Four times in a span of two weeks, Ukrainian drones lit up the local oil refinery and export terminal, laying bare the weakness of Russian air defenses. Clouds of smoke so vast that they were visible from space.

As long-range hits were gathering pace, the Russian president vanished. Ten straight days without a public appearance. Then on April 28, the self-styled strongman resurfaced and got on the phone with Donald Trump to beg for a three-day ceasefire to save his Victory Day parade.

Scheduled for May 9, a grotesque spectacle colloquially known as “pobedobesie,” or victory mania, is central to the Kremlin’s claim to legitimacy. Where democracies rely on elections, Moscow relies on ritual: staging strength, celebrating sacrifice, and national pride to bind past triumphs to present wars. It’s a day when Russians conveniently forget that the war began in 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland from the West and Soviet Russia from the East.

For all the chest-thumping, Putin’s Defence Ministry has now stripped the parade of tanks and missiles for the first time in two decades. The man who has threatened to nuke Europe seems afraid the cameras will catch him ducking Ukrainian drones on Red Square.

An old KGB hand, trained in reflexive control, Putin tried to box Zelensky in with two bad options. Reject the ceasefire, and the Kremlin’s Western apologists, the Putinversteher crowd, get a fresh talking point about Ukraine refusing peace. Accept it, and Ukraine forfeits the chance to rain on Putin’s parade and remind ordinary Russians that they’ll have to eventually reap what their government and their army sow.

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In a clever move, Kyiv flipped the script. Zelensky announced his own ceasefire to begin at midnight on May 6 as a precondition for a truce on May 9. Russia was given a chance to demonstrate what it really wanted, and sure enough, within minutes, Russian-Iranian Shahed drones were raining on Dnipro and guided bombs on Sumy, Kharkiv, and Zaporizhzhia.

Moscow murdered 70 civilians and injured 500 more across Ukraine in the first week of May, exposing itself, again, as the side committed to war, a side for whom no war crime is too heinous and no cost is too much.

The story should be everywhere. Instead, the Western commentariat will dutifully zoom in on the parade in Red Square as scheduled programming, the diplomatic equivalent of head buried in sand.

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Finland’s President Alexander Stubb remains the most clear-headed European leader of the day. “The tide has turned,” he said. “We need Ukraine more than Ukraine needs us.” On the battlefield, Stubb estimates Ukraine is killing or wounding 30,000 to 35,000 Russian soldiers a month, 95% of them with drones, at a kill ratio of five Russians for every Ukrainian.

Meanwhile, in Hungary, the Kremlin’s most reliable European protector, Viktor Orban, just lost his first election in 16 years. Freed from Orban’s veto, the EU approved a $106 billion loan for Kyiv.

Moscow’s economic fortunes are moving in the opposite direction. Yes, it is benefiting from the spike in oil prices, but “in March alone, Russia’s oil revenue losses from our long-range capabilities are estimated at no less than $2.3 billion,” Zelensky said.

Russia’s GDP has already contracted 1.8% at the start of the year. According to Sweden’s military intelligence chief, the country is “living on borrowed time,” stuck in a zero-multiplier model – it churns out weapons that promptly go up in smoke, stimulating no additional spending and feeding no supply chains except that of heinous war crimes.

Lots of facts have changed. The mindsets in the West? Not so much. “At some point, Ukraine will sign a ceasefire agreement… then it may be that part of Ukraine’s territory is no longer Ukrainian,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz told students in Marsberg. Even if he was speaking off the cuff, the instinct is revealing. Berlin has spent billions to help Ukraine defend itself, yet the chancellor is sketching concessions on Moscow’s behalf – a repeated case of self-deterrence.

Washington has the same problem in spades. The American people overwhelmingly support Ukraine, but our government is not keeping pace. $400 million in Ukraine aid approved months ago sat idle at the Pentagon, stonewalled by Undersecretary Elbridge Colby – until it was finally pushed through after Senator McConnell called it out.

Ukraine is no longer just an aid recipient; it is emerging as a security provider for Europe. Countries are turning to Ukrainian systems not out of charity, but because the speed of the innovation cycle, hardware upgrades combined with AI, now defines battlefield advantage. Under the pressure of war, Kyiv has built a model of rapid adaptation that the Pentagon and its contractors will struggle to match.

Past Tuapse, Ukrainian UAVs arrived in Perm, 1,000 miles into Russia. On May 5, Ukrainian Flamingo cruise missiles travelled more than 700 miles to strike a Russian facility in Cheboksary that produces components for Shahed drones and Iskander missiles.

The war the Kremlin unleashed on Ukraine is ricocheting back on the aggressor. Ukraine has figured out what comes next. Some in the West understand it. Some are catching up. Some are still oblivious.

A version of this article first appeared in The Kyiv Independent on 9 May, 2026

Enter Vladimir Putin, who signed off on an official biography in which a hallway rat becomes the origin story of a poor but strong-willed kid growing up in the communal apartments – the Soviet projects – of Leningrad. Two decades of Western analysis dutifully followed: the judo black belt, a spook who never forgot what rats do when they have nowhere left to run.

To Moscow’s delight, our most esteemed Kremlinologists turned a pest-control incident into profound geopolitical insight. Memorable but entirely useless.

Steeped in celebrity culture, we can’t resist mythologizing Putin: the empty-eyed KGB operative, the man who resurrected Russia from the ruins of the Soviet collapse, and wants us to treat it as a superpower again. This folklore is seductive. Alas, Putin, a wanted war criminal, is as ordinary as Russian despots come.

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In 1961, Hannah Arendt watched Adolf Eichmann on trial in Jerusalem and came away not with a portrait of a bloodthirsty sociopath, but of a bureaucrat. A cog in the machine rather than a singular villain. We failed to heed that insight in Russia’s war on Ukraine. Strip away the rat story, the spy patina, and what remains is the banality of Putin.

Consider the evidence.

Ivan the Terrible (1547–1584) created Muscovy’s first secret police, the oprichnina, to whip nobility into submission. Surely, Ivan was waging wars of conquest in defense of Holy Russia. He had no qualms about brutalizing his own people, for this was the path to “greatness.” Putin praised Ivan as a “gatherer of Russian lands,” never mentioning that they belonged to other peoples – Tatars, Maris – whom Moscow promptly resettled, murdered, starved, or conscripted into the next war.

Peter the Great (1682–1725) looked west, liked what he saw, and set about modernizing his backward empire – on serf bones. He launched the Great Northern War to assert Russia’s place among the great powers, funding his ambitions on the windfall of expanding trade revenues. In June 2022, Putin compared his invasion of Ukraine directly to Peter’s conquests. “We are also returning our own” – a line as trite as it is mendacious.

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Nicholas I (1825–1855) censored everything, suppressed minorities, established the Third Section – precursor to the KGB – and launched the Crimean War in pursuit of regional hegemony he saw as his birthright. The West called him the “gendarme of Europe” and fancied the Russian military unstoppable. Nicholas lost, badly, and died watching his hubris collapse at Sevastopol. Moscow was better at instilling fear than winning wars – a distinction Western leaders continue to miss.

Nicholas II (1894–1917) inherited an extraordinary economic boom and promptly squandered it on the Russo-Japanese War, a gamble the empire decisively lost. A decade later, he led Russia into the First World War with the same misplaced confidence. That didn’t end well for Moscow either. Nicholas II is remembered for forcibly Russifying minorities with even more zeal than his predecessors.

Joseph Stalin (1924–1953) is the most instructive example for anyone tempted by today’s talk of accommodating Moscow. In 1939, the Allies hoped to bring Stalin into an anti-Hitler coalition. Instead, he signed a secret pact with Hitler to carve up Eastern Europe – annexing the Baltic states, invading Poland from the east while Nazi Germany pushed from the West.

Moscow’s interests came first. They always do.

When the Allies came to Russia’s rescue after Hitler betrayed Stalin in 1941, the Kremlin took the help and turned on the hand that fed it. Stalin raced his armies to Berlin not to hasten victory, but to plant Soviet flags in other people’s countries. The Iron Curtain and a nuclear arms race were what America received as payback for trusting Moscow. Those who today urge concessions to Putin to peel him from Beijing’s embrace should sit with that history.

Even Boris Yeltsin – toasted at G8 summits and praised for burying the Soviet past – launched a savage war in Chechnya, handed Russia’s riches to loyal oligarchs, and picked his successor from the ranks of the chekists to secure his own immunity. Interests of ordinary Russians and the dreams of freedom be damned. Yeltsin was more Putin than not.

To sustain subjugation at home, Ivans, Peters, and Vladimirs cowed their neighbors and reached for maximum atrocities at every turn. Conquest is the currency of domestic legitimacy. No occupant of the Kremlin throne would waste a windfall – whether from fur, grain, or oil – on the Russian people. That would threaten the extractive system centered on Moscow, which feeds on its internal colonies, now known as the subjects of the Russian Federation.

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Putin isn’t a strategic genius playing three-dimensional chess. To wage colonial wars and oppress the peoples of Moscow’s realm is his inheritance, his privilege, and his burden – just as it was for every ruler before him.

No different Russia is waiting to be discovered or unlocked. There is only this Russia – a matryoshka doll of the same violent tragedy under different branding: tsarist empire, USSR, prison of nations, the Russian Federation – persisting in its ways for five centuries. The first step to confronting aggression from the Kremlin is to stop being surprised by it.

A war crimes tribunal for the perpetrators and decades of reckoning for the society that failed to stop them is the only known antidote to the banality of evil. Putin and Russia could use both.

A version of this article first appeared in the Kyiv Independent, on April 15, 2026

In the first week of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, more than 1,000 of these murderous balalaikas were launched by the Revolutionary Guards and regime-aligned forces, targeting everything and everyone around the Persian Gulf.

Tehran can produce about 10,000 a month. For comparison, since Iran licensed the technology in 2022, the Kremlin has scaled up domestic production to an estimated 12,000 a month.

In September last year, unarmed Russian-made versions of the Shahed breached NATO airspace over Poland and Romania. Nearly 58,000 death mopeds have rained on Ukrainian cities since 2022. The Shahed drone is the red thread that connects Iran to Ukraine, via Russia. It is also a lesson that unpunished aggression does not fizzle out. It spreads.

Europe started neither of these wars, but will have to reckon with both.

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The Iranian regime was decapitated three weeks ago, and European nightmares are compounding. The Strait of Hormuz is effectively closed, oil prices are through the roof, and more Patriot interceptors are used up in the Middle East in one week than Ukraine received in four years. The US-brokered parody of peace talks is on ice, and the White House is easing sanctions on Russia to stabilize energy markets. And to top it all off, Washington is now tying security guarantees to Ukraine ceding territory to Russia.

Describing the situation in the Middle East, the EU Council President, Antonio Costa, put it bluntly: “So ​far, there is only one winner ​in this war – Russia.”

Moscow shares intelligence with Tehran. Ukraine is sending its cutting-edge drone-intercept technology to protect America and its Gulf allies. Over 200 Ukrainian military experts are already deployed across the region.

To compare the two wars is tempting, even necessary. But superficial parallels won’t help with questions that matter: where Europe can intervene, where it should, and where it has the duty and the means to change the outcome.

Righteous indignation is not the same as the resolve and wisdom to act.

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The Ayatollahs have hijacked the country from its citizens. No doubt about that. Hundreds, if not thousands, have been machine-gunned in the streets. The despotic system enjoys little popular support, but maintains a monopoly on violence.

But the fall of a brutal regime rarely guarantees betterment. Iranian theocracy could radicalize further, accelerate its nuclear program, or collapse the country into civil war, unleashing a refugee crisis of a scale Europe can hardly imagine. Bad, very bad, and terrible options abound.

The possibility that the mullahs relinquish control and a popular movement succeeds in Iran cannot be ruled out, but it remains the least likely scenario. In Ukraine, there is no such ambiguity. The road to peace is difficult, but the direction is clear: give Kyiv what it needs to expel the invaders.

Should European NATO members be preparing to send troops and patrol Ukrainian skies, as Ariana Gic, Gabrielius Landsbergis and Roman Sohn have argued in an essay for RUSI? Should they send long-range missiles like Taurus, a step debated for three years? Should they stop discussing frozen Russian assets and start transferring them? Yes, yes, and yes. What stands in the way is the corrosive weakness of “with Ukraine, as long as it takes.”

If Europe allows Moscow to get its way in Ukraine through hesitation, half-measures, and failure to recognize the existential imperative of Ukrainian victory, the vacuum of appeasement will pull Russian aggression westward. And should the guns fall silent without Ukraine fully inside Europe’s collective defense, Russia will regroup and re-invade.

The war with Iran is a macabre labyrinth. Russia’s war on Ukraine is, as Anders Åslund wrote, “the most black-and-white issue of good versus evil in modern history.”

Finland’s President Alexander Stubb, whose country borders Russia and who understands the stakes better than most, put it plainly: “Iran is not my war, Ukraine is my war.” Europe should invest its economic heft, political capital, military resources, and diplomatic clout where outcomes are achievable.

When the German President calls the strikes on Iran illegal under international law, he is invoking something sacred. But for that language to carry weight, we have to rewind the tape.

The rules-based order did not collapse on February 28, 2026, when America bombed Iran. It fractured in 2008, when Russia invaded Georgia, and Europe responded with thoughts and prayers. It eroded further when Russia invaded Crimea in 2014. And it evaporated when Europe went ahead with Nord Stream 2 – effectively rewarding the Kremlin’s aggression with a redundant pipeline that stripped Ukraine of its most powerful deterrent: energy transit on which both Europe and Russia depended.

A bloc of middle powers that looked away for eighteen years has no standing to pontificate and point fingers. Europe’s future will not be decided in the Middle East, but in Donetsk, Luhansk, and Crimea. The energy shock will pass. What will not pass is the realization that “never again” was a slogan, not a promise. Russia’s war is genocidal in intent. Putin spelled it out in his 2021 essay denying Ukraine’s right to exist, and the ICC arrest warrant for the deportation of Ukrainian children leaves no room for doubt.

Europe does not need permission to help Ukraine restore its borders. It needs the will. There is a basic discipline that applies to nations as much as to people: pour your energy into the things you can affect. Stop posturing, stop making proclamations about a rules-based order the West collectively failed to uphold, and start defending it where you can. Strength does not precede decisive action in Ukraine. It follows from it.

A version of this article first appeared in The Kyiv Independent on March 29, 2026

Too many crimes against humanity, too many innocent victims: children, women, the elderly. Each war, each enemy, each century.

If these words resonate with you as ultimately true, and you are not unsettled by the war being recursively attributed to itself rather than the aggressor, you are the problem.

In peacetime, in the world of academic abstractions, even when two belligerents of comparable strength and competing claims clash on the battlefield, condemning war itself is defensible. But not today. Not when this is the lens through which Moscow’s war on Ukraine is presented or seen.

When peace advocacy gets detached from the duty to act, appeasement follows. The aggressor interprets it as permission.

Not “each enemy.” Russia. The invader.

All horrors flow from the Kremlin’s decision to commit a crime of aggression, clearly defined in the UN Charter and one of only four crimes the International Criminal Court is sanctioned to prosecute.

By any consequentialist measure, policies rooted in faux-pacifism have stimulated Russia’s appetite for war: from the brazen violation of Georgia’s borders in 2008, to the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, to the flooding of Donetsk and Luhansk with Russian troops and weapons, the downing of a civilian airliner, and ultimately the largest war in Europe since 1945.

The same script, on repeat: Moscow manufactures a grievance, attacks a neighbor, and European leaders proclaim restraint as the path back to peace. More death and destruction follow. Europe’s refusal to confront reality, which in practice means confronting the threat decisively, taught Moscow that aggression pays.

Four dangerous misconceptions sustain Europe’s self-defeating reflex.

The first is that war is waged between two belligerents while good people suffer on both sides. A truism that, taken to its logical conclusion, erases the distinction between invading and being invaded. Russia and Ukraine are not the same. Russia deliberately targets and murders civilians. Ukraine, categorically, does not. The UN has found that in 2025, for every three Russian civilians killed, ninety-seven Ukrainians were.

The second is that non-violent resistance is universally applicable. When it comes to colonial conquest, forced assimilation, and ultimately the disappearance of a nation, it is not.

Postwar Europe has long wrestled with a genuine philosophical question: is defending one’s homeland a duty or a trap? When young men are called upon to kill and die for their nations, are they doing so for illusions? When these questions, valid as they are, are transposed onto Russia’s criminal war, they become a sleight of hand.

Ukrainians are not fighting for an abstraction. They are fighting because Russian soldiers crossed the border to rape and torture, to massacre Ukrainians for daring to exist. The alternative to armed resistance is not a change of flag. It is kidnapped children, filtration camps, and mass graves. Bucha, Mariupol, and Izium remove all doubt.

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The third false premise is that the end of war brings betterment. History suggests otherwise. Some wars end with the aggressor defeated; some with the victims enslaved. Still others end in intermissions. The guns fall silent while injustice entrenches. Should Europe fail to help Ukraine drive out the invaders, Moscow’s present target will be left to a peace in the cemetery. And the continent – of which Ukraine is an integral part – will have to relearn history’s grim lesson: unpunished evil spreads.

The fourth is the threat of nuclear war. It is pseudo-pacifism’s strongest and weakest argument: strongest because the moral imperative of preventing human annihilation is indisputable; weakest because it fails to grapple with the very danger it invokes. Russia did not use its doomsday weapons when its army collapsed outside Kyiv, when Ukraine liberated Kherson, or when Crimea came under attack. The claim that nuclear risk rises if the West helps Ukraine defend itself mistakes intuition for evidence.

As Timothy Snyder put it: “By taking nuclear blackmail seriously, we have actually increased the overall chances of nuclear war.” Beijing, Russia’s most consequential backer, has taken a nuclear first strike off the table for the Kremlin.

While pacifists in Europe debate ethics from the safety of their armchairs, Ukrainians speak with the clarity of people who have lived under Russian fire for twelve years.

In a 2024 essay aptly titled Why pacifism kills, Ukrainian intellectuals wrote from experience rather than theory. Their argument was simple: an adversary committed to violence reads restraint as an invitation. The high-minded principles of inclusivity and open society do not survive contact with a regime that sees them as proof of decadence.

This is not an abstract debate. Russia has attacked over 1,000 healthcare facilities in Ukraine. It has destroyed 358 educational institutions through aerial bombardment. Bombed 675 churches, abducted, tortured, and murdered priests. Of the nearly 53,000 verified civilian casualties since the start of the full-scale invasion, more than 3,000 have been children.

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Europe has agency and power; it should exercise both. Taurus missiles remain undelivered, frozen Russian assets untransferred, and each vacillation is dressed in the language of caution. Meanwhile, Moscow exploits Europe’s disunity. The fractures between north and south, the retreat by some states into narrow national interest at the expense of solidarity and collective defense, become a force multiplier for the Kremlin.

The willful blindness has a long pedigree. A century ago, Moscow starved millions of Ukrainians to death, and the world largely accepted the framing Moscow pushed: a famine, a terrible tragedy, an act of God. It took decades for Holodomor to be recognized for what it was -- a genocide. Decades of complacency among the academics, policy-makers, and opinion leaders morphed into complicity.

Centuries of forced russification under tsars and commissars followed the same logic: deny the crime, play the victim, wait for the world to forget. The Russian Orthodox Church, long fused with the KGB and now the FSB, has played its part in the same colonial project. What Moscow is doing today has a name, a history, and a pattern.

Russian aggression must fail, and be seen to fail. Expecting Ukraine to carry the burden for all of Europe while others retreat into half-measures is neither wisdom nor restraint. It is the surest path to the wider war pseudo-pacifists claim to fear.

A version of this article first appeared in Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ), on March 27, 2026

We don’t always get to choose our friends or enemies. Sometimes they choose us.

For three decades, every American president assumed post-Soviet Russia would seek normalization, if not partnership. The Berlin Wall fell in 1989, and with it the belief that ideological struggle would define relations forever. Fanaticism and communism were out; the market economy and pragmatism were in. Finally, the Americans thought, no one had to lose for everyone to win.

We were wrong. Self-centered in our assumptions and ignorant of how the Kremlin operates and what drives its policies.

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Putin’s Russia needs an enemy to survive. Not occasionally. Constantly. When corruption spreads, when the economy serves only Kremlin-connected oligarchs, when Moscow wages wars on its neighbors, the regime needs a scapegoat. The story never changes: Russia is under siege, always the victim. And the villain is, you guessed it, Washington. Not by our choice, but by Moscow’s.

Ukrainians, by contrast, draw inspiration from the same ideals that define these United States. Our ally’s bravest sons and daughters fight and die for a creed Americans know well: give me liberty or give me death.

Russia and Ukraine are not the same. Russia deliberately targets and murders civilians. Ukraine, categorically, does not. The UN has found that in 2025, for every three Russian civilians killed, ninety-seven Ukrainians were. As many as 20,000 Ukrainian children have been taken from homes, orphanages, and boarding schools to Russia since the February 2022 invasion by Moscow. Ukraine does not steal Russian kids.

Kyiv wants peace. It accepted the unconditional ceasefire that the Trump administration put on the table. Zelensky did not stall, hedge, or play games.

Putin did. The Kremlin treats negotiations with the United States as a joke. A joke at the expense of America’s credibility and Ukrainian lives. Diplomats talk, Russia bombs. While envoys shake hands, Russian-Iranian drones hit apartment blocks – murdering mothers and children in their sleep. Moscow mocks American mediation while demanding concessions from Washington and surrender from Ukraine.

Negotiating with Ukraine took twenty-four hours. Russia still refuses to cease fire. Chooses war. Every. Day.

Ukraine produces heroes. Russia produces war criminals. Ukrainian soldiers defend their homes, their families, their right to exist. Russian forces defend nothing. They are the invaders who enter other people’s countries to deliver rape, torture chambers, and mass graves.

In Bucha alone, more than 450 civilians were found murdered after Russian troops retreated, many with their hands bound and signs of torture. Across Ukraine, authorities are investigating over 150,000 Russian war crimes.

Ukraine wants a future. Russia clings to the past. Ukrainians are building a modern democratic state accountable to the people. Like Americans, they believe citizens hire leaders to drive the bus of government, not dictate how they live.

The Kremlin, by contrast, tries to resurrect an empire – bloodthirsty and cruel – whipping Russians into patriotic frenzy every year on Victory Day, glorifying violence, while conveniently forgetting that WWII started with Nazi Germany invading Poland from the west and Soviet Russia from the east.

Kyiv invests in institutions, reforms, and a generation that wants to live normal lives in liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Moscow invests in tanks, stokes myths of imperial glory, and launches wars of aggression – criminal activity under international law. One country is trying to move forward. The other spreads chaos as far as it can reach, betting that if everything burns, Moscow’s failures will be harder for its people to see.

Ukraine’s victory would make America safer. Russia’s victory would endanger Americans everywhere. In 1994, America gave Ukraine security assurances in exchange for giving up nuclear weapons. Breaking that commitment now tells every ally that our promises are far from ironclad.

Washington demonstrated willingness to confront hostile regimes in places like Iran and Venezuela. But if Russia – the most reckless, revanchist power on earth, which does not wish the United States well – can invade its neighbor, commit unspeakable crimes, threaten nuclear escalation, and then get what it wants, American deterrence collapses.

If nuclear blackmail works against Ukraine, it will work everywhere. China, Iran, and North Korea are all taking notes. They shouldn’t learn that rattling the nuclear saber is the way to bend America to their will.

Ukraine is our friend. Russia is our enemy. One country fights for freedom, the other survives by inventing enemies and beating the war drum. The Kremlin turns America into a monster so it can pose as a savior – practicing politics of grievance to justify repression at home and atrocities abroad. Ukrainians refuse to be recolonized by Russia and are standing up for themselves. They should succeed in kicking the invaders out, and we must help.

A version of this article first appeared in Real Clear World on 18-Mar-2026

The story was a brazen lie and quickly collapsed. But that was beside the point. By telling it, an old KGB hand boxed the U.S. president into two bad options: confront the lie and respond forcefully to such overt disrespect, or ignore it and appear gullible, or worse – accommodating toward someone who had just insulted the office.

For Putin, shaped by decades in Soviet and Russian intelligence service, deception is the default setting. He does not negotiate. He manipulates. It is not that he dislikes dealmaking; it is that the idea barely registers. Lying comes easily and instinctively, and the person across from him is never a partner or an interlocutor, only an object to be used, misled, controlled, and exploited.

In 2001, George W. Bush famously described his interaction with the Kremlin ruler, who was then seen as a budding democrat, as follows: “I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy [...] a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country.”

In a resource-rich state where two-thirds of the rural population lacks indoor plumbing and more than a million men have been killed or wounded in a war of choice, Putin’s record points less to care for the nation than to the pursuit of power and the perpetuation of a bloodthirsty imperial order at all costs.

Obama attempted to engage Putin rationally and later dismissed him as “not so smart.” But it was John McCain who said it best: “I looked in Mr. Putin’s eyes and I saw three letters, a K, a G, and a B.”

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To grasp the point of the Valdai lie, one has to understand reflexive control, a concept developed by Soviet intelligence to shape an opponent’s decision-making. It narrows your choices, so that every option carries a cost.

Putin lied about troops in Crimea. Lied about Russia’s intentions in Ukraine. And he’ll keep going because, as the Institute for the Study of War explains, “The Russian way of war is centered on the notion that wars can be won and lost in the opponent’s mind.”

Putin also preyed on Trump’s desire to be seen as a peacemaker. In early 2025, Ukraine took just 24 hours to agree to a ceasefire proposed by the White House. Publicly, the Kremlin claimed to be relentlessly pursuing peace. In reality, it intensified its criminal war. Attacks on civilians increased, North Korea confirmed that its troops are fighting for Russia, and negotiations turned into farce. The Nobel Peace Prize never arrived, and Putin wasted little time gloating.

The Alaska summit exposed the same pattern. The Russian dictator gained a platform to repeat his lies, and Ukraine was excluded from talks about its own future. Putin gave nothing. No ceasefire, no withdrawal, no accountability.

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As the former commander of the Ukrainian armed forces Valerii Zaluzhnyi wrote: “Russia’s negotiators, like its generals, fight to exhaust, confuse and divide. Their aim is not peace but delay; not compromise in pursuit of accord but conquest through deception.”

This approach is well documented. As Casey Michel has shown in his analysis of Russian wartime narratives, Moscow’s objective is not coherence or credibility but psychological dominance. The Kremlin’s strategy relies on flooding the zone with contradictions, half-truths, and outright lies, forcing adversaries to react – not act.

The Putin who signals affinity toward Trump is the same Putin who has spent a quarter century turning anti-Americanism into state doctrine. Under Gorbachev and Yeltsin, roughly 70% of Russians viewed America as a friend. Today, about three-quarters see us as the enemy.

Then there’s the nuclear blackmail. Russia didn’t use its doomsday weapons when its army collapsed outside Kyiv, when Ukraine liberated Kherson, when Crimea came under attack, or when Ukrainian troops crossed into Kursk Oblast. Ultimately, the biggest factor here is that Xi Jinping, to whom Putin now effectively reports, has ruled nukes out.

Perhaps Putin’s boldest lie is that Russia can be lured away from China if the West lets him have Ukraine. The so-called “marriage of convenience” hardened into a “no limits” partnership the moment the invasion began. China now supplies 92% of the foreign components in the drones Russia uses to strike Ukrainian cities. Letting Russia prevail would not loosen that bond. It would reward Moscow for choosing Beijing.

So why does Putin lie to Trump? Because lying is what Putin does, and because he believes it works.

The first step to defeating Russian cognitive warfare is simple: stop playing by Russia’s dirty rules. Stop accepting Putin’s framing. Stop reasoning from false premises. The second step is harder: give Ukraine what it needs to kick the invaders out. Show Putin that attempts to take Ukraine’s freedom, deceive the U.S. president, and threaten nuclear escalation will not be tolerated.

Putin lies out of habit, but also out of fear. He lies because his military is underperforming even the lowest expectations and Russia’s economy is faltering. Putin lies because his only path to victory runs through Washington’s self-deterrence and Europe’s indecisiveness. The greatest lie of all is that we have no choice but to accept it.

A version of this article first appeared in The Hill on Jan 22, 2026

The same Vladimir Putin, a wanted war criminal and Russia’s president, wakes up every day facing a binary choice: to continue Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine or to end it. For the last eleven years, he has chosen the former.

Why?

Moscow could stop its war of choice at any moment – declare “mission accomplished” and let the state-controlled media, the only kind that exists in Russia, celebrate a glorious triumph. After all, a man who monopolized the information space and lies with ease is not constrained by such trifles as facts.

The population would exhale and cheer. A vast majority of Russians support the war, but ever fewer fighting-age men appear willing to die in it. In a system built on fear and obedience, accepting the party line has always been safer than having an opinion – let alone expressing one.

Why not lock in the gains and quit – or at least pause?

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Pundits keep scratching their heads, mistaking symptoms for causes. Some point to an economy locked into a wartime footing; others to public expectations of victory, fed by years of propaganda. Those factors matter, but they are derivatives of deeper forces: a cold geopolitical calculus; a regime that needs the spectacle of power – forever staging Russia’s “return to greatness” to mask looting and decay at home; and the legitimacy of an imperial system stretching across eleven time zones, one where wars of aggression choose themselves and anoint the ‘leader’ to carry them out.

Consider the calculus from Moscow’s perspective. It may indeed be searching for a reason to stop – look at the state of the Russian economy – but every time Washington and its allies fail to act with strength, the Kremlin cannot resist the temptation to keep going. Lenin once advised to “probe with the bayonet: if you meet steel, stop; if you meet mush, push.” Today, Moscow’s probing is hesitant, almost weary, yet the mush it encounters in the West is so tantalizingly soft that it cannot help but press on.

In pure cost-benefit terms, Putin’s regime is acting rationally – concluding that more aggression will yield more gains. What we call “escalation management” is, in effect, escalation encouragement. By refusing to send a clear, unambiguous stop now signal – close the skies over Ukraine, transfer Russian central bank assets to bolster Ukraine’s defences, terminate crude oil purchases, enact sanctions “from hell,” send Tomahawks and Taurus missiles – we create the very vacuum that keeps pulling Russian violence westward.

The second factor is the regime’s mandate – strange as that may sound in a dictatorship. For two decades, the promise of a Russia “rising from its knees” has required the sacrifice of rights and the postponement of prosperity. The state’s security apparatus, court oligarchs, and propaganda bureaucracy all derive purpose from conflict; peace, by contrast, would expose their irrelevance.

At his 2024 press conference, Putin let the mask slip: “When everything is calm, measured, stable, we are bored… this is when everyone wants action.” It was not a joke. This regime fears stillness more than anything.

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The third force behind the Kremlin’s choice to keep waging war on Ukraine is the legitimacy of the imperial Russian system itself. This machinery of plunder, oppression, and control is the only one the Frankenstein state has known since Muscovy’s founding as a tax collector for the Mongol khans. For the Kremlin, expansionism is not an academic abstraction; it is a virus woven into the state’s DNA, impossible to isolate because it defines the host.

Moscow’s domination over its internal colonies, from the Caucasus to Siberia, depends on the constant performance of power. The myth of the benevolent center protecting and guiding its periphery has always been used to justify repression at home.

A Russia at peace would face an unbearable question: why should its so-called “federal subjects” remain under Moscow’s rule at all? The invasion of 2014 and, again in 2022, are not only attempts to recolonize Ukraine but also a way to reassure the peoples of Russia of their place within the imperial hierarchy. This isn’t about policy, but identity. Defeat in Ukraine would be bad for Putin, but defeat in Russia would be catastrophic.

Three powerful forces are tipping the scales of war and peace. No Western strategy will be effective until these are fully recognized and policies are calibrated accordingly. The calculus of costs and benefits is entirely within our control. We know how to change it; but we lack the resolve.

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The second – the regime’s preservation – is not our concern. Russia under Putin is a terrorist enterprise that wages war, a criminal act under the UN charter, and actively works to weaken American, European and global institutions and divide our society. Most egregiously, the Kremlin toys with nuclear threats – stoking chaos and undermining global nonproliferation – while knowing full well it is bluffing. Xi Jinping, to whom Putin now effectively reports, has ruled nukes out.

The third – imperial software powering the Moscow-centric operating system – is the hardest to crack. We cannot expect Russians to confront it until the West purges its own discourse of Moscow’s false narratives. Russians cannot escape imperial self-deception while we in the West refuse to address it – tolerating Kremlin propaganda in our digital spaces and imperial tropes in our own scholarship.

Like Russian drones over Polish skies, disinformation is a national security threat. Alongside weapons and sanctions, the Free World must fund counter-programming in Russian, harden platforms against coordinated manipulation, and support honest scholarship that exposes the pernicious myths on which Moscow’s delusions of grandeur rest.

If we truly want to see the end of Russia’s war on Ukraine, we must retire the language of “as long as it takes.“ Every Western half-measure and failure to act can be traced back to this counterproductive phrase. When the arithmetic that rewards Moscow’s malice finally flips, the flywheel of violence will slow.

Putin needs a solid reason to end Russia’s war. And the Free World must give it. The Kremlin will spin retreat into triumph, but only when pressing on becomes riskier than stopping. Ukraine can and should restore its borders. Why the Transatlantic alliance keeps tripping over its own strength – seeming more afraid of Russia’s defeat than of its victory – remains a mystery.

A version of this article first appeared in The New York Post on November 22, 2025

Russian jets didn’t bomb Tallinn; the drones over Poland carried no payload. The incursions over Denmark and near Alaska are shrouded in the fog of plausible deniability — serious enough to scramble fighters but ambiguous enough to dodge consequences.

And that’s exactly the point. Moscow is waging a different kind of war on the West. Not like the one it brought to Ukraine. The point of poking NATO is to provoke nothing.

We’d all be better off if the Kremlin were merely testing NATO’s defenses. Instead, it’s deploying reflexive control at scale: the art of making your enemies self-deter before they self-destruct. Russia has no interest in kinetic confrontation but is eager to weaken our collective ability to think, act and mount a defense. Drones and jets are deadly weapons, but in NATO skies, they’re fuel for a different sort of war — one Moscow believes it’s winning.

There’s no realistic path for Russia to defeat NATO on the battlefield. Moscow invaded a country quarter its size and, as Donald Trump put it, “has been fighting aimlessly for three and a half years a War that should have taken a Real Military Power less than a week to win.”

But further westward, Moscow’s goal isn’t to fight but to have us wake up one day to find NATO’s guarantees void, European Union institutions ruined and transatlantic solidarity gone. No need for Russia to fire a shot if it can convince Europeans that defending themselves isn’t worth the effort.

Just 32% of Russians and 41% of Americans would fight for their country, Gallup says — compared with 62% of Ukrainians. The European Union average is only 32%. But the real story is in the refusals: 78% of Italians, 62% of Austrians, and 57% of Germans say they wouldn’t fight if invaded. This is the psychological terrain where Russia is waging war.

NATO’s fragile element is political cohesion, above all on Article 5. Discredit that mutual-defense guarantee, and the alliance will unravel into dysfunction and collapse under the weight of its own hesitation. Article 5 doesn’t have to be revoked. Any whiff of uncertainty around it will turn NATO into Schrödinger’s cat: both alive and dead.

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“Hybrid war” is absolutely the worst term for what we’re witnessing. Every airspace breach met not with deep strikes on enemy airfields but with a carefully worded condemnation delivers exactly what Moscow wants.

In NATO skies, the kinetic violations are choreographed for Moscow’s foot soldiers in the West: the “Not our war” politicians, the “We mustn’t escalate” pseudo-scholars, the “What if they go nuclear?” commentators — the voices that drown out reason with fear. The war Russia hopes to win is psychological, political and informational. And the West isn’t even showing up to fight it.

Moscow also keeps poking its neighbors to reinforce a narrative carefully cultivated at home: Russia is already at war with a scheming, ruthless, bloodthirsty West. It can’t be at war with Ukraine because in Putin’s telling, Ukraine doesn’t exist. So Mother Russia must be fighting NATO.

That fiction needs evidence, and drones drifting into EU airspace provide it. No matter what NATO does, the Kremlin’s spin doctors frame it the same way: “See? The enemy is at the gates.” This imaginary war legitimizes the real one in Ukraine. It helps Putin turn failure into defiance, stagnation into strategy and a flailing invasion into heroic resistance against an enemy that was never there. It also creates a face-saving off-ramp. If the Russian economy collapses or China pulls back support, the claim Russia fought NATO to a draw will fall on fertile ground.

Lastly, Moscow is poking NATO because it can — and because history says it pays. 17 years of Western inaction, under four US presidents and an incalculable number of European governments, created the vacuum that keeps pulling Russian aggression in.

From Georgia to Crimea to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, each red line crossed without consequence taught Moscow the same lesson. The Frankenstein state, a revanchist colonizer at heart, isn’t provoked by NATO’s strength but by its visible unwillingness to confront aggression — a criminal act under the United Nations Charter.

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Russia also runs the numbers — and the results keep coming back in its favor. What usually follows a Russian intrusion? Panic, confusion, maybe a strongly worded statement. What doesn’t follow? A sense of urgency matching the stakes. Robust action. The kind of response that would alter Moscow’s risk calculus.

Every drone or fighter jet forces the Western alliance to choose between doing the hard thing and wishing the problem away. Behold reflexive control in its purest form: presenting the adversary with a menu of bad options. Shoot down a warplane that brazenly violates your airspace, and Moscow cries provocation. Issue a press release instead, and NATO looks paralyzed. Either way, Russia wins — because it set the terms.

Restoring peace through strengths is the only viable path, but the free world keeps failing to take it. Poland’s invocation of Article 4 may suggest movement in the right direction and so does Trump’s news-making, paper tiger, post, but at the end of the day, actions not words will make a difference.

A version of this article first appeared in New York Post, on Sep 28, 2025

Let’s be frank: if you live in the U.K., elsewhere in Europe, or America, you may support Ukraine and scorn Russia, but this is not your war. It is their war. Not Russia’s unprovoked act of aggression that obligates you and your government to act, but their barbaric, unnecessary carnage. And if they – the Russians, the Ukrainians, whoever they are – could just abandon their savage ways, we, the dignified and enlightened, could go back to our normal, peaceful lives.

This thinking is a manifestation of basic human instinct – to disassociate from horror, to avoid the burden of reckoning with genocide in plain sight. Russians are killing Ukrainians for daring to exist, and Europe – fully capable of stopping it – has chosen not to. Layered on top is the ever-present orientalism, dividing the world into the civilized and the uncivilized.

But this latent othering of Ukrainians – the first people to spill blood wearing EU ribbons – is a moral failure, a historic regret in the making, and a one-way ticket to a much bigger war. That war has been knocking at Europe's door for years. And for years, many Europeans have pretended it belonged to them – those other people – who are not us.

This flawed thinking has shaped Western Europe’s Russia policies for decades, defying the enlightened self-interest of every EU citizen. The moment those who identify as members of free societies realize that Ukrainians are not them but us, the imperative becomes clear: mobilize every resource to drive the aggressor out of Europe, out of Ukraine that is.

Here’s how: seize Russia’s frozen assets and put them to work defending Ukraine. Arm Ukraine not in dribs and drabs, but fully – with the long-range missiles and precision tools needed to expel the invaders. Extend Europe’s protective shield over Ukrainian skies. And finally, stop talking about resolve and show it – raise defense spending not because America is losing its patience, but because European security demands it. Not because Europe is spoiling for a fight with Russia, but so it won’t have to fight.

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None of this is charity. In fact, Kyiv is a deeply underappreciated security provider for Europe, if not the ultimate guarantor. The uncomfortable truth is this: if Ukraine falls, Europe won’t be debating whether to fight Russia, but when.

Until this realization takes hold among the public, politicians in Western Europe will struggle to articulate – let alone implement – the necessary policies. Peace will not come through half-measures or wishful thinking. Wars of conquest don’t end until a winning coalition emerges to hold the expansionist belligerent to account. A capitulation dressed up as diplomacy – while Russia still occupies Ukrainian land – will not bring peace but invite more war. That’s not conjecture; it’s how we got here.

We have seen this before. In 1938, the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain dismissed Czechoslovakia as “a faraway country of which we know nothing.” That failure to act decisively emboldened the pillage-hungry Nazis and set the stage for the deadliest conflict in human history.

The failure to confront Russia’s naked aggression in 2008, 2014, and 2022 has followed the same pattern. What began as a “small” violation of Georgia’s sovereignty has escalated into the largest war in Europe since World War II. Russia is the sole perpetrator of this war, but has seventeen years of Europe’s complacency now hardened into complicity?

This mental divide between us and them is not accidental. For centuries, the Russian empire controlled the narrative about Ukraine in Europe, portraying it as a territory rather than a nation, a people unworthy of agency. Meanwhile, Ukrainians – secure in their national identity – have to fight not only for sovereignty but for the right to tell their own story. To this day, echoes of Russian imperial propaganda distort perceptions, reducing Ukraine to a mere extension of Russia.

Then there is the reflexive Western European tendency to see its eastern neighbors as either refined or primitive, civilized or barbaric. Ukraine, despite its deep European roots, has been relegated to the latter category. Founded centuries before Amsterdam, Berlin, Brussels, Dublin, Madrid, or Stockholm rose to prominence, Kyiv was no frontier outpost but a center of European civilization – its legal codes written and democratic traditions taking root while much of the West was provincial backwaters.

The medieval kingdom of Kyivan Rus’ thrived more than 600 years before Moscow even appeared on the map. Yet later, Moscovia – an imperial upstart – claimed that legacy as its own, distorting perceptions and casting Kyiv as peripheral. This distortion has fueled a subconscious reluctance among Western Europeans to see Ukraine’s fight as our fight – even when the stakes could not be clearer.

How can we not recognize Ukraine’s courage as a profound gift? Ukrainians are resisting Russia’s onslaught while Europe navel-gazes, debating how much to help – and how to protect itself if Ukraine falls. But there is no if. Western Europe is protecting itself by helping Ukraine.

It has done a lot, but not enough. We know this because Russian forces remain entrenched on European land – in Donetsk, Luhansk, and Crimea. Still there. Still committing heinous war crimes every single day. Still killing, raping, torturing.

The time has come for Western Europe to set aside poisonous arrogance and be inspired by how much Ukrainians have sacrificed for all of us – refusing to surrender in the face of overwhelming force. Now it’s our turn. Ukraine will deliver peace to Europe – but only if Europe finally declares: We are in this together. Not just with Ukraine for as long as it takes, but united, ready and willing to punish the aggressor. Because anything less all but guarantees that Russia’s war will, sooner or later, reach your home.

A version of this article first appeared in Byline Times on Aug 11, 2025

Moscow’s impotence is visible to anyone willing to look: eleven years into its crusade against a neighbor quarter its size, Russia now holds less Ukrainian ground than it did in 2022, and its latest tactics – terrorizing civilians – are best described as a tyrant-tantrum.

Each dawn brings killer drones and missiles aimed not at Ukraine’s military targets but at apartment buildings, playgrounds, maternity wards. In Kherson, a one-year-old Dmytryk was killed in his grandmother's yard by a Russian drone operator. This was no isolated incident – the UN was already investigating these "human safari" attacks as crimes against humanity before this cold-blooded execution of a toddler made headlines.

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Russia's campaign to punish Ukraine for daring to exist is the flailing of a bully, full of rage, devoid of strength. As it struggles to conquer, Moscow turns to terror, but every strike only hardens Kyiv's resolve, because Ukrainians know – letting Russia get its way will not end the suffering – it'll multiply it.

Some will say: Ukraine stands because we’re helping. But, are we really? A drip of aid here, a shipment of munitions there – delayed, debated, diluted. All told, America has spent less than 0.5% of its federal budget to help the bravest people on earth defend themselves. If that faint-hearted stream has kept Russia’s army at bay, then it doesn’t prove our strength – it demonstrates their weakness.

A superpower that Russia wishes it was wouldn’t stall out because someone across the ocean is struggling to help Kyiv while making sure Moscow can save face. What keeps Ukraine alive is not our help; it’s a people who know what they’re fighting for, facing a brutal colonizer that doesn’t.

Cosplaying superpower, Russia ran out of basic food staples. Potatoes are now a luxury. Prices have more than doubled, and families are forced to ration. It’s not a silly grocery store problem – it’s a window into an economy on the brink, strained by a criminal war of choice, sanctions, and decades of embezzlement.

Moscow launched an invasion it thought would be over in days: soldiers packing parade uniforms and food rations for a week. But Ukraine refused to surrender, and it all went horribly wrong for Putin. In failing to win quickly, Russia did more than lose momentum – it lost autonomy. Tying itself to China, it now takes orders from Beijing. According to Bloomberg, 92% of the foreign components found in Russia’s killer drones are of Chinese origin.

On nuclear weapons, Xi Jinping – the “daddy,” to use the words of NATO’s Secretary Rutte – made himself abundantly clear: their use is off the table. Russia may bluster and threaten, but the decision is no longer Moscow’s to make. The credibility of Russia’s nuclear threat lies in the eyes of the beholder – us.

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A superpower doesn’t beg North Korea for artillery shells and Iran for drone technology. Yet that is exactly what Moscow has done, reduced to knocking on the doors of pariah states that once depended on it.

Russia racked up over a million casualties trying to recolonize Ukraine. But fear not – the Kremlin has a magic trick up its bloodstained sleeve. Just as it outlaws recessions, it solves its demographic crisis by simply stopping the release of monthly population data.

What about Russia's storied soft power – its grand ideology, supposed rich heritage, and claim to virtue? Moscow has skillfully exploited Western culture wars, positioning itself as the defender of authentic conservatism to Americans fed up with woke politics. But this "traditional values" facade is built on lies.

Russia has one of the highest divorce rates in the world – nearly 60% higher than in the United States. Its abortion rate is more than twice that of Ukraine’s and four times higher than America’s. Barely 1% of the population attended Christmas services last year. And at the center of it all sits the Russian Orthodox church, less a religious institution than a state security affiliate.

When Tucker Carlson mourned the fate of Moscow Patriarchate in Ukraine, he left out two crucial details. First, it is Russia – not Ukraine – that has damaged or destroyed more than 600 houses of worship since 2014. And second, Ukraine isn’t banning religion; it’s evicting spies. In the middle of a war, who can blame Kyiv for trying to ensure that priests are serving God, not the FSB?

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The collective West accounts for nearly half of global GDP. Russia makes up less than 2%. It's no superpower – just a declining empire throwing a tantrum. Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine is real, as are the missiles that kill innocent children in their sleep. But its foundation – economic, moral, demographic – is rotten to the core. And the only thing more dangerous than an aggrieved dictator is a world too polite, too naive, or too afraid to confront him.

This article first appeared in New York Post, on July 20, 2025

April. May. June. The carnage continues. Apartment buildings, publishing houses, kindergartens, a sleeper train — bombed.

A mother in Kyiv learns she’ll never hold her baby again. A news editor in Washington, grasping for words to describe the horror, moves on — there’s breaking news from Iran.

When America flinches — issuing threats to Moscow it won’t enforce and promises to Ukraine it won’t keep — this kind of weakness destroys all prospects of peace — it prolongs slaughter, and stains our national honor.

Syria. Korea. Vietnam. America paid the price for letting fear of escalation outweigh the responsibility to act. Words of steel followed by deeds of mush.

Even those who like to hide under the rock of “not our war” must understand that this isn’t just repeated incoherence — it’s the erosion of American credibility at lightspeed. And when our enemies no longer believe our words, they stop respecting American power.

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The President signaled frustration with Russia’s war-making on April 24th — then promptly declined to support congressional secondary sanctions. Reports suggest the administration is quietly trying to dilute a bipartisan bill meant to choke off Russia’s oil profits and opposed European efforts to tighten the G7 price cap.

Then came the infamous “two weeks” deadlines. On April 24th, May 19th, and again on May 28th, Trump repeated the same hollow threat. Peter Dickinson rightly called two weeks a shorthand for too weak.

And astonishingly, just 14 days after the latest ultimatum, instead of delivering consequences to Moscow, Trump’s Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, revealed the plans to slash U.S. military aid to Ukraine in the next defense budget. Fear us — or else we’ll retreat. Is that really the message we want to send?

To add insult to injury, on June 12th the State Department issued a tone-deaf press release celebrating “Russia Day.” While Ukrainians buried their dead, Washington congratulated the country doing the killing. At the G7, Trump was effectively lobbying for Putin’s rehabilitation — lamenting Russia’s expulsion from the G8, as if the invasion of a sovereign neighbor were a minor diplomatic hiccup. One could almost hear the laughter — and the champagne corks popping — in the Kremlin.

America has drawn red lines before — loudly, confidently — and then erased them just as quickly when the costs of enforcement became politically inconvenient. It doesn’t happen often. But when it does, the consequences are catastrophic.

In 1950, Secretary of State Dean Acheson excluded South Korea from America’s defense perimeter in a speech meant to clarify U.S. priorities. Six months later, North Korea invaded. The omission was read as a license to attack. The cost: three years of brutal war and over 35,000 American lives. To this day, the Korean Peninsula remains a tinderbox — North and South are still technically at war, locked in a fragile armistice with no peace treaty ever signed.

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In Vietnam, it was the reverse. U.S. presidents kept declaring the war essential to global freedom, while their policies were defined by half-measures and micromanaged stalemates. The rhetoric never matched the resolve. And the result was devastating: the fall of Saigon, the humiliation of a superpower, and a generation scarred by strategic paralysis.

Then came Obama’s red line of “enormous consequences” if chemical weapons were used in Syria. Assad crossed it, and Washington blinked. A Russian-brokered disarmament deal gave the vassal dictator a pass. The Kremlin didn’t outmaneuver the United States — we handed over the cards and ducked under the table.

What happened in Syria in 2012 is often cited as one of Obama’s worst foreign policy missteps — but it didn’t happen in a vacuum. In 2008, Russian tanks rolled across a sovereign border and occupied Georgian territory. We responded with handwringing and hollow statements — completely incommensurate with the gravity of the moment. A territory was effectively annexed, and the precedent was set. Moscow learned that every act of overt aggression would be met with deep concern, not deep strikes. In 2014, Russia’s war on Ukraine began.

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Thankfully, there’s another model of pairing rhetoric with resolve instead of regret. Ronald Reagan didn’t bluff. He followed through — methodically, consistently, and with purpose.

He called the Soviet Union an “evil empire”— not as a slogan, but as a signal. Then he rebuilt America’s military, strengthened our alliances, and confronted Soviet aggression wherever it appeared — from Poland to Afghanistan to Libya. When Gaddafi murdered Americans in a Berlin nightclub bombing, Reagan didn’t hold a press conference. He sent bombers and fighter jets. The message was clear: no act of aggression would go unpunished.

Reagan didn’t posture. He didn’t just issue threats — he made them real. And he understood a lesson today’s leaders seem to have forgotten: deterrence is capability plus credibility.

That’s the difference. Peace through strength isn’t a bumper sticker. It’s a doctrine grounded in history. And when we abandon it, the only thing we guarantee is dishonor through weakness. The next time the U.S. president draws a red line or tweets a threat, it had better mean something.

A version of this article first appeared in Kyiv Independent on June 24, 2025

“Too many people are dying — thousands each week — in a terrible and senseless war.”

Moscow’s war of choice is truly terrible, but to call it “senseless” is to miss the point. Russia has been killing Ukrainians for the crime of being Ukrainian since 2014 — predictably, methodically, relentlessly. Russia’s war is also criminal, under the UN charter.

Is it senseless for Ukraine to fight back? A war for survival is immensely costly — but to shield your children from Russian missiles is not a choice; it’s a duty. Kyiv has no real options but to resist: Because failure to defend your home is dishonor, followed by annihilation.

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While Trump uses words like Putin is “playing with fire,” the Kremlin uses rockets to set suburban neighborhoods ablaze. Today, Russia may hold few cards, but they’re all in the same suit: mass murder. And it plays them with a grisly smirk.

After months of frantic diplomacy, it’s finally clear where everyone stands. The White House wants a ceasefire. Ukraine wants peace. Russia wants neither.

How do we know? Back in March, Trump dispatched Sec. of State Mario Rubio to demand that Kyiv prove it was serious about ending the war. Within 24 hours, Ukraine not only agreed to halt hostilities in the air and at sea — it offered an unconditional 30-day ceasefire.

Russia rejected Washington’s peacemaking efforts, stonewalled, and openly mocked America. Putin mouthed lies about ending the fighting, while unleashing ever more rockets on Ukrainian cities. On Palm Sunday — just 48 hours after Trump’s envoy Witkoff met with him — Russia launched its worst attack since 2023: 84 civilians wounded, including 10 children.

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This week, Russia set a new record by launching nine cruise missiles and 355 of the Shahed drones it sources from Iran, in a single night. Over the preceding three nights, it launched around 900 drones — a grim milestone in a war defined by deliberate cruelty and heinous war crimes.

Knowing where we stand inspires little optimism — but it doesn’t determine what comes next. Russia chose to invade. Ukraine found the courage to defend itself. But crushing Russia's appetite for war will take more than heroism from Kyiv. It will require resolve from America and every nation that stands for freedom. We can and must give peace through strength a chance!

If we’re serious about protecting U.S. interests, let’s get real about the three ways this war could end.

The most likely outcome — and the one Washington is drifting toward — is a frozen conflict, otherwise known as a ticking time bomb. A ceasefire is declared, the front line hardens into a de facto border, and Putin keeps what he stole. Ukraine loses what it bled for. The West congratulates itself for “containing the crisis," and everyone pretends that’s a win.

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What follows is predictable: Moscow prepares for the next invasion. America’s credibility circles the drain and the world tilts toward un-security, where fear reigns, prosperity falters, Russia-China alliance hardens, and the cost of freedom rises.

Then there’s the most dreadful scenario: we let Russia have its way. A third-rate power with first-rate imperial arrogance, economy the size of Texas, and collapsing demographics is handed a victory — not because it deserves one, but because we failed to help Ukraine. We’ve seen this movie before. In the 1930s, giving Hitler what he wanted didn’t end the war – it made it bigger.

The third scenario — what some call the best case — is that we finally do the right thing: arm Kyiv to push Russia back. We have the tools; what’s missing is the will. Some of Ukraine’s borders are restored, Crimea stays in limbo, and Putin declares victory — because regimes that control the narrative never have to admit defeat. But at least the world re-learns something important: invading your neighbor has consequences.

But even this feel-good outcome would fall far short of justice. If stolen children aren’t returned, if mass graves and beheaded POWs are ignored, if war criminals are drinking champagne in Moscow instead of facing judgment in The Hague — then what exactly will we have won?

What’s not even on the table is the one path history tells us brings lasting peace: the aggressor is defeated, disarmed, and held to account. That means full restoration of Ukraine’s borders, reparations, and prison for those who ordered and carried out atrocities. Not to punish the Russian people — but to give them a chance at finally breaking free from a system built on oppression, violence, and conquest.

This version of peace — just, durable, and enforced — is the one worth aiming for. And yet, somehow, it’s not even part of the conversation.

Last weekend, Trump said Putin “has gone absolutely CRAZY!” But madness isn't the problem — impunity is. Russia’s war makes perfect sense to Putin, that’s why he is waging it. The real insanity is pretending that angry words or half-measures will stop him.

A version of this article first appeared in New York Post on 30-May-2025

Russia’s response was as predictable as it was heinous. It, once again, bombed civilians in Sumy, killing at least four and injuring 28.

Russia commits war crimes every day.

Russia’s President — a wanted war criminal — Vladimir Putin failed to show up in Istanbul for the “direct talks” with Ukraine that he himself proposed. For the Kremlin to wage an unprovoked war of conquest, reject a ceasefire, and call it a peace effort is nothing new. Russia lies.

In 2022, building up troops at the Ukrainian border, the Kremlin told us it had no intentions of invading. Russia lied.

Eleven years ago, Putin claimed that the unmarked troops seizing administrative buildings in Ukrainian Crimea weren't his. Russia lied.

Ninety years ago, Moscow starved millions of Ukrainians in an effort to break a nation’s will to live free. What the world knows as the Holodomor — and what 35 countries have recognized as genocide — Russia denies.

Russia. Lies. All. The. Time.

Much ink has already been spilled over the Istanbul talks, the Kremlin’s venal theatrics, and Washington’s mixed signals. But the fundamentals remain unchanged. No one longs for peace more than Ukraine — it accepted an unconditional ceasefire in March. Russia did not. It still refuses to stop killing Ukrainians for the crime of being Ukrainian.

Moscow frames its war of aggression as a neighborly dispute that spiraled out of control — a cynical and callous lie. But many nations entertain this equivocation, absolving themselves of the responsibility to help Ukraine expel the invaders.

With an economy ten times the size of Russia’s and three times the population, Europe pretends it has done all it could — sanctions, aid, thoughts, and prayers. But half-measures, laced with appeasement, have predictably failed to quench Moscow’s appetite for war. When Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, it marked the collapse of the post-Cold War order. Europe flinched. A well-known serial killer isn’t just knocking on the door — he’s already inside the house.

To call out Russia’s lies is no longer enough. Europe must confront — and discard — five lethal delusions of its own.

First, our fear of escalation fuels Russian aggression.

The response to 2008 wasn’t ignorance — it was fear. Instead of pacifying Moscow, our self-restraint emboldened it. Paralyzed by the belief that confronting Russia was too risky, Europe missed the memo: not confronting it was and remains the most dangerous option of all.

Second, it’s not Putin’s war — it’s Russia’s

Blaming one man is comforting, but a serious misreading of history. Russia was born an empire and never became a nation. Its rulers changed — tsars, commissars, now kleptocrats — but the colonizer impulses remain. The precursor state to today’s Federation of Oppression, Muscovy, began as a tax collector for the Mongol khans, and it never stopped extracting, erasing, expanding. If the West denies agency to the millions of Russian people today and spares them responsibility for their government, it’ll guarantee that history repeats itself.

Third, yielding to nuclear coercion rewards the threat and ensures its return

The world changed forever when Moscow rattled its nukes — and the West responded not with resolve, but retreat. Timothy Snyder said it best:

By taking nuclear blackmail seriously, we have actually increased the overall chances of nuclear war. If nuclear blackmail enables a Russian victory, the consequences will be incalculably awful.

The risk of a nuclear strike is never zero — but if Russia walks away with anything resembling a victory, the collapse of the non-proliferation regime is all but assured.

Fourth, the frozen asset debate is backwards

Europe agonizes over whether transferring $300 billion in frozen Russian assets to Ukraine might set a dangerous precedent. But the flipside is worse: doing nothing signals that a pariah state can wage a war of annihilation — and keep the profits. After WWII, German assets helped rebuild what Hitler destroyed. What’s different now? The Kremlin chose to launch a criminal war and thus forfeited any claim to be treated as a respectable sovereign actor. Making Russia pay is the only fair outcome.

Finally, Ukraine is a security provider for Europe, not a security burden

By resisting the full-scale invasion, Ukraine has severely degraded Moscow's military capabilities. It chose to stand and fight rather than surrender — a gift the Free World has yet to fully appreciate. Ukraine’s valour is Europe’s shield. A NATO-integrated Ukraine isn’t a liability — it’s what a credible and effective deterrent looks like.

Our wishes notwithstanding, Istanbul was no turning point, but yet another chapter in a centuries-long pattern of deceit driven by Moscow’s imperial ambition. Russia’s own former foreign minister, Andrei Kozyrev, put it plainly: by appointing Vladimir Medinsky — a fringe propagandist loathed even in Russia — to lead the talks, Putin signaled open contempt for diplomacy and for Washington in particular. This wasn’t negotiation — it was provocation in a cheap suit.

The Free World, and Europe in particular, has the means, the direct strategic interest, and — if it finds the will — the moral responsibility to help Ukraine restore its sovereignty. Not just to punish aggression, but to break the cycle of appeasement that brought us here. Victory for Ukraine is not a gift. It is the price of peace in Europe — and the best guarantee that your children won’t be drafted in the coming months or years to defend what remains of it.

A version of this article first appeared in Kyiv Independent on May 16, 2025

This framing is seductive. It offers an embodiment of evil—which the wanted war criminal Putin truly is—but also a shield from contending with collective responsibility. As warned: “Russia’s victimhood talk is part of the crime”

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A truism, frequently cited on social media, comes to mind: Putin didn’t create Russians; Russians created Putin.

He is a product and a manifestation of a society that reveres obedience over citizenship and glorifies state violence – endless wars of conquest – over accountability. Russian culture isn’t just ballet and literature; it is a culture in which the erasure of peoples, genocide, and cultural appropriation aren’t examined or condemned—but swept under the carpet or even celebrated.

A quick look at history makes clear that a future Russia is unlikely to differ from its present—or its past—if its aggression once again goes unpunished.

What hides in plain sight is a classic colonial empire, not a nation with a set of shared values. Centered in Moscow, it drains blood and treasure from the provinces—better described as “internal colonies” like the Sakha Republic, Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, and Buryatia.

Many demonstrate genuine personal courage worthy of admiration, but then go on to justify the unjustifiable and promise to reform the unreformable.

If the country’s best and brightest can’t envision themselves outside the Russian imperial ethos, what exactly are they opposing? They seem unable to imagine a future grounded in atonement—the kind that allowed Germany to recover from the imperial virus and reckon with the crimes of Nazism.

Instead, the worldview of prominent dissidents and anti-Putinists remains shaped by a sense of undeserved exceptionalism and a refusal to acknowledge the societal ills that plagued Russia long before the lieutenant colonel of the KGB came to rule his country in 2012. If I had to guess, it’s because they instinctively grasp that a unitary Russian state—essentially a Moscow-centered colonial system—is inseparable from the violence that sustains it.

Be it the invasion of Ukraine, the Holodomor nearly a century ago, the extermination of Ichkerians, or the forced assimilation of native peoples in Dagestan, Kalmykia, or Karelia, the refusal to confront these crimes by Russia’s so-called “future leaders” signals not a desire for change, but an assurance of continuity with a bloodsoaked past.

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Consider four passages – the words of those hailed as the moral counterweight to Putin. What they offer isn’t a real alternative, but a defense of the status quo packaged as dissent: a rebranded empire, a recycled sense of messianic purpose, and a demand to recognize Russia's “greatness”— an implied right, even duty, to invade neighbours and continue the maltreatment of ethnic minorities within the Oppression Federation.

Examples of mental acrobatics

“There are those who advocate for the urgent ‘decolonization’ of Russia, arguing to split our vast country into smaller, safer states. However, these ‘de-colonizers’ can’t explain why people with shared backgrounds and cultures should be artificially divided.”

—Yulia Navalnaya, Bled Strategic Forum

“The collapse of Russia would be a tragedy not only for our country and our people, but also, in fact, a major risk for the entire world. Just imagine: Russia falls apart along its administrative borders. In place of today’s Russia, separate republics and regions emerge. A massive number of internal conflicts would begin. It’s unclear how nuclear weapons would be divided, unclear where various military assets would end up. And to be honest, I think a scenario of such a brutal disintegration of Russia would severely undermine the entire structure of international security.

That’s why, as a Russian politician, as a patriot, I see my mission in finding a solution for post-putin Russia that preserves the country—changing the political regime, introducing democratic institutions, creating a completely different government, one that changes through rotation. But I am against the disintegration of russia. I consider that a tragic scenario.”

—Illya Yashin OBOZREVATEL, September 2024

“Many people believe it would be best if Russia simply didn’t exist. But that won’t happen. Regardless of the future setup, in the coming decades, the West will need to coexist with Russia and its population of 120-140 million people. It’s a substantial population that cannot be ignored. Opposing the entire nation, even if it’s acting against the West, is wrong. Some people question how one can believe the war is solely driven by Putin and that Russians have no part in it. While I’m aware of the polls and how many Russians support the war for various reasons, from a pragmatic standpoint, the West should not declare war on the Russian people as a whole. That would be a mistake.”

—Mikhail Khodorkovsky GLOBSEC Forum, June 2024

“I spoke in Strasbourg yesterday during the session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, and I spoke with a colleague who works extensively with prisoners of war from both sides. She has spoken a lot with Ukrainian prisoners of war who have been freed from russia, and with russian prisoners of war who are currently still in Ukraine. And she told me there’s another reason why the Russian Ministry of Defense recruits so heavily from these national minorities: apparently, they say it’s psychologically very difficult for ethnic Russians to kill Ukrainians—because we’re the same. We’re the same people, very close, as everyone knows. We have almost the same language, the same religion, centuries and centuries of shared history…

But if the soldier comes from a different culture, apparently, it’s easier. That’s what this colleague told me yesterday. I had never thought of that point before. For me, it was mainly economic reasons—but now that she said that to me yesterday, I’ve started thinking about that aspect too.”

—Vladimir Kara-Murza French Senate, April 2025

These words constitute a consistent pattern: an instinct to preserve Russia as a geopolitical unit at all costs; to rob its people of agency; and to suppress conversations about the empire’s heinous colonial character. These are not fringe positions. They are the dominant narrative among the very people the West holds up as the antidote to putinism.

As historian notes, even in exile, the so-called “oppositionist leaders” tend to speak not with moral urgency, but with strategic calculation—working to restore the innocence of a society that is either directly involved in a criminal war, supportive of it, or complicit through apathy and inaction.

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Among the dissidents abroad, found the wisdom and courage to name the war for what it is—Russia's war—and demands that Russians, both inside and outside the country, grapple with the question of responsibility.

“The position of many of my fellow émigrés cannot withstand any serious criticism. This constant attempt to keep their white gloves clean — 'we have nothing to do with it' — is baffling. You do have something to do with it. We’re all in this shit, and this shit is on all of us. Stop pretending you have nothing to do with it. The longer you keep up the act, the more complicit you become in Putin’s crimes.

With every Russian strike on Ukraine, the shameful lie about 'Putin’s war' turns to dust. This is not Putin’s war. This is Russia’s war. Stop lying to the West that there is some kind of anti-war movement in Russia. Sure, there are some decent people — but they’re silent. And they’re just a handful against the backdrop of the masses. Some are in prison — but even they didn’t end up there because they were dreaming of heroism. True heroes like Skobov and Gorinov are few and far between.

Of course, all of us share some historical guilt for what’s happening. But far greater guilt lies with those who, living off grants, continue deceiving Western public opinion by spinning tales about some 'other Russia' that simply doesn’t exist.

War has become routine. Killing has become routine. And it’s our duty to scream that killing must never be normalized. Putin is a war criminal, and every person working for him is a war criminal. Any attempt to blur this picture makes you an accomplice.

Today’s Putinist Russia is an enemy — just like Nazi Germany was. That’s why we must help Ukraine win this war. And yes, Ukraine must be given missiles capable of striking Moscow City. That is a principled position that every person who considers themselves a Russian patriot should take.”

—Garry Kasparov, April 2025 Facebook Post

When compared to the mealy-mouthed statements of other opposition figures, Kasparov’s words expose the evasions, half-truths, and moral laundering that dominate the conversation about Russia's future.

It’s tempting to see Putin as the root of all evil and to imagine that his removal will somehow cleanse Russia of its crimes or open up a new path towards “normalcy.” But until this delusion is confronted directly, Russia will remain what it has always been: not a nation temporarily gone astray, but a violent empire, fundamentally unchanged since its founding—and still in denial.

The West must stop indulging fantasies about a mythical "other Russia." There is no shortcut to justice. There can be no democratic future without decolonization. And there is no peace until Russia—not just Putin—is held accountable.

This article first appeared in Euromaidan Press on May 6, 2025

Ukraine is fighting back. But a pariah state to the north will not stop committing war crimes while the international response remains a cycle of strongly worded statements backed by half-measures. Enter the much-touted minerals deal — prioritized by Washington above all else and signed with fanfare, even as fresh atrocities surfaced. While diplomacy took center stage, the killing, reaping, and torturing continued — unrelenting and unpunished.

The minerals agreement was originally conceived as a mechanism to “collect” repayment for aid, and it looked more like a shakedown than a strategic partnership. The final version, stripped of its worst elements, may have merit as a long-term investment. But its timing and prominence — set against fresh atrocities and America’s ceasefire efforts rejected by Russia — make it more of a distraction than a deterrent.

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The White House’s gestures look increasingly hollow against the backdrop of daily missile strikes and mass graves. And that speaks to a deeper problem: the U.S. still treats Russia’s criminal war of choice like a policy dilemma to be managed, not a strategic threat to be dealt with decisively before it spreads further.

Since January, the policy of carrots for the victim and sticks for the aggressor has morphed into a policy of olive branches. But the Kremlin has torched every one of them, treating overtures from the White House not as goodwill to reciprocate but as weakness to exploit.

In March, Ukrainian civilian casualties surged by 50% compared to February – and 70% compared to March 2024. A missile strike on a playground in April killed 18 people, including nine children. The UN now reports near-daily attacks on civilian areas. This isn’t peacemaking – it’s sadism in slow motion.

For eleven years since Russia first invaded, successive U.S. Administrations have failed to grasp that there is no “conflict” in Ukraine – no tension between two sides with competing claims. Such framing is deeply flawed. Just as there wasn’t a “conflict” in Poland in 1939 when the Nazis invaded from the west and the Soviets from the east. Polish people didn’t need mediation between Warsaw and Berlin. They wanted help driving out the invaders.

America tried to stay out of the war, but history proved that wishing for peace isn’t enough to secure it. WWII came for Europe first, and eventually reached American shores.

As warnings of a broader war become harder to ignore, the United States can and must stop signaling weakness and start acting with resolve — arming Ukraine, isolating Moscow, and demanding that war criminals are held accountable and reparations paid — then it can once again claim to be the leader of the Free World. But instead, Washington is taking the bait, sending envoys to shake hands with Putin — falling for the same Soviet-era tactics it spent half a century trying to contain.

Meanwhile, Moscow is drawing America’s rivals and enemies into its criminal war effort. It began with artillery from Pyongyang. Now, thousands of North Korean troops have been spotted in Russian trenches. Iranian drones continue to rain on Ukrainian cities. Chinese nationals have been captured on the battlefield, fighting for Moscow. Alliances are being forged, and every one of them pulls America’s adversaries deeper into a war Russia claims to want to end. If this isn’t a provocation, what is?

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Not our war, some say. Quite right — it’s Russia’s war: soaked in the blood of innocents, justified by lies, and led by a venal thug. But Ukraine’s dogged refusal to surrender reminds us what a fight for freedom actually looks like. And if we choose dealmaking over accountability for mass murder and state terror, don’t be surprised when the revanchist dictators come knocking closer to home.

Instead of pressuring the aggressor, Washington is threatening to walk away from negotiations altogether. What kind of ultimatum is that? Ukraine wants peace more than we will ever know. It agreed to an unconditional ceasefire within 24 hours and accepted the minerals deal. All Ukraine wants is to be left in peace, not in pieces.

Russia, meanwhile, has spent nearly two months dodging that same unconditional truce that the White House put on the table. Even an agreement that heavily favors Russia, while offering Ukraine little, has been met with silence and bad faith.

My fellow Americans, we’re not ending a war — we are indulging a war criminal. And the longer we pretend this is a conflict to be negotiated, rather than a criminal aggression to be terminated, the more respect – and security – we will lose.

A version of this article first appeared in Kyiv Independent on May 5, 2025

Yet, three years in, political discourse in Washington has muddied what should be crystal clear even to a third grader: there is no conflict in Ukraine, no dispute that can be resolved with a handshake. This is an unprovoked war of aggression – a criminal act. Only the invader, which steals children, beheads POWs, deploys North Korean troops, and procures ballistic missiles from Iran—can end it.

A third world war looms closer, and the only force holding it back is Ukraine’s unyielding courage – the willingness of Ukraine’s bravest sons and daughters to fight and die for freedom. We can’t ask more of Kyiv—but we can, and must, demand more from Moscow.

To every diplomatic overture, Russia has responded with unceasing violence. If Putin wanted peace, why did Moscow unleash a record 267 drones on Ukraine just days after the Trump White House extended an olive branch through high-level talks between Secretary Rubio and Foreign Minister Lavrov? This stark display of duplicity and disrespect is a wake-up call that Washington mustn’t ignore.

Moscow could terminate its war today if it so chose. Withdrawing forces from the territory of a sovereign state would not weaken Russia or threaten its security. If NATO were truly a threat, Moscow would be reinforcing its defenses along the Finnish border—not betting everything on a craven attempt to recolonize a peaceful neighbor.

Under Ronald Reagan's leadership, America won the Cold War—but, contrary to the Kremlin’s shameless spin, no one lost. On the contrary, the world stepped back from the brink of nuclear Armageddon, red terror came to an end, and Russians, Ukrainians, Kazakhs, Moldovans, Armenians, and countless others had their first real chance at freedom.

The dictator in the Kremlin—a wanted war criminal—refuses to see it, but the collapse of the USSR was not the greatest calamity of the twentieth century. It was the downfall of a brutal, extractive empire—and it could have been a historic opportunity for the Russian people, but alas. After briefly flirting with democracy in the nineties, the Kremlin swiftly crushed all dreams of freedom.

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Now, the predatory state under Putin is working to unwind the gift history afforded to the Russians. Instead of building on three decades of global progress, the Kremlin seeks to drag the world back into the darkness of colonial conquest.

The America I know does not stand by as tyrants redraw borders by force – recall the success of the Desert Storm when Washington’s leadership earned global respect. The America I know does not betray friends or stub allies in the back. It does not kick the victim of a vicious attack in the gut while that victim is fighting for survival. The America I know does not negotiate with terrorists. And when we see nations willing to fight and die for freedom, America stands with them.

Because if Russia succeeds in unraveling the post-Cold War order, it will not stop with Ukraine. Other aggressors—be they in Tehran, Pyongyang, or Beijing—are watching. They see that Russia has faced no real consequences for launching an unprovoked war, for slaughtering civilians in broad daylight, for violating long peace established in 1945. If we fail Ukraine now, we will have opened the door to a world where every nation—ours included—is less safe.

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Some say America has given enough, that supporting Ukraine is too costly. But what is the cost of inaction? A world where our enemies will see America as strong on paper, but fickle, unreliable, afraid of standing tall in a righteous fight. If we’re trying to pull a Kissinger-in-reverse and split Russia from China, abandoning Ukraine will do the opposite—pushing them closer together and emboldening both.

As Ronald Reagan put it, “The ultimate determinant in the struggle now going on for the world will not be bombs and rockets but a test of wills and ideas – a trial of spiritual resolve: the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish and the ideals to which we are dedicated.” The America I know is a generous place that stood on the right side of history more often than not. Our economy is strong— the envy of the world. If our federal budget were a dollar, the support we give to Ukraine amounts to half a penny.

The Free World cannot afford another Munich. Let us call Russia's war by its name—a neo-imperialist campaign that must be stopped. Our tomorrow will be shaped by the choices we make today. This war must end. But not with concessions. Not with another frozen conflict. Not with a victory for the aggressor.

Mr. Putin can and will tear down this war—if America demands it.

A version of this article first appeared in The Hill on March 2, 2025

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But not far behind is America. According to the Levada Center, Russia’s last remaining independent pollster, three-quarters of Russians see the U.S. as the bad guy. Tehran draws eight times more affection than Washington. And the love for China is nearly as overwhelming as the hatred for America.

Russia is not a country seeking “reset” or compromise — it is conditioned to view us as an existential enemy. In the 1990s, when Russia flirted with democracy under Boris Yeltsin, 70% of the population thought America was a friend and 15% a foe. Under Putin, those numbers have flipped.

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The Kremlin’s power rests on selling a lie to its population that Russia is defending itself against a scheming West, with Europe portrayed as Washington’s vassal. In Putin’s telling, this isn’t a war with Ukraine but a war with NATO. How else could Moscow explain the pathetic performance of its own military?

And the harsh truth — which Moscow buries — is that Ukrainians are fighting alone.

No American or European troops have joined in. No NATO jets are intercepting Russian missiles the way American systems helped shield Israel from Iran’s barrage. Yes, the U.S., Europe and other allies have provided weapons and aid — reluctantly, often too late — because no civilized nation can sit idle while Russian invaders commit the most heinous war crimes: beheading POWs, kidnapping children, targeting supermarkets with Iranian killer drones, and shelling apartment blocks with North Korean munitions.

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Our aid to Ukraine isn’t charity, and it’s not a proxy war — there is no shame in standing with a freedom-loving nation resisting a tyranny that wants to erase it from the map. And there’s no reason to hesitate in defending the principle that sovereign nations should not have to live in fear of their violent neighbors.

Together with the U.K., France and Russia, the U.S. stripped Kyiv of its nuclear deterrence in the 1990s, offering security assurances in return. If America’s word means nothing, who will trust us again — and what will stop the next aggressor from trying the same?

Any U.S. outreach to Russia is read by the Kremlin as a weakness to be exploited, not a gesture of goodwill to reciprocate. As former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson put it, “Putin isn’t negotiating. He’s laughing at us.”

It’s a bloodsucking kleptocracy anchored in a dream of colonization — incapable of delivering prosperity to the people, but skilled at peddling fantasies of greatness in exchange for obedience. Unable to rise, Moscow aims to pull America down instead, believing its best shot at relevance lies not in competing with the West, but in weakening it.

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Putin lied about Crimea when Obama was president, lied about Syria during Trump’s first term, lied to Biden about having no plans to invade Ukraine — and he is lying now. It’s hard to find a single instance where Putin wasn’t lying — manipulating, embarrassing or demeaning Western leaders he holds in contempt.

None of it is subtle. After Trump’s reelection in 2024, Russian state TV aired nude photos of Melania Trump during prime time. This was easy to dismiss as pointless trolling, but anyone who’s been to Russia will recognize it as psychological warfare — a KGB specialty.

In a recent display of open mockery, Putin was caught on camera giggling when reminded he was late for a scheduled call with Trump. Surrounded by Russian business elites, he smirked as his entourage burst out laughing — making clear the delay was no accident but a calculated power play straight out of reflexive control, the Soviet-era doctrine of manipulating opponents into acting against their own interests.

Another master class in snookering America unfolded at the United Nations, where America found itself in the company of Belarus, Burkina Faso, North Korea, Russia and Sudan voting against a recent resolution meant to state the obvious: there is a difference between invading and being invaded. Russia was no doubt thrilled to see the U.S. dragged into such a diplomatically humiliating position.

The pattern isn’t new. After World War II, the Soviet Union quickly betrayed its wartime allies, plunging the world into the Cold War and condemning generations of Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Poles and others to lives of oppression. Expecting Putin's Russia to act differently, despite all evidence, isn’t realism but delusion.

America’s choice is simple: stop playing a rigged game. Don’t dignify a regime that sees our humiliation — not compromise — as its core objective.

Refusing to accept the Kremlin’s derision or entertain absurd demands isn’t escalation — it’s what national honor requires.

A version of this article first appeared in The Hill on April 7, 2025

Why? The pundits are scratching their heads. Why pursue such self-defeating policies? God knows, the largest landmass on our planet, the Russian Federation, doesn’t need any more territory, nor was it ever threatened by Ukraine or NATO, never mind the agents of influence the Kremlin deployed to convince itself and us of this patent lie.

In some sense, neither Putin nor his inner circle had to choose war. The criminal war of aggression chose them. Colonialism, a deeply rooted and overpowering impulse, is what spins the wheels of Russian history where the actors change, but the violence remains.

We, in the West, must move beyond the fixation on Vladimir Putin’s motivations and confront a deeper reality. Russia was born an empire. The country’s sense of itself as a divinely anointed civilizational force, or a “third Rome”, drives aggression toward its neighbors and sustains the relationship between the Russian population and their government in the Kremlin.

When not preparing for or fighting a war, the Russian peoples—from Buryats to Kalmyks and from Tatars to Yakuts—might find themselves questioning what truly binds them together. How is it that Moscow, a city with one of the highest ratios of billionaires per capita in the world, continues to drain the vast riches of the land while offering nothing but delusions of “greatness” in return? That’s in a country where 66% of the rural population have no indoor plumbing and 48% use outhouses.

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It is not just the actions of a particular regime or even the Russian state as a whole; it is the essence of a culture, warped self-conceptualization steeped in neo-imperialism. The latest iteration may be called Putinism or ruscism — Russian fascism — but the name is secondary. What endures is the pattern: unceasing violence as the manifestation of Moscow’s urge to colonize and dominate.

In every society, certain phrases, when frequently repeated by both powerful and powerless, become tokens of collective consciousness. In Russia, a particular vocabulary evolved, fueling genocidal narratives and framing its aggression as destiny. Consider these five expressions — not aberrations but the organizing principles – the scaffolding of Russia’s imperial identity.

Русский мир — Russian World

Far more than a claim of cultural jurisdiction, this is a self-declared duty to intervene — and if necessary, invade — wherever Russian speakers or the Russian Orthodox Church are present. It transforms language, heritage, and religion into pretexts of imperial expansion. Under this doctrine, no neighboring state is truly sovereign. As Putin once put it, Russia’s border "doesn’t end anywhere" — a phrase that sums up the degree of violence and aggression embedded in Moscow’s self-conception.

Братские народы — Brotherly nations

This is a reference to Russians and Ukrainians—a trope Moscow repeats ad nauseam. Putin devoted a 5,000-word article to the topic in 2021, signaling its utmost importance as a driving force of the coming full-scale invasion. It seems to imply kinship, but these two words carry a far more sinister weight. The phrase reveals the real violence embedded within: Ukrainians must either accept that they are, in fact, Russian or be destroyed. This conditional "oneness" underscores the impossibility of coexistence.

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Где вы были восемь лет? — Where were you for eight years?

This is a rhetorical question weaponized by Moscow to deflect criticism of its aggression against Ukraine. Referring to the period from Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 to the full-scale invasion in 2022, it accuses others of selective outrage while conveniently ignoring the suffering Russia itself engineered. Just to be clear: Ukraine was not bombing itself, as the Kremlin propaganda would have you believe. The ultimate responsibility for the pain and suffering inflicted on the people of Donetsk and Luhansk regions rests with Moscow. By the standards of international law and basic moral reasoning, the party that launches a criminal war of aggression bears responsibility for the chain of violence it sets in motion.

Своих не бросаем— We don’t abandon our own

On the surface, it reads like a noble declaration of the Kremlin's solidarity; a commitment to your kin. In practice, Russia has weaponized this idiom to justify invasions and undermine the sovereignty of neighboring states. It asserts that wherever Russian speakers exist, Moscow has both the right and, critically, the duty to intervene, regardless of the consequences.

Можем повторить — We can do it again

This is a boast about Russia’s role in World War II and the victorious march on Berlin, but it has now become shorthand for the country’s militaristic pride and endless cycles of violence. It frames conquest as both inevitable and righteous, masking the fragility of a system built entirely on oppression.

Вставание с колен — Rising from knees

A nation shaking off humiliation, reclaiming its rightful place. Yet another sleight of hand. The collapse of the Soviet Union — a moment that expanded freedom across the world and gave Russians a rare chance to build a better country. But through the imperial lens, losing Moscow’s colonial possessions was not liberation but catastrophe. And so, the unprovoked wars, the most heinous crimes, the conquests are sold as restoration of “greatness” — a rise that is really just a fall back into militarism and repression.

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Загадочная русская душа — The Mysterious Russian Soul

This eternal cliché about Russia is invoked by its admirers and apologists. It suggests a profound, enigmatic essence that outsiders can neither understand nor define—a supposed spirituality, or “скрепы,” that binds Russians together. Yet this is doublespeak.

The so-called "mystery" of the Russian soul is a smokescreen, concealing the hollow core of a Frankenstein state—one that spans continents yet lacks a unifying vision.

It is imperative that we understand what this vocabulary reveals about the depths of Russia's imperialist mindset if we are to truly comprehend why Moscow behaves as it does. The Free World hides behind vague promises to stand with Ukraine "as long as it takes," all while failing to grasp—or willfully ignoring—the full reality of what we are facing.

Under the guise of 'protecting national interests,' Russia’s wars—in Chechnya, Georgia, Syria, Crimea, and now Ukraine—are all part of the same pattern. This relentless drive for domination will not stop on its own; it must be stopped. If the Free World fails to ensure Ukraine's victory, our policy missteps will only compound. Attempts to ‘de-escalate,’ ‘trade land for peace,’ or ‘freeze the war’ by placating Moscow will backfire—just as they always have.

this article first appeared in Euromaidan Press on March 26, 2025

No editor had to write it because it didn’t happen. And maybe it’s time we ask why. The reddest of lines any country has—let alone a dictatorship like Moscow’s—is to defend its borders and not let foreign tanks roll over them. Well, Ukrainian tanks did just that, so what happened with the Kremlin?

Here’s my take: the world’s misread Russia. Again.

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I’m no military strategist, but it’s hard not to spot the pattern: the Kremlin escalates whenever the Free World hesitates. On the surface, Kyiv’s move into Russian territory seemed risky, but those who’ve lived next to a violent empire for centuries know full well that strength deters Moscow, while weakness invites its aggression.

This isn’t new. Lenin, in his brutal pragmatism, reportedly said

“You probe with bayonets: if you find mush, you push. If you find steel, you withdraw.”

A century ago, Russia’s despot sought to build a communist state; today’s tsar runs a kleptocracy. But neither can escape Moscow’s imperial ethos—conquest, subjugation, and oppression—a handy substitute for a non-existent national idea.

The words of the Yale historian, Timothy Snyder, come to mind:

“Putin doesn’t offer his people a future at all. He governs without a future.”

Russia flirted with democracy for about a minute in the 90s, but it quickly reverted to the only form of government that could sustain the level of oppression needed to hold its colonial structure together – a police state, or, to be more precise, a state organized around its secret police.

While democracies gain legitimacy through the consent of the governed, a neo-imperial, expansionist, and now overtly fascist Russian state asserts control over the inhabitants of its Federation with invasions, propaganda, and the repression of dissent.

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In 1999, the Kremlin’s bayonet was aimed at Chechnya. But, has a nation of a million people ever had a chance to resist a colonizer the size of Russia when the Free World couldn’t care less?

Fast forward to 2008: Georgia is invaded. The West expresses deep concern, but its response amounts to a shrug. In 2014, the Kremlin thrusts its bayonet into Crimea—Washington wields a stick so feeble it barely stings, while Berlin brings a carrot, pressing ahead with the signing of Nord Stream 2. Why reward aggression – a criminal act under international law? What does that say about the Free World—and what signal does it send to the next revanchist tyrant watching from the sidelines?

To no one’s surprise, Russian troops invade eastern Ukraine right after Crimea, yet the Free World indulges in the fiction of a "local uprising." Calling a spade a spade would have demanded decisive action—so why not look the other way instead? Did such callous, cynical hypocrisy whet Moscow’s appetite? You bet.

No rational analysis can explain—or justify—the Russia-related policy choices made in Western capitals over the past two decades. The U.S., Europe, and allies like Japan, South Korea and Australia together account for half the global economy. Russia? Barely 2%. In 2021, Russian military spending was $66 billion, a rounding error compared to NATO’s $1.2 trillion. The disparity is staggering.

Ukrainians want the invaders out and are putting everything on the line to defend freedom: theirs as well as ours. Yet, despite having the means and clear strategic interest, the Free World is failing to provide what is needed for a decisive Ukrainian victory.

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Rousing political will to intervene in “a quarrel in a faraway country, between people of whom we know nothing,” as Neville Chamberlain once said, is a tough sell. But the alternative is always worse. What we dismiss as “regional conflicts”—whether in Chechnya, Georgia, or Ukraine—inevitably escalate into larger wars.

Gabrielius Landsbergis, Lithuania’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, laid it out clearly: “Putin is spending $140 billion while we struggle to promise fifty. We are basically sending him the message,

‘We won’t stop you,’ so he won’t stop. But if we allocated $800 billion, he would be forced to rethink. Yes, we could afford it. And yes, it would be cheaper than letting him carry on.”

$800 billion sounds like a big number, but it’s meaningless unless we’re honest about the alternative. If a terrorist state starts an unprovoked war, commits innumerable war crimes, and profits from it, while the Free World does little, we will enter a new era of unsecurity—a world where wars of aggression are no longer taboo. A world where nuclear blackmail has worked is one where the proliferation of doomsday weaponry is all but inevitable.

Ukraine is fighting not because the West is helping, but because the alternative is annihilation. Can we predict what Moscow will do if the West abandons Ukraine? No—because predict is the wrong word when dealing with a certainty.

Pinning down the exact amount of aid to Ukraine—whether announced, appropriated, obligated, or disbursed; whether grants or loans; whether book value or actual value—is nearly impossible. But if you think cutting aid to Ukraine will save national budgets and free up funds for domestic priorities, you’re in for a rude awakening.

Right now, the U.S. spends about $1 trillion a year on defense—just 3.5% of GDP. That’s a fraction of Cold War levels when, for more than two decades, military budgets hovered around 10% under the shadow of nuclear Armageddon. Yet here we are, sleepwalking—if not sprinting—toward a similar state of affairs. If the West fails to confront and punish aggression, the threats will multiply, China and Russia will come even closer together, and the nuclear nonproliferation regime will unravel. The costs for the American taxpayers won’t just rise—they will explode. $40 trillion to be precise if we apply the same spending ratio over the same timeframe.

If Russia is not defeated in Ukraine, European NATO members will have to, at a minimum, triple or quadruple their defense budgets to establish credible deterrence. The current $50 billion in annual aid to Ukraine will suddenly seem like pocket change, as these countries would need to collectively spend nearly $1 trillion more per year on top of the current spending of $476B it spends now—twenty times the current aid to Ukraine levels.

The Kremlin reads our dithering as permission. The longer we hesitate, the more dangerous the world becomes.

Americans and Europeans, regardless of politics, share a stake in halting this cycle. This isn’t about picking sides on a partisan issue; it’s about standing up for a world where aggressors face consequences. We’ve chosen mush over steel for far too long. The Free World needs to stand tall—not just for Ukraine’s sake, but for our own. If we don’t stop Russia now, the next apocalyptic headline won’t be a warning; it will be the grim reality we failed to prevent.

A version of this article first appeared in Euromaidan Press on March 7, 2025

Back in September, a Russian missile tore through his home, instantly killing his wife, Yevheniya, and their daughters—Yaryna, 21, Dariya, 18, and Emiliya, 7. No matter how deeply we try to empathize, no one, not you, not me, can comprehend such a loss.

Yaroslav speaks because retelling his story is the only way to make us see—if we are willing—the true and heinous nature of Russian aggression. So that Americans and Europeans might feel, even for a moment, the enormity of the violence Russia inflicts on Ukrainians. So we might finally grasp that never again is not just a phrase to recite in speeches, but a sacred responsibility. And living up to it begins with a clear admission: ending a war of conquest is never in the victim’s hands.

Many in the West hesitate to acknowledge the obvious: when a murderer announces an intent to kill, then breaks into your home to do exactly that, the only way for the victim to “deliver peace” is to die quietly.

Three years into Russia’s full-scale invasion, we remain trapped in “both-sidism” and the outdated “postmodern” discomfort with moral clarity. Virtue isn’t a false construct—Ukraine’s fight is righteous. And Russia, which launched an unprovoked war, deserves nothing but defeat. Russian troops who commit countless war crimes every day—and the generals who give the orders—deserve nothing but a tribunal.

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During the Cold War, Soviet Russia posed a direct threat to America, and its nuclear arsenal dwarfed today’s Russian capabilities. Yet the United States, led by Ronald Reagan, stood firm. What Neville Chamberlain failed to grasp—but Reagan understood—is that strength prevents wars, while appeasement precipitates them.

The lesson remains unchanged: Russia invades not because it feels threatened, but because it perceives weakness and division. Endless Western concessions—despite being vastly stronger than Russia in every domain—have only emboldened Moscow.

We looked away after Georgia in 2008, did too little after Crimea in 2014, and let the downing of MH17 fade into diplomatic obscurity. Each time, we sent a message: aggression pays. And each time, Russia took it as a down payment on the next war.

The Free World, by and large, does not understand what Russia is. It is not a nation with interests, but an empire addicted to conquest, subjugation and oppression. From the Caucasus to Crimea, from the Arctic to the Pacific, Moscow has built itself on the plunder of others.

Unlike other colonial powers, it never faced a reckoning. The Soviet collapse didn’t end Russia’s imperial project—it merely paused it. Now, the Kremlin is at it again, dressing ruthless and deliberate violence in the language of grievance, branding colonization as “reunification.”

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President Trump has pledged to “secure peace through strength.” If he means it, he must ensure Ukraine wins. Not a negotiated surrender. Not a pause before the next invasion. A victory.

Some treat the non-zero chance of nuclear war as the ultimate argument – a way to end all debate. But the problem with this framing is that it is always true. The bigger concern—the one we refuse to face—is what happens after we let it dictate our response.

A Russia that walks away with anything resembling a win will rewrite the rules of global security. The doctrine of nuclear non-proliferation? Gone. The idea that only responsible states can be trusted with these weapons? Finished. The next crisis won’t be a matter of if but when—and when it comes, we’ll be living in a world a lot more combustible than today’s.

Moscow is bleeding out and Beijing is watching. Xi Jinping has studied every move of Russia’s war—the battles lost and won, the sanctions imposed, the punishments threatened and those that never came. He has learned what the Kremlin can endure, what the West will tolerate, and where the cracks are forming.

Russia’s economy is faltering, ruble is in freefall, and Moscow is slashing social spending to keep the war machine running. India has capitalized on Russia’s desperation after its self-inflicted divorce from Europe—its most lucrative commodities market—snapping up cheap oil, coal, and fertilizers while settling 90% of trade in local currencies. In 2023-24, bilateral trade hit $65 billion, but India’s exports were a mere $4 billion, leaving Russia dependent on a buyer that pays in rupees it can barely use.

Now both India and China are growing wary – halting Russian oil purchases for March — their banks fear U.S. sanctions. What happens next in Ukraine will not stay in Ukraine. If the Kremlin profits from aggression, Xi will take his lesson. Strength now will shape not just Ukraine’s future, but the balance of power for years to come.

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It’s time to use Russia’s stolen wealth against it. The $300 billion in frozen Russian assets remain untapped, a tool not yet wielded. As Niall Ferguson and Chris Miller recently argued, these funds should be seized to rebuild Ukraine, just as German assets were used after World War II. This isn’t just practical—it’s just. A tyrant wages a war of annihilation, and his victims foot the bill? Friends of the victim chip in while the aggressor grins in the back?

The choice before us is stark: strength or surrender, moral courage or appeasement. Will we let Yaroslav's grief be ignored, his daughters' stolen futures dismissed? If we cannot summon the will to act for Ukraine’s sake, we must do so for America’s. Capabilities without credibility are no deterrent — they are a grotesque charade. Hesitate now, and America’s adversaries will stop taking us seriously. History does not remember those who “manage” crises; it remembers those who resolve them. Ukraine has done its part. It’s time America does the same.

A version of this article first appeared in The Hill on Feb 14, 2025