In August 2024, the largest prisoner exchange between Moscow and the West since the end of the Cold War took place, drawing much-needed attention to the issue of political prisoners in Putin’s Russia. While the release of high-profile opposition figures in August was certainly welcome, it is vital that the international community does not forget
NEW YORK—Two dark clouds hung over the United Nations General Assembly this week in New York. The first was the growing peril of Chinese-Russian common cause. The second was uncertainty about whether US leadership will rise to the challenge after the November elections. It’s impossible to separate the two issues, as the disruptive dangers of
Vladimir Putin has this week proposed changes to Russia’s nuclear doctrine that would significantly lower the threshold for the country’s use of nuclear weapons. Addressing a September 25 meeting of senior Kremlin officials, he presented a series of draft amendments aimed at expanding the scope for possible nuclear strikes. Putin emphasized that if these revisions
History is at the very heart of Russia’s war on Ukraine, with Russian President Vladimir Putin frequently using historical narratives to justify the invasion. Western academia can help combat the Kremlin’s weaponization of the past by paying significantly more attention to the field of Ukrainian history. Ever since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began ten
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is due to present his widely anticipated Victory Plan to United States President Joe Biden later this week. While the details of Zelenskyy’s plan have yet to be made public, it should already be obvious that any serious peace proposal must include a significant boost in current military support for Ukraine,
Ukraine conducted one of the largest and most effective drone attacks of the entire war in the early hours of September 18, causing a blast at a weapons depot deep inside Russia that was large enough to be picked up by earthquake monitoring stations. According to Ukrainian sources, the attack involved more than one hundred
If Donald Trump wins the United States presidential election in November, he has pledged to bring the war in Ukraine to a swift end by brokering an agreement between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump himself has yet to elaborate on the terms of any potential deal, but his vice presidential
It is often said that armies always prepare to fight the previous war. This rings particularly true in relation to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The sheer scale of the war unleashed by Vladimir Putin in February 2022 has exposed a lack of preparedness among the Western defense establishment, which has spent the past few
Vladimir Putin attempted to draw yet another red line on September 12, warning Western leaders that any decision to let Ukraine use long-range weapons against targets inside Russia would mean that NATO countries are “at war” with Russia. Speaking to the Kremlin media, Putin said that allowing Ukrainian strikes on Russian territory using Western-produced missiles
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has included a wide range of attacks on Ukrainian heritage sites as the Kremlin seeks to erase Ukraine’s cultural identity. By September 2024, UNESCO had officially verified damage to 438 cultural sites in Ukraine including religious buildings, museums, libraries, and monuments. Writing earlier this year, Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin
