American Committee for US-Russia Accord

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — European Union officials warned Ukraine on Thursday that it must keep cracking down on graft in the wake of a major corruption scandal that could hurt the country’s ability to attract financial help. But they also offered assurances that aid will continue to flow as Kyiv strains to hold back Russia’s invasion.

LONDON — Ukraine is being shaken by one of the biggest wartime corruption scandals since Russia’s invasion three years ago, after investigators raided the homes of top officials and a former business partner of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as part of an investigation into an alleged sprawling corruption scheme in the country’s energy sector.

From censoring a report on CIA domestic surveillance to running cover for the Contra War to helping launch the war on terror, Dick Cheney dedicated his life to making sure the US national security state could kill, spy, and torture with few checks.

Magical thinking, case number 1: Ukraine can win its war against Russia, and do so without the United States and its NATO allies becoming full-fledged belligerents in the conflict.

Prrogressives who reviled him this week need to acknowledge how close their own views came to Cheney’s in the last years of his life.

Almost four years after the full-scale Russian invasion, Ukraine faces the twin challenges of not having enough troops and men avoiding military service.

With the imposition of new U.S. sanctions on Russian oil producers and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s dismissal of visiting Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev as a “propagandist,” the Trump administration’s efforts to end the war in Ukraine seem to be hanging by a thread.

There is much of significance happening in Ukraine right now that is being reported either lightly or not at all by the mainstream Western media in an apparent attempt to harmonize their reporting with Kiev’s narrative in order to keep hope high and economic and military support flowing.

ACURA’s Nicolai Petro is Professor of Comparative and International Politics at the University of Rhode Island and the author of The Tragedy of Ukraine.

When he saw a group of Soviet soldiers on the street in East Berlin, Los Angeles Rams offensive lineman Irv Pankey had an idea.

He wanted a fur hat, and offered an NFL-branded cap in return.

“The guy, he was cool about that, and the rest of it is history,” Pankey said.

Until the end of last year, the agreed policy, as stated by then incoming Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, was that

“the British Government must leave the Kremlin with no doubt that it will support Kyiv for as long as it takes to achieve victory. Once Ukraine has prevailed, the United Kingdom should play a leading role in securing Ukraine’s place in NATO”.

I have heard this formula endlessly in the last three or four years. Can the noble Baroness tell us whether this is still the policy of the British Government? If not, why not? That policy, to my way of thinking, was always dishonest and in fact, morally repugnant, since we were never going to give Ukraine all it takes for victory, for the very good reason that any such policy carried an unacceptable risk of escalation. I am really worried by the insouciance of those noble Lords speaking today who talk about unleashing long-range missile attacks on the most heavily armed nuclear power in the world.

There has been a great deal of confusion about why it is so difficult to achieve a ceasefire, and why Russia insists on a comprehensive peace settlement that deals with “the root causes” of the crisis.

Movies have long played a significant role in shaping our understanding of the perils of nuclear war. As a teenager, I was stupefied by On the Beach (1959), the cinematic portrayal of Nevil Shute’s 1957 novel about the extermination of human life in Australia as a lethal radioactive cloud drifts from the Northern Hemisphere (where it was generated by a cataclysmic nuclear war) to the South Pacific. Next came Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove (1964), still the most powerful dramatization of nuclear war’s utter madness. The Day After, a made-for-TV film from 1983, provided gruesome images of a nuclear war’s deadly consequences for members of a small Kansas community.

It started back in 2017. Congressional Republicans were trying to trace the FBI, CIA, and other agencies’ activities in what is often known as the “Russia hoax.” One central focus was the Steele dossier, the collection of false and salacious accusations that Trump conspired with Russia to steal the 2016 election.

President Donald Trump’s October 29 announcement that the United States will restart nuclear weapons testing after more than 30 years marks a dangerous turning point in international security.

The decision lacks technical justification and appears solely driven by geopolitical posturing.

Trump’s impulsive and ignorant statement about resuming nuclear testing was truly terrifying. Not because it would blow up the CTBT, which the U.S. has never ratified but, like Russia and China, continues to adhere to but because it reflected how little understanding Trump has about nuclear weapons and their use and  because it shows how recklessly impetuous Trump is. The reality is that the U.S. is nowhere near ready to begin underground nuclear testing. It would probably take the U.S. three years to get ready to test and the U.S., with its stockpile stewardship program, has no need for such testing, which would only trigger similar moves by Russia and China and others, who actually would benefit from such testing far more than the U.S. would.

The fact that Trump doesn’t even understand that tests of new delivery systems is not the same thing as a nuclear weapons test, which only North Korea has undertaken this century, is also flabbergasting. The thought that this fool has the power to effectively end life on the planet is truly staggering and incomprehensible.

The timing and announcement of Russia’s recent tests of the Burevestnik missile and Poseidon torpedo were partly in response to Trump’s mockery of the Russian military as a “paper tiger” and partly in response to his cancellation of the Budapest meeting with President Putin, who has also proposed extending the New START treaty for another year while negotiations continue. They were also partly in response to Trump’s “Golden Dome” fantasy. As Putin emphasized, much like he did in his original announcement on March 1, 2018, these systems, like the Oreshnik, which Russia deployed last November, can all circumvent U.S. missile defense. Former National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster said the U.S. wouldn’t have a counter to the Oreshnik for at least 15 years. That is probably true for all these systems. It is time for the U.S. and Russia to hold strategic security talks as the world has been demanding.

–Peter Kuznick, Professor of History at American University

The war in Ukraine needs to end. It has been out of control for three years, costing hundreds of billions of pounds and hundreds of thousands of lives. Further escalation risks confrontation with a nuclear power.

Opinions differ on how we got here. Some claim Vladimir Putin is intent on recreating a Russian empire. Others believe that no Russian leader would survive if they allowed Nato to expand to within 300 miles of Moscow. What matters is what we do now, starting from where we are with the available options.

The Pentagon has given the White House the green light to provide Ukraine with long-range Tomahawk missiles after assessing that it would not negatively impact US stockpiles, leaving the final political decision in President Donald Trump’s hands, according to three US and European officials familiar with the matter.

In a Truth Social post, Trump touted progress made on nuclear weapons modernization during his first term. But he warned that China’s nuclear weapons buildup will place Beijing’s arsenal on equal footing with the United States and Russia “within 5 years.”

“Because of other countries [sic] testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis,” Trump said. “That process will begin immediately.”

Anastas Mikoyan: An Armenian Reformer in Khrushchev’s Kremlin, by Pietro Shakarian (Indiana University Press, 2025) 350 pp. A review by Aleksandr V. Gevorkyan calls it “impeccable in its factual analysis and ease of prose.” Full review here.