Category: John E. Herbst

The House passed Ukraine aid at last. Here’s what it means.

JUST IN Help is (finally) on the way. The US House on Saturday approved $60.8 billion in aid for Ukraine in its fight against Russian aggression, after months of delays that have seen Russian gains on the ground. The bill, part of a four-piece national security package put forth by House Speaker Mike Johnson over

Congress must act to stop Kremlin aggression—for the sake of US interests

Are we at the end of an eighty-year period of US global leadership? The United States emerged as a global leader—no, the key global actor—when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt overcame a long tradition of US isolationism by moving forward with the Lend-Lease program that provided essential aid to keep the United Kingdom in the war

Zelenskyy visits DC at Ukraine’s most dangerous moment

JUST IN Sometimes politics doesn’t end at the water’s edge. Amid a difficult stage in Ukraine’s fight against Russia’s invasion and congressional division over US policy toward Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is visiting Washington this week to make his case for continued aid for his country. While US President Joe Biden said Tuesday he

Memo to the president: A bold agenda for the Washington summit: How to advance vital US interests by helping Ukraine win and defining its path to NATO membership

TO: POTUSFROM: Ambassadors John Herbst, Steven Pifer, Alexander Vershbow, and 39 other national security leadersSUBJECT: A bold agenda for the Washington summit: How to advance vital US interests by helping Ukraine win and defining its path to NATO membership SHARE MEMO BY EMAIL DOWNLOAD PDF What does the US president need to know? Our new

Will Zelenskyy’s Washington visit help deliver ATACMS for Ukraine?

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s trip this week to New York and Washington is just the latest twist in a flurry of contacts between the United States and Ukraine this summer. Zelenskyy met with US President Joe Biden at the NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, in July and hosted Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Kyiv two

What Prigozhin’s plane crash tells us about Putin’s Russia

JUST IN The plane was flying northwest, then events went south quickly. On Wednesday, Wagner Group founder Yevgeniy Prigozhin and nine other people were reportedly killed when their aircraft, en route from Moscow to Saint Petersburg, crashed under mysterious circumstances. In late June, Prigozhin led a short-lived mutiny in Russia that involved a convoy of

The NATO Summit’s underwhelming support for Ukraine

JUST IN It’s a fast track with a slow start. NATO leaders meeting in Vilnius today released their summit communiqué, in which they said that Ukraine no longer needs to complete a membership action plan to join the Alliance—but that an invitation would only be extended “when allies agree and conditions are met.” In the

An expert briefing on the Wagner mutiny and what’s next for Russia and Ukraine

On Monday, the Atlantic Council organized a briefing for its global leadership on Yevgeniy Prigozhin’s Wagner Group rebellion, its potential consequences around the world, and how the drama could unfold next. Top experts and former officials helped make sense of the stunning events—and what they mean for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s hold on power, Russia’s