American Committee for US-Russia Accord

Few concepts in contemporary international relations are invoked as often, or with as little precision, as ‘multipolarity’.

In a highly confrontational address to the UN Security Council, Russian Permanent Representative Vassily Nebenzia accused the European Union and foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas of deliberately escalating the Ukraine conflict and preparing for a major war with Moscow.

George and Ian discuss the November 2025 US National Security Strategy and how Trump’s failed Iran war has done many of the things the Strategy promised that America would not do. Adding to that, efforts at peace have twice acted as preludes to military strikes against Iran, eroding all trust on the Iranian side.

In the context of the present Cuba crisis, the 65th anniversary of the infamous Bay of Pigs debacle takes on renewed and immediate significance. The CIA-organized paramilitary effort to roll back the Castro revolution remains a cautionary history of the high costs of US intervention in Cuba—and elsewhere.

This week, TRR had the pleasure of speaking with the eminent scholar of Russia, Richard Sakwa, emeritus professor of politics at the University of Kent in the UK. His new book (his fifth since 2020) is called The Russo-Ukrainian War: Follies of Empire, which examines the root causes of the current conflict.

Comparing the U.S. intelligence community’s newly-released Annual Threat Assessment-2026 with the previous edition of this document reveals a change in how this community approaches analyzing Russia and other countries that negatively impact U.S. national security.

As the war in Ukraine enters its fifth year, it remains unclear when or how the conflict will end. But it will end, as all wars do, and when it does, both Ukraine and Russia will face the challenge of reintegrating thousands of soldiers back into their societies. Some veterans will return home resilient and ready to rejoin their communities; others will need physical, mental, and financial support for the rest of their lives. Both countries will face reintegration challenges requiring significant policy attention and financial resources, and Kyiv and Moscow are aware that there is no alternative to tackling the problem head-on.

Russia has lost interest for now in participating any time soon another round of talks with Washington and Kiev in the negotiation process kicked off by U.S. President Donald Trump to end the NATO-Russia Ukrainian War. The reasons are manifold and include the increasingly erratic and duplicitous behavior of Russia’s interlocutors, consequences emanating from the U.S./Israeli-Iranian or Third Gulf War, and growing dissatisfaction across Russia because of the behaviors and consequences, all of which I detail below.

The idea that peace in Ukraine would be premature remains predominant in a few major European capitals, especially London, as well as inside hawkish American think tanks which have invested their reputation in defeating Russia — a goal that appears to be further away than ever before. Two prominent foreign policy scholars, Michael Kimmage and Hanna Notte, put it far more candidly than Ischinger in a Foreign Affairs piece. “Most important, the US and Europe shouldn’t rush any talks to end the conflict,” they wrote.

Four years into the war in Ukraine, taboos around NATO’s role in its outbreak show signs of weakening.

In a recent televised rant on the Fox News Channel, the neoconservative publicist Mark Levin made the eye-opening claim that the current US-Israeli War on Iran is “every bit as important as World War Two.”

Never has humankind seen so much power concentrated in the hands of one so capricious.

Since the invasion of Ukraine, Europe has had only two options regarding its stance toward Russia: forever war or offering Russia a sensible peace and security pact.

For four years, analysts and policymakers have warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin “cannot afford to lose” in Ukraine. Increasingly, some argue he cannot afford peace either. In this view, the war is existential for his regime. Defeat would shatter Putin’s legacy and potentially end his rule. Trappedbetween humiliation and collapse, inviting comparisons to the fate of the last Russian tsar, Nicholas II, Putin is portrayed as having no viable off-ramp from an unwinnable war.

In the view of General de Gaulle, “Treaties are like young girls and roses; they last while they last.” By that standard, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization seems to be wilting pretty fast. The Israeli-U.S. war on Iran has opened up (or revealed) divisions that may prove fatal.

To date only one person that we know of from the Trump administration has resigned over the decision to attack Iran. Joe Kent a very senior official in the administration. Retired Green Beret and CIA para-military operative, was Director of the National Counterterrorism Center. He resigned on March 16 writing in his resignation letter to Trump that Iran “posed no imminent threat to our nation” and that the administration “started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby”.

Peace is not merely the absence of fear. It stabilizes the conditions under which ordinary people can act, plan, invest, and raise families.

An American and six Ukrainians have been arrested on terrorism charges. Sometime back I wrote an article in which I noted the greater risk of terrorism generated by Ukrainians would come to Europe and in fact had already arrived on a small scale (https://gordonhahn.com/2015/11/05/europes-new-terrorist-threat/). This was confirmed by prior and later events.

Bad Ukrainians must not be allowed to worship false idols.

Bad Ukrainians are irrationally attached to outdated holidays. Orthodox Christmas, which most Ukrainians have traditionally celebrated according to the Julian calendar, has been moved to fit the Gregorian (“European”) schedule. Victory Day, which used to stand for the Soviet Union’s victory over the Nazis, has been moved, renamed, and reinterpreted in accordance with EU practice. The old holidays have been made workdays. The Kyiv government’s glorification of World War II–era Ukrainian nationalist organizations and their leaders and chants (“Glory to Ukraine, Glory to the Heroes,” “Ukraine Above Everything”) was repeatedly mentioned as casus belli by Donbas separatist insurgents, who were brought up to associate them with the fascist enemy their grandfathers had defeated.

Bad by definition are thousands of Ukrainians charged with “collaboration,” 200,000 soldiers away without leave, two million draft evaders, and untold numbers who would like to stay home on their traditional Christmas Day.

On March 5, Helsinki published draft amendments to the Nuclear Energy Act and the Criminal Code that would allow nuclear weapons to be brought into or based on Finnish soil, despite widespread public skepticism toward the change.