In the UK questions arise over the commentary of the documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone. In Australia, ECAJ Co-CEO Alex Ryvchin is demanding the Federal Government to declare a national emergency on antisemitism. In the US 100 Doctors stage a protest in Congress over the situation in Gaza. Jeffrey Sachs provides Piers Morgan Continue reading »
Ukraine / Russia
Ukraine has not been invited to a key meeting between American and Russian officials in Saudi Arabia this week to decide what peace in the country might look like. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine would “never accept” any decisions in talks without its participation to end Russia’s three-year war in the country. A decision to negotiate Continue reading »
The two big stories in the news today are the Trump administration saying Ukraine is going to have to give up territory and NATO ambitions in order to secure a peace deal, while Israel appears to retreat from its ceasefire standoff with Hamas. US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth said on Wednesday that the US Continue reading »
On 30 January 2025, CNN carried a long, detailed article, accompanied by photographs entitled Suicidal tendencies and ’80s battlefield tactics: How North Korean soldiers are operating in Russia’s war on Ukraine. The article, by a team led by senior journalists Nick Paton Walsh and Rebecca Wright, offered an insight into “the brutal and near-suicidal tactics Continue reading »
In late February 2022, I was walking on a street in Irkutsk (in the middle of Russian Siberia) when I met a former female student of mine who had just come from her work office. She was upset by the invasion of Ukraine but even more so by the attitude of some women in the Continue reading »
Back at the very start of the war retired US Ambassador Chas Freeman, an eloquent critic of many aspects of his government’s international conduct, warned that the US was prepared “to fight to the last Ukrainian”. Some want to prove him right. Others want to save the remaining young men of Ukraine. The US National Continue reading »
In less than two weeks, when Donald Trump takes office, he will confront sharply conflicting advice on Ukraine from pro-war and anti-war camps in his incoming administration. We cannot predict the outcome, but here is relevant analysis of the choices facing him. I will offer first a précis of the known and increasingly agreed military Continue reading »
George Beebe, long-time head of Russia analysis at the CIA, a 27-year veteran of the agency and now the current head of Grand Strategy at the Quincy Institute in Washington, is just the kind of American the world needs right now. Understated, immensely knowledgeable and decent, he understands the Russo-Ukraine war in its widest sense Continue reading »
There should be a Christmas truce/ceasefire (Orthodox Christmas or western doesn’t matter) in the war between Russia and Ukraine. Last Western AND Orthodox Christmas, there was discussion of the possibility of a truce or ceasefire over one of the Christmases. The precedent quoted was of course, the spontaneous ceasefire that took place over December 1914, Continue reading »
Some stand to benefit from the deluge of fake news from the war, while others could pay dearly. On Nov. 21, Maria Zakharova, spokesperson of the Russian Foreign Ministry, answered her mobile phone during a press briefing. The microphone picked up the person on the other end saying, “Be sure not to say anything about Continue reading »