Ukraine

Mixed-up confusion illustrated

Featured image Before Bob Dylan really made his name in folk music he recorded “Mixed-Up Confusion” — a rock song that was his first single and that anticipated the direction he would go a few years later. Dylan recorded it in the sessions for Freewheelin‘, but Columbia held the original back from his albums until Dylan included it on Biograph in 1985. The song comes to mind in connection with the video »

Nuclear War?

Featured image I believe this article in the Kyiv Independent is the source for stories, some of them rather alarmist, about comments made by Putin crony Dmitry Medvedev: Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, on Feb. 18 threatened to use nuclear weapons against the U.S., the U.K., Germany, and Ukraine if Moscow loses all occupied Ukrainian territories. *** “Attempts to restore Russia’s 1991 borders [i.e., Russia’s borders before its »

War In Europe?

Featured image The war in Ukraine seems to have settled into a stalemate, and one would think that the Russian army’s mediocre performance in that conflict would dampen any Kremlin aspirations to widen the war. But military leaders in Western Europe are nevertheless sounding an alarm. Thus, Bild magazine has published documents from Germany’s Ministry of Defense about the possibility of a Russian attack. It isn’t clear from the linked story whether »

Restoring deterrence

Featured image Cliff May is founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and a columnist for the Washington Times. He is a veteran reporter, foreign correspondent, and editor for the New York Times and other publications. Cliff’s current column is “Restoring deterrence” (at FDD, where it is posted with links). Cliff has kindly given us his permission to post his columns on Power Line. He writes at year’s »

It’s not just Zelensky’s war

Featured image Cliff May is founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and a columnist for the Washington Times. He is a veteran reporter, foreign correspondent, and editor for the New York Times and other publications. Cliff’s current column is “It’s not just Zelensky’s war” (at FDD, where it is posted with links). Cliff has kindly given us his permission to post his column on Power Line. He »

Trofimov not trying hard enough

Featured image On its news pages the Wall Street Journal’s more or less marches in lockstep with the rest of the braindead media on Israel’s response to the Hamas massacres. Yaroslav Trofimov is the chief foreign-affairs correspondent of The Wall Street Journal. He wrote the Review section’s featured essay “Does the West Have a Double Standard for Ukraine and Gaza?” Beyond the ambit of the news section, it reflects some of the »

Podcast: A Conversation with Col. Austin Bay about America’s Proxy Wars

Featured image Herewith another bonus classic format edition, this time featuring an extended conversation with Col. Austin Bay, one of the proprietors of the indispensable Strategy Page, columnist for Creators Syndicate, and author of the splendid Cocktails from Hell: Five Complex Wars Shaping the 21st Century. His column last week is a brief and lucid tour through the proxy wars America is currently confronting (against Russia and Iran, by way of Ukraine »

The View from Budapest, on Ukraine, China, and the U.S.

Featured image BUDAPEST, September 25: I’ve been so overbooked in Budapest that I haven’t had time to file any foreign dispatches, and I have a lot to catch up on. I spent most of Saturday at a small roundtable convened by the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs, which was devoted to exploring American and Hungarian perspectives on a variety of issues. The meeting was off-the-record and under Chatham House rules, so I »

Poll: Nearly Half of Americans Under 30 Support Sending US Troops to Defend Ukraine

Featured image A CBS News/YouGov poll found that 48% of adults under the age of 30 support sending U.S. troops to defend Ukraine. I’m rather struck by such a high number given that the military is failing to reach recruitment goals among this very demographic. Perhaps they feel it’s a good idea as long as it isn’t them being sent to the front lines. The numbers drop off sharply among older age »

The Fired Ukrainian Prosecutor General Speaks

Featured image We’ve all seen the clip a thousand times. Speaking to a group of foreign policy experts at a 2018 Council on Foreign Relations event, President Joe Biden boasted that he threatened to hold back $1 billion of U.S. aid unless then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko fired Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, who was investigating corruption inside energy company Burisma Holdings. Shokin’s office was also looking into the activities of Ukrainian oligarch Mykola »

How Nixon Advised Clinton

Featured image A remarkably interesting letter (“Eyes Only”) that Richard Nixon sent to then-President Bill Clinton in March 1994, after Nixon returned from a trip to Russia and Ukraine, has been declassified and made public. Luke Nichter writes about Nixon’s letter in the Wall Street Journal: Nixon anticipated a more belligerent Russia, the rise of someone like Vladimir Putin, and worsening relations between Moscow and Kyiv. Nixon emphasized the importance of Ukraine, »

The buried FD-1023: Key quotes

Featured image Thanks to Senator Grassley, we can take a look at the FBI’s suppressed — suppressed by the FBI! — FD-1023 in the matter of the Biden family business. John posted the document here. It makes for interesting reading. It is not merely a report of what Burisma insiders told a highly trusted FBI source, it is (or should be) a key investigative document that can be set against known facts »

Russia: No One Knows Anything

Featured image Screenwriter William Goldman’s famous line about Hollywood—”No one knows anything”—applies fully to the confusing scene in Russia right now. And let’s not go further without also bringing up for the millionth time Churchill’s description of Russia as “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” There’s a sentence in one of the Wall Street Journal‘s many articles about the matter today that reminds of this: “The full story behind »

A Coup In Russia? [Updated Again]

Featured image In a stunning turn of events, the Wagner Group under Yevgeny Prigozhin has revolted against the Russian Army, and has turned eastward from Ukraine and taken the city of Rostov. Prigozhin justified his rebellion by asserting that the Russian military had bombed one of his units, but that is unconfirmed. Initially there didn’t appear to be serious fighting between Wagner and Russian military units, but Wagner’s mercenaries are now marching »

Corruption case against the Bidens is on the verge of exploding

Featured image It took the threat of contempt of Congress charges for FBI Director Christopher Wray to allow House Oversight Committee members to view the unclassified June 30, 2020 FD-1023 in which a confidential human informant alleged President Joe Biden accepted a $5 million bribe from a foreign national in exchange for policy decisions. But not before redacting 10% of the text. Frustrated by the fact that an unclassified document should be »

Breakthrough Near In Ukraine?

Featured image I have followed the war in Ukraine from a distance, and my impression has been that the conflict has settled into a stalemate that is unlikely to be broken. That being the case, I have thought that our goal should be to push toward a cease fire and a political settlement. But former British tank commander Hamish de Bretton-Gordon sees it very differently. He foresees an imminent Ukrainian breakthrough. I »

Tucker’s back — on Ukraine

Featured image Elizabeth Stauffer declares that “Tucker’s back” in the adjacent post and includes Tucker’s new ten-minute monologue posted to Twitter. “Tucker’s back” doesn’t quite have the zing of “Winston is back!” — the message signaled to the British Fleet when Churchill returned to the Admiralty in the opening days of World War II — but it’s good news. Like Elizabeth, I hope he has found a new home on Twitter. Tucker »