by Therese Raphael We can’t know what was said in those secret deliberations, but the Nobel Committee must have thought about giving Volodymyr Zelenskyy the Peace prize. That would have been a popular choice — he easily topped the 2022 Time magazine reader poll for the most ...
As attested by Vladimir Putin’s carefully calibrated photo ops, he knows the value of spectacle. One such spectacle took place last week in the Kremlin, as the despot held a pompous ceremony to supposedly formalize the annexation of Ukrainian territories following illegal referendums in ...
by Daniel DePetris From the moment Russian forces began their widespread missile barrage against Ukrainian targets in February, the United States and Europe have sought to rally the world on Ukraine’s behalf. The narrative of the collective West has been simple, and it appeals to our ...
by Martin Schram This was not the way Russia’s Vladimir Putin wanted to look, for all the world to see last Thursday, when he walked into the massive and bizarrely flowered and leafy conference room in Uzbekistan for his much-needed meeting with a deep-pocketed counterpart, China’s ...
Authoritarians control their flock with flattery about their inborn goodness and fear-mongering about the outside forces threatening it. There’s an underlying laziness to all this. It frees the followers from thinking things through since the strongman is going to protect them. And it frees ...
by Trudy Rubin Aug. 24 marked six months since the start of Russia’s war on Ukraine. It was also Ukraine’s Independence Day. Yet instead of celebrating, Kyiv canceled all holiday observances across the country as major cities braced for vicious Russian missile attacks. “We ...