Analysis

Historically, one of the greatest dangers to a major power in the international system is letting smaller allies and clients drag that power into an unwise war. Both the United States and leading European powers seem inclined to make that blunder with respect to the Baltic republics. Too many U.S. policymakers have not only tolerated but also facilitated the obsession those “allies” (i.e. protectorates) have exhibited with defeating Russia in Ukraine and weakening their arch adversary overall.

Surveying the devastation wrought by the wars in Ukraine and Iran, the Nigerian writer and former secretary general of African workers, Owei Lakemfa, concludes that “humanity is moving back to the pre-World War era when there were no agreed universal rules, might was right.” Today, writes Lakemfa, “strongmen, and nations roam around as terrorists and bandits playing God. The strongest is the Zelensky, Netanyahu, and Trump triumvirate.”^[1]

This is how the world outside of NATO and Tel Aviv sees things. This might spur a normal country run by normal people to question the wisdom of its current course. Needless to say, in 2026, the US is no such country.

Over the course of a few short weeks, a grim new reality has taken shape in Ukraine.

Ukraine becomes fault line in Italy’s next election…

This summer I and my largely Russian family, culturally and ethnically speaking, traveled to St. Petersburg to visit relatives and friends. We do this several times a year. Last summer we had a much far-ranging itinerary that included Moscow, Novorossiisk, Crimea, Sochi, and Gelendzhik in addition to St. Petersburg. The following is a series of thoughts and observations regarding this year’s July trip to Russia’ ‘northern capitol.’

The Senate on Friday passed a long-sought bipartisan bill that would impose harsher sanctions on Russia and the top five buyers of Russian oil, along with extending existing sanctions on Iran.

That measure was a major legislative goal of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who died suddenly earlier this month. The vote was 86-11.

Hardliners on both sides in the Ukraine war are pursuing a chimaera in the hope of a miracle. Moscow appears to believe that in the near future, the Ukrainian defences that have held the Russian advance to a bloody crawl for years will miraculously collapse, or that the European money and arms that have enabled those defences will suddenly vanish. A large part of the Western commentariat (and some, though by no means all Ukrainian security experts) appear beholden to a symmetrical fantasy. Drones and satellite intelligence have made the accumulation of combat power for a Russian breakthrough impossible, enabling the Ukrainian army to fight Russia to a near-standstill. Yet Western observers seem to believe that these technologies will miraculously not allow Russia to do exactly the same to the Ukrainian army.

Senator J. William Fulbright, was one of the 20th century’s most incisive critics of American militarism.

It is clear that the tit-for-tat strikes between Iran and the US are escalating — dangerously so — and that President Trump apparently believes he can best the Iranians as he marches up the escalation ladder.

On January 14, 2026, Mykhailo Fedorov was appointed Ukraine’s minister of defense.

Just six months later, he was dismissed.

Since Putin’s full-scale invasion began, over a million Ukrainians have been conscripted to defend their homeland. And, as voluntary recruits have dried up, the army has begun resorting to the same methods faced by that couple in Odesa. People even have a term for it: “busification”

In his farewell address of January 1961, Dwight Eisenhower warned Americans against the “acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex,” and the danger that “public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.” Sixty-five years on, Eisenhower’s warnings have been repeatedly and tragically vindicated. American democracy hangs by a thread, while the military-industrial complex, now including Silicon Valley, runs American foreign policy over the objections of the American people.

If you listen to the pronouncements of European elites like Kaja Kallas and British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper, and read the Western mainstream media, you would be forgiven for believing that sanctions are helping to change the war in Ukraine and slowly bring Russia to its knees.

You would be mistaken.

This interview with Grigory Yavlinsky, the founder of Russia’s Yabloko Party, comes in the run-up to national, regional, and local elections scheduled for September 20. The regime’s failure to achieve its goals in Ukraine and the increasing costs incurred by its retaliatory strikes across Russia, on cities and facilities that were not impacted even by World War II, is making the regime increasingly insecure, and its response to any critique is rapidly hardening. Since the start of the military operation, five members of Yabloko, including its vice chair and the recent head of its caucus in the Moscow City legislature, have been sentenced to terms in a penal colony, ranging from one to 10 years, and nine of its leading and most recognizable members other than Yavlinsky (who is not seeking office) have been banned from running in the elections.

Albuquerque, NM — Plutonium warhead cores (“pits”) are the primary fissile components of all U.S. nuclear weapons.

“Consistent with the requirements of the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of Energy shall ensure that, by not later than 2050, the nuclear security enterprise has the capability to reliably produce no fewer than 180 war reserve plutonium pits annually.’’

In this wide-ranging conversation, Professor Richard Sakwa explains why we are now in a **third Cold War**, how Russophobia has become mainstream in Western politics and media, and why peace in Ukraine is increasingly viewed as “failure” by Western elites.

Many western commentators are misreading the four-year-old conflict. It is Russia — not Ukraine — that retains the strategic advantage.

Ukraine’s 40-day deep-strike campaign – launched by President Volodymyr Zelensky to “push the aggressor toward ending the war” – is now at its height.

U.S. and NATO leaders have waged a multi-year propaganda campaign to convince Western publics that Ukraine is a splendid democracy and that President Volodymyr Zelensky is an extremely popular elected leader who epitomizes those values.  Multiple aspects of that carefully crafted image are untrue.  Ukraine is a corrupt, autocratic state that maintains strict censorship and brutally represses political opponents.  When Zelensky’s term ended in 2024, he and his obedient followers in parliament simply postponed elections indefinitely.  Even absent adverse election result, though, there are ample signs that NATO’s much-lauded hero has alienated Ukraine’s public.