Vladimir Putin
February 23, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Scott noted here that it has taken over 80 years, but Hollywood finally got round to exonerating Neville Chamberlain for his malfeasance in Munich in 1938. Today’s media isn’t even waiting 80 hours to exonerate President Biden. They are already declaring this to be Biden’s finest hour. Behold the Washington Post just three days ago: With or without war, Ukraine gives Biden a new lease on leadership Six months ago,
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November 12, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
With winter approaching, Europe is facing an energy crisis. To a significant degree, Vladimir Putin is orchestrating it. Josh Rogin observes that Putin has been refusing to respond swiftly to requests by Europeans for more gas. He is also probably behind the migrant crisis along the Belarus-Poland border. As a result of that crisis, as John noted yesterday, the Belarus president has threatened to close down a key gas pipeline
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July 7, 2021 — Scott Johnson
Axios’s Jonathan Swan reports that Tucker Carlson was talking to U.S.-based Kremlin intermediaries about setting up an interview with Vladimir Putin shortly before Tucker accused the National Security Agency of monitoring his electronic communications for nefarious purposes — according to “sources familiar with the conversations.” Draw your own conclusions from this: The NSA’s public statement didn’t directly deny that any Carlson communications had been swept up by the agency. •
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June 19, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
It’s not an explicit confession of error, of course, but consider this line that appears well into a report about Joe Biden’s meeting with Vladimir Putin: “Putin’s high hopes for Trump delivered little for Moscow.” How can that be? The Post, the Democrats, and more than a few Never Trumpers told us that Trump colluded with Putin. Had that been true, Trump would have delivered for Moscow or else been
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June 17, 2021 — Scott Johnson
Whatever President Biden had to say at his press conference after his meeting with Vladimir Putin in Geneva yesterday, it wasn’t worth the price. The price, that is, of giving Putin a stage on which to disparage the United States with a variety of left-wing talking points. Moreover, if Biden said to Putin what he said he said — the White House has posted the text of Biden’s comments here
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February 4, 2021 — Scott Johnson
I wrote about Vladimir Putin’s poisoning of Alex Navalny in “Inside Putin’s underpants op.” It’s an incredible story. For background I recommend Leonid Bershidsky’s January 18 Bloomberg column “Navalny vs. Putin is an epic existential battle.” Perhaps even more incredible is Navalny’s subsequent return to Russia. Bershidsky’s column on Navalny’s return is here. Having returned to Russia, Navalny has now been sentenced to prison for three and a half years.
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January 12, 2021 — Scott Johnson
I don’t recall reading anything like Paul Roderick Gregory’s Hill column — “The Kremlin, FSB, and the ‘Berlin patient’s’ underpants” — and related news stories. The Coen Brothers could turn it to good use in a film like Burn After Reading. Gregory tells how Vladimir Putin’s would-be assassination victim Aleksei Navalny extracted an account of the operation from the failed FSB assassin Konstantin Kudryavtsev himself. In a four-hour December 17
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February 27, 2020 — Scott Johnson
It is simply false to assert that we rely on Bill Browder’s word for the facts related to the torture and murder of Sergei Magnitsky. We have Magnitsky’s own account preserved in diary and court records, among other things and we have the witnesses who can be heard in Justice for Sergei, the documentary film I have embedded below. Several versions of the film can be viewed free of charge
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July 21, 2018 — Paul Mirengoff
I’ve commented on two appalling aspects of Trump’s Helsinki news conference — his placing equal blame on the United States for the problematic state of Russian–American relations and his refusal to side with his own intelligence appointees on the matter of Russia’s cyberespionage. Andy McCarthy finds it even more mind-boggling that Trump touted Putin’s “incredible offer” to have Robert Mueller’s team come to Russia to work with Russian investigators regarding
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July 19, 2018 — Paul Mirengoff
In this Wall Street Journal op-ed, Michael Mukasey questioned the timing of Robert Mueller’s indictment of 12 Russians on the eve of the Helsinki summit. I discussed the matter here. In the same op-ed, Mukasey made another important point, one that has influenced my thinking on Russian interference since January 2017, when an experienced intelligence hand articulated it to me: If we know the Russians hacked the Democrats, it’s probably
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July 17, 2018 — Scott Johnson
Vladimir Putin sat down for a 30-minute interview with Chris Wallace for broadcast on FOX News yesterday. Putin is of course an extraordinarily cold-blooded liar and murderer. See, for example, David Satter’s The Less You Know, the Better You Sleep. I thought that Putin’s qualities of character emerged with some clarity in the course of the interview. Putin’s treatment of responsibility for Russian interference in the 2016 election is of
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July 17, 2018 — Scott Johnson
First Vladimir Putin and then President Trump gave statements following their meeting in Helsinki yesterday. I have posted the video below (about 47 minutes); the White House has posted a transcript of the entire event. Angelo Codevilla makes a contrarian case for Trump’s performance in a column for American Greatness, but I thought it was a low point in the Trump presidency. In the questions and answers, President Trump name-checked
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July 16, 2018 — John Hinderaker
As so often happens, President Trump’s critics are so crazy that one feels compelled to take his side. Thus, former Communist and CIA Director John Brennan tweeted earlier today: This is simply insane. Other Democrats, not going as far as Brennan, say that Trump “gave away the store,” or made inappropriate concessions to President Putin. But there is no evidence that Trump gave anything away in his meeting with Putin,
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July 16, 2018 — Paul Mirengoff
I agree with Steve’s characterization of President Trump’s performance in Helsinki as “extraordinarily dismal.” “Disgusting” might be an even better description. The performance was disgusting in at least two ways. First, Trump blamed the poor state of U.S. relations on the U.S. He tweeted: Our relationship with Russia has NEVER been worse thanks to many years of U.S. foolishness and stupidity and now, the Rigged Witch Hunt! Trump is right
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July 16, 2018 — Steven Hayward
I have been wanting for at least a couple of months to start a thread/series involving the whole Power Line team on “Ten [or 15, or 20] Ways to Think About Trump,” as this maddening, erratic, seemingly undisciplined, cantankerous, disruptive, sometimes brilliant, often embarrassing, and always unpredictable man rampages on the world stage, much of the time to good effect—at least so far. Too soon to tell, for example, whether
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April 11, 2018 — Scott Johnson
In his his fourth tweet this morning President Trump provides a striking (no pun intended) preview of coming attractions in Syria. The theme of “collusion” grows more absurd every day. Trump advises his supposed buddy Putin: “You shouldn’t be partners with a Gas Killing Animal who kills his people and enjoys it!” Speaking of the Putin-Assad partnership, this brings us to the first of “Five catastrophic decisions” logged by Victor
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March 20, 2018 — Scott Johnson
In its September 2009 number GQ carried an interesting article by Scott Anderson on the September 1999 apartment bombings in Russia that left hundreds dead and led to Vladimir Putin’s rise to power. The piece profiled former Russian FSB officer Mikhail Trepashkin and collected evidence suggesting that the bombings were perpetrated by the FSB rather than by Chechen terrorists. It was the kind of intriguing investigative piece that most publications
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