On October 5, Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed the plenary session of the Valdai International Discussion Club near Sochi, Russia. The session was attended by scholars and diplomats from forty-two countries. Putin spoke for half an hour and then answered...
On November 18, 2021, Putin held a meeting with Russian diplomats. Facing renewed vows that Ukraine would enter NATO and continued concerns that NATO’s “military potential and infrastructure [would be] in the vicinity of Russian borders," Putin turned to his minister...
At times, Ukraine has been unwilling to negotiate an end to the ongoing war with Russia. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has gone so far as to issue a decree banning negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin. At other times, Russia has given up on...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
