Ted Snider

In 2007, Putin asked the world, “What happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today? No one even remembers them.” He then went on to remind his audience of NATO’s promise not to expand east of Germany toward Russia’s borders. In 2008, when … Continue reading “The Key to Peace in Ukraine? The Other Broken NATO Promise.”

A year and a half into the war, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky may be finding himself back in the same dilemma he was confronted with at the beginning of his presidency, only magnified by the disaster of war. In April 2019, Zelensky won a surprising landslide victory, taking 73% of the run-off vote. He won, … Continue reading “Volodymyr Zelensky, Between a Rock and a Hard Place”

In the early weeks of the war, a peace was still possible that would have seen Ukraine lose few lives and little to no land. Even the Donbas would have remained in Ukraine with autonomy under a still possible Minsk agreement. Only Crimea would have remained lost. A year and a half later, Ukraine’s daily … Continue reading “A Rough Diplomatic Week for Ukraine”

There are two things that go off script and are not allowed to be said. Every official statement or mainstream media article that mentions the war in Ukraine must call it an unprovoked war. You are not allowed to say that NATO expansion east, potentially to Ukraine and right up to Russia’s borders, was a … Continue reading “NATO Keeps Saying Things NATO Doesn’t Let You Say”

US President Joe Biden’s speech before the General Assembly on September 19 spent surprisingly little time on Russia and the war in Ukraine and, in many ways, hit many of the right notes with its praise of “Sovereignty, territorial integrity, human rights . . . the core tenets of the U.N. Charter, the pillars of … Continue reading “Fact Checking Biden’s UN Speech: Words Versus Action”

In an interview with ABC This Week on September 10, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was asked about the possibility of negotiations with Russia. “You spent quite a bit of time with President Zelenskyy,” ABC’s Jonathan Karl said. “What is your sense?  How does he see this ending? Does he see himself coming to … Continue reading “The War in Ukraine Can’t End Until Washington Stops Interfering in Talks”

The signature of Joe Biden’s State Department has been the abdication of diplomacy. Its head, Antony Blinken, the chief U.S. diplomat, has abdicated the role of diplomat. Though obvious in Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea, this absence of diplomacy has been nowhere more evident than in the Russo-Ukrainian war where the State Department has … Continue reading “Why We Don’t Negotiate”

There is a dawning realization that the war in Ukraine is not going to end with the Ukrainian counteroffensive. It is not going to end with a military victory for Ukraine, and it is not going to end by attaining the goals necessary to force Russia to concede Ukraine’s key demands at the negotiating table. … Continue reading “In Ukraine, the Best Plan B Is the Plan Before Plan A”

“International law” and the “rules-based international order” sound like the same thing. They’re not. International law is the Charter international system firmly built upon the foundation of the United Nations. It is impartial and applies to everyone. Rules-based law is the preferred system of the political West, and it is built upon the structure of … Continue reading “A Tale of Two Coups”

The five members of BRICS promised that their fifteenth annual summit, held in Johannesburg, South Africa, would be an important one for BRICS’ development and that it would mark a significant moment in the changing international architecture. The political West predicted that the summit would disappoint and forecasted that differences would dominate and unity would … Continue reading “Following the BRICS Road to Multipolarity”