On 25 July [2026], the Russian Cultural Heritage Festival [sic] took place at Fort Ross[State] Historic Park in California for the first time in six years, with the involvement of [Nina Abramian], cultural attaché from the Russian Embassy, whom the U.S. State Department had authorized to travel from Washington, D.C., to San Francisco for the occasion.
This revived unique celebration, designed to keep alive the historical memory of Russian America, brought together our compatriots and concerned Americans from across the United States, as well as members of Indigenous tribes.
Ninety-nine-year-old Otis Parrish, chief [sic] of the [Kashia Band of Pomo Indians], was invited as guest of honor to the celebration, which featured performances of folk songs, Russian cuisine tasting, displays of arts and crafts, and a round dance set to the music of traditional instruments.
Guests immersed themselves in an atmosphere of unity and a sense of connection to Russian history. The legendary settlement on the coast of Northern California, 140 kilometers north of San Francisco, and founded on 11 September 1812 by the Russian-American Company for fur hunting and trade, was a part of this history.
Ivan Kuskov, an explorer, merchant, and government official, was appointed commandant of the colony. Under his command were twenty-five Russian colonists and eighty Aleuts who had arrived from Russia’s colonies in Alaska. Construction, however, was only possible after Kuskov obtained permission from the indigenous people, the Kashaya Pomo tribe, to use the land for the settlement.
Despite the passage of time and the ocean winds, the fort’s original structures—the administrator’s house, outbuildings, and defensive towers—have survived to this day. In its time, Fort Ross was a hub of innovation: California’s first windmills and shipyards were built there.
These historic sites were at the heart of the plot of Alexey Rybnikov’s renowned [rock] opera Juno and Avos, and they inspired future generations to create works of art, including the famous portrait of Conchita Argüello by the Russian painter Anatoly Sokoloff, which the artist’s family donated to the State Historical Museum in Moscow in September 2001.
As Fort Ross approaches its 215th anniversary, which will be celebrated in September 2027, it remains in operation. It attracts tourists, scholars, historians, and politicians, serving as a reminder of Russia and America’s shared historical and cultural heritage and the significant contribution of our fellow countrymen to the conquest of America, while remaining a vivid example of the intersection and peaceful, harmonious coexistence of diverse cultures, beliefs, and traditions.
We are grateful to everyone who sincerely contributes to the preservation of this unique architectural landmark. Preserving the memory of the shared milestones in the history of Russia and the United States is an important element in restoring an atmosphere of trust and mutual understanding between our nations and peoples.
Son of political prisoner Oleg Belousov sentenced to 7 years in prison
The 1st Western District Military Court in St. Petersburg sentenced Daniil Belousov to seven years in prison on multiple counts of “condoning” terrorism,” our correspondent reports. The indictment states that Belousov was an administrator of the project Media Partisans, which was declared a “foreign agent” in March of this year.
The prosecutor had requested a nine-year sentence. Belousov’s case was heard in closed chambers.
Bumaga first learned of Daniil’s arrest in March in a letter from Pavel Sinelnikov, a defendant in the Vesna Case. At the time, Belousov was being held in the Crosses pretrial detention center.
The case stemmed from a message posted in a public chat group called “No to War” (Net voine), Sinelnikov reported. Bumaga located a chat with that name where Belousov had posted photos of a pro-Ukrainian rally, organized by Ukrainian refugees near the [Moldovan] parliament building in Chisinau. The chat is linked to the Media Partisans project.
In April, Ostorozhno, Peterburg reported, citing a source in the FSB, that an administrator of the Media Partisans chat had been detained in Petersburg. According to security officials, the detainee had urged Russians to join the Russian Volunteer Corps and the Free Russia Legion. SOTA clarified that the individual in question was Daniil Belousov.
Daniil Belousov has a disability dating back to childhood: he suffers from a residual organic lesion of the central nervous system. He finds it difficult to secure employment and requires constant care, Oleg Belousov toldBumaga. Oleg Belousov raised his son as a single parent. And yet, according to the website Kino-teatr.ru, Belousov junior has appeared in several Russian films over the past three years.
Oleg Belousov is an amateur archaeologist from Petersburg who in late March 2023 was sentenced to five and a half years in a medium security penal colony under the law prohibiting the dissemination of “fake news” about the Russian army. According to investigators, Belousov senior had called Putin a war criminal and wrote about war crimes in Bucha, Hostomel, and Irpin in a private VKontakte chat group for treasure hunters.
Before his imprisonment, Oleg was unemployed and lived on state benefits, as he has a third-class disability due to an arm injury. In February, the EU identified the judge who sentenced Belousov senior as “culpable of serious human rights violations.”
The cinematography department of the All-Russian State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK) posted an ad on its VKontakte page about “a special group” being recruited for director [and cinematographer] Mikhail Agranovich’s class. Prospective students are offered free tuition starting in the 2027 academic year, provided they sign a one-year contract with the [Russian] Defense Ministry for service in UAV (drone) units.
The students are also promised free dormitory accommodation, combat veteran status (along with associated benefits), and “expanded technical and financial resources for student film projects.” Contract service will be equated to conscription service, the ad states.
“If you dream of studying at the world’s first film school, the renowned VGIK, now’s your chance. Places in the group are limited,” the ad reads.
Previously, the Higher School of Economics announced free tuition for students serving in unmanned systems units and the BARS (“Leopard”) reservist detachments in Moscow.
Russian universities and colleges have launched a widespread pressure and propaganda campaign aimed at steering students toward the war in Ukraine. Valery Falkov, minister of science and higher education, demanded that two percent of students be sent to the army. Students are promised “guaranteed discharge” upon the expiration of their contracts.
However, Artyom Klyga, head of the legal department at the Movement of Conscientious Objectors (DSO), found that this was a ruse. In reality, students recruited for military service are deployed wherever the command decides and discharged only when the command deems appropriate.
A screenshot of an in-house article on HSE’s website touting its rankings.
Higher School of Economics confirms it is offering students a standard military contract instead of regular one-year conscription, says human rights activist
Vladimir Krotov, head of the department at the Higher School of Economics (HSE) responsible for student military registration, stated in response to an inquiry that those who voluntarily enlisted in the army would be subject to the Defense Ministry’s standard terms. This was reported by Artyom Klyga, a lawyer with the Movement of Conscientious Objectors (DSO).
Earlier, the publication T-Invariant released a letter sent to university staff. The document stated that students facing expulsion were being offered an alternative: a one-year contract with the Defense Ministry. The terms cited included guaranteed discharge after one year and service in unmanned systems units. However, Krotov’s response indicates that those who agreed to enlist would be deployed wherever the command decided and discharged whenever the command deemed appropriate. Only the provision regarding financial compensation is accurate, Klyga notes.
The HSE regularly appears on lists of Russia’s most prestigious universities. The letter to staff noted that they are now required to submit weekly reports on the number of military service notifications sent to students.
Banner Featuring “Little Stalin” Spotted on Ligovsky Prospekt
Bumaga spotted the “rap quotes” banner, featuring the refrain from Jubilee’s track “Little Stalin,” on Thursday. Our correspondent confirmed that the banner is still there today.
The banner has been attracting quite a bit of attention: passersby have been stopping, reading it, and taking snapshots, according to our correspondent.
Roskom who?
We'll do the job ourselves
A little Stalin sits inside each of us
He sits there inside
And says to you:
'Delete that tweet'
'Don’t do that—take back that like
Or the investigator will be at your door'
That’s how sweet it’s become to stay mum
A little Stalin lives inside each of us
“Little Stalin” is the sixth track on the album LIKHO (“Reckless”), released in November 2024.
Laura Loomer (left) is an American far-right conspiracist and influencer from Arizona who has suddenly (supposedly) seen the light on Ukraine after actually visiting the country that has endured an unprovoked Russian invasion for the last four and a half years. Lily Lynch (right) is a leftyish American foreign affairs writer from California who, apparently, does not need to see a place with her own eyes to give her readers the all-knowing lowdown on what’s happening there. Whose account of the Ukraine-Russia war rings truer to you?
Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s speech at NATO’s Defence Industry Forum in Ankara earlier this month was a hymn to drone warfare. Drones, the Ukrainian president proclaimed, had heralded ‘revolutionary changes in the very nature of war’ – as significant as the machine gun in the First World War, or as the modern tank in the Second. ‘Disruptive’ drone tech had allowed Ukraine to increase dramatically the number of Russian casualties, intercept Russia’s Shahed UAVs and hit targets as far away as Siberia. Recent attacks had succeeded in blackening the skies over Moscow and striking oil refineries 2,700 km away in Omsk. The country had transformed itself into a ‘drone superpower’, in the words of the Atlantic Council. Before 2022, there were just seven domestic drone manufacturers – today, there are over 500. And now, as restrictions on drone exports are being lifted, Ukraine will soon be selling them to the world.
The man most responsible for putting drones at the centre of Ukraine’s war effort has been the telegenic 35-year-old, now former Defence Minister, Mykhailo Fedorov. This much-hyped tech wunderkind has acquired a following among both patriotic liberals at home and Atlanticists in the West. He has helped promote Ukraine as a kind of ‘start-up nation’ – a high-tech defence industrial powerhouse forged in war. When barely in his thirties, he was appointed Minister of Digital Transformation, where he was responsible for the ‘state in a smartphone’ initiative – which moved government services onto a USAID-funded app called Diiya. Though beloved by the liberal NGO set, Palantir-backed Fedorov has also learned to speak MAGA’s language; in January, he announced his ministry’s objective to kill 50,000 Russians per month, explaining it would ‘make the cost of war for Russia one it cannot sustain, thereby forcing peace through strength’.
In the weeks leading up to the NATO summit, Western media reports alleged that Ukraine had turned the tide in its favour. Russia was in trouble. The narrative was reminiscent of the ‘spring counteroffensive’ of 2023, much hyped in Western media – a supposedly transformational Ukrainian battlefield push that never quite materialized and cost tens of thousands of lives. In Ankara, the latest reversal of fortune was attributed to Ukraine’s drone tech capabilities, its thriving defence industry and its innovative young leadership, who apparently ran the country less like a post-Soviet state and more like a Silicon Valley start-up.
Just one week later, however, this optimistic story began to fall apart. Zelenskyy abruptly dismissed Fedorov, a move that left many feeling furious and betrayed. Fedorov’s loyalists responded by excoriating Zelenskyy on social media and assembling in Kiev, Lviv and Odessa, holding signs bearing messages like ‘Hands off Fedorov’ and ‘Stop Sabotaging Victory’. Ukraine’s supporters in the West did not hide their opposition to the decision either. ‘Firing Fedorov, one of the smartest, most competent and innovative ministers in all of Europe, is one of the dumbest things Zelenskyy has done’, Estonia’s former president Toomas Hendrik Ilves wrote on X. A consensus formed among the Atlanticist commentariat: Zelenskyy had sided with his sclerotic ‘Soviet’ generals – particularly Russian-born commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskyi – against an energetic young reformer. After several days of virulent backlash, Zelenskyy responded by dismissing Syrskyi too.
The decision to remove Fedorov forced a simmering Ukrainian political crisis into the public eye. In Ankara, NATO officials were intent on depicting Russia – and only Russia – as the country in dire political and economic straits. At one briefing, I listened to a senior NATO official speak of possible tensions within the Russian political elite. These days, he said, they look outside their windows and see oil refineries in flames from Ukrainian drone attacks. This, he asserted, must be having a psychological effect, and resentment towards Putin was likely mounting. A fracture could be coming any day now. The Russian economy, meanwhile, was ‘in the worst state it’s been in for decades’. He recited a litany of grim statistics: the federal deficit was now 2.3 times what it was during the same period last year, the economy was now 70 per cent security-related expenditures, which came at the expense of the regular economy and would be ‘very hard to reverse’. And despite rising oil prices due to the war on Iran, Russia would still have to cut non-military spending by 10 per cent this year.
Russia was also reportedly performing poorly on the battlefield and any progress it was making came at an enormous cost. According to the NATO official’s estimates, there had been between 1.3 and 1.5 million Russian casualties in the war, and between 30,000 and 35,000 Russians were now being killed each month. The military was now ‘increasingly relying on convicts, indebted citizens and foreigners’ to fill its ranks. Russia’s territorial gains had also been ‘far less steady’ in recent months: its forces were now purportedly advancing at just 3.79 sq km per day, down from a reported 16 sq km last year. Another morbid statistic touted at the summit was the alleged average life expectancy of a Russian soldier: thanks to Ukraine’s drones, I was told, the average Russian recruit only lived between 20 and 30 minutes at the front.
Listening to all this, I thought about what I’d heard [sic] about life in Russia. I was certainly aware of the mounting wartime pain. I knew there were now petrol shortages in parts of the country, though these are partly seasonal, and that this has meant long waits outside stations. Whereas the war had previously been experienced by most Russians as a distant conflict – only seen on social media or television – the drone attacks on Russian oil refineries had brought the war home. But the idea that this would inevitably provoke a major anti-government backlash didn’t quite follow. Videos have even surfaced on Russian social media showing people drinking and dancing as they waited in long queues for petrol. As one commentator put it, ‘coronavirus divided us, but petrol shortages brought us together’. The domestic problems were all very real and getting worse, but Russians appeared to be weathering them, at least for now. Prophesies of the Russian economy’s imminent collapse had been issued for years, but had all come to nothing.
Polls from inside Russia also hint at a more stable situation than that depicted at the NATO summit. Russia experts always caution readers to be sceptical of polls from inside the country, but even so, the results suggest that at least some of the graver prognostications might be exaggerated. According to a survey by the independent Levada Center, Putin’s popularity is indeed in decline, but as of May, as many as 79 per cent of Russians polled still said they approved of his performance. Only 15 per cent said they disapproved. In the same survey, 74 per cent of Russians said they supported their country’s actions in Ukraine. (Still, some 60 per cent of Russians reported that they favoured peace negotiations to end the war, and only 30 per cent said they wanted to continue fighting it.) Even adjusting for a degree of wartime self-censorship, these numbers do not exactly hint at a coming cataclysm.
But the question that most nagged at me throughout the summit was: what about Ukraine? The assessment of Russia’s position in the war included a host of criteria: a survey of the situation on the homefront, elite political fractures, the economy, the demography of its soldiers. Yet Ukraine’s position was portrayed according to a single hopeful indicator, its success in drone warfare.
According to a recent Gallup poll (one that was largely buried in the Western press), Ukrainians are even less enthusiastic about fighting this war than Russians are. Less than one in four adults (24 per cent) say Ukraine should keep fighting until it wins the war, while 66 per cent say Ukraine should seek to negotiate an end to the war as soon as possible. And while NATO officials were eager to tout staggering casualty figures for Russia in Ankara, there was naturally far less said about Ukraine’s dead – unless they could be presented in terms of a favourable ‘kill ratio’ with Russia. According to the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (which receives funding from the US government, Lockheed Martin and NATO among others) the Ukrainian military has suffered between 125,000 and 150,000 fatalities. However, some believe the actual number is higher.
As NATO officials look for cracks in the Kremlin matrix, there are plenty to worry about in Ukraine. In addition to the rupture between Fedorov and the military brass, a ‘spectacular’ corruption scandal has implicated members of Zelenskyy’s inner circle, part of which involves corruption in drone procurement. Meanwhile, the ‘stable stagnation’ of the Ukrainian economy also rests on relatively fragile foundations – continued support from Western partners. Often missing from Western wartime reporting is the brutal economic reality of everyday life in Ukraine: the number of Ukrainians living below subsistence levels has increased dramatically in wartime; while Russians have been inconvenienced in this conflict, most haven’t faced the same material devastation.
The Ukrainian armed forces may be an even worse state than their Russian adversaries. A transition to a corps-based command structure last year may have aligned Ukraine with NATO standards, but no amount of restructuring can change the fundamentals. The average age of a Ukrainian soldier is now 45. Mobilization remains a persistent problem. One of the reasons cited for Fedorov’s dismissal was his failure to fix this (ever the tech solutionist, Fedorov had reportedly pushed for a ‘digitalization’ of mobilization). The brutal practice of ‘busification’ – whereby military age men are snatched off the street – continues to inspire loathing. Reports regularly surface of forcibly conscripted men being beaten or killed. Unsurprisingly, Ukraine is suffering a desertion crisis. Though the exact figures were classified last year, in January, Fedorov said that 200,000 Ukrainian soldiers had gone AWOL.
The Russian armed forces may be filled with convicts and debtors, but they still haven’t had to resort to conscription[sic], while the Ukrainian side is partially composed of men who are middle-aged and don’t want to fight. Ukraine also increasingly relies on foreign fighters; while Russia has recruited hapless Africans to serve as cannon fodder, Ukraine now employs thousands of recruits from Colombia, Brazil and various European countries, designated as ‘volunteers’ to get around anti-mercenary laws. And there remains the fundamental problem of massive asymmetry: Russia still has Ukraine outmanned. Ukraine has attempted to make up for this difference with drones, but this has only succeeded in slowing the pace of Russian advances.
The image of a Ukraine filled with patriotic liberals eager to fight a high-tech war until total Russian collapse is a fiction. In reality, the majority of both Russians and Ukrainians want negotiations to end the war now. Only a minority want to continue fighting until their side’s most maximalist aims are met. Absent the propaganda of a youth-driven drone tech revolution in war, Ukraine looks in a remarkably similar situation to Russia: two countries hurtling toward demographic oblivion, in a conflict directed by a profiteering political elite and fought in part by the unwilling, the coerced, the foreign and the old. At the NATO summit, however, the alliance continued to promote its PR-manufactured image of Ukraine, through selective statistics and polite obfuscation.
Laura Loomer became infamous for spreading conspiracy theories online. Now, as she travels across Ukraine to see the damage inflicted by Russia in its years-long war, she wants to admit that she fell for some falsehoods of her own.
A close ally of President Donald Trump, Loomer has completely reversed her longtime criticism of Ukraine and is urging fellow conservatives to be wary of Moscow’s propaganda, which she blames for duping large swaths of the American right.
“You don’t need to listen to a podcaster and let them influence your opinion about a country. You can look at those facts yourself,” she told the Associated Press in Kyiv shortly after returning from a trip close to the front line in Ukraine’s east. The interview was supposed to take place in Loomer’s hotel, but it had to be moved to the building’s underground bomb shelter as the city faced another ballistic missile attack.
Loomer has remained influential with Trump despite not having an official role, and she said they spoke over the phone after she sat down with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. She also said that she expects to meet with Trump after returning from her trip.
Loomer’s turnaround on Ukraine has been welcomed by the country’s leaders, whose relationships with Trump have been strained at times. But it has also stirred confusion, surprise and suspicion in the United States. She continues to insist that Ukraine is not paying for her travels.
As Trump and Zelenskyy prepare to meet on Tuesday in Washington, Loomer said it’s clear that her trip has already made a difference, refocusing attention on the war as Congress debates new sanctions intended to punish Russia.
“It’s looking good for Ukraine, right?” she said. “Going into this meeting next week at the Oval Office is looking pretty good.”
Loomer says she was ‘bamboozled’ to oppose Ukraine
Loomer had spent years minimizing the war and amplifying Russian propaganda until she made a dramatic reversal this week.
“I’ve come to realize I was bamboozled by Russian propaganda and I came to believe a lot of untrue things about Ukraine. I used to think that this was a country full of Nazis,” Loomer told Zelenskyy as she interviewed him for her show on Rumble, an online video platform.
Loomer blamed her indoctrination on getting banned by American social media platforms, leading her to try Telegram, where Russian media is widely shared.
“The Russians,” she added, “are very good at capitalizing on people’s rage. And I was very angry,” she said, recounting her feelings about the 2020 election, which she falsely maintains was stolen from Trump despite all evidence to the contrary.
She said her change in perspective had been gradual as she started to see podcasters like Tucker Carlson “turn on President Trump” while having their rhetoric amplified by Russian sources.
Loomer, who casts herself as an independent journalist, told the AP she believed her reversal was already changing minds within Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement.
“Oh, 100%,” she said. “I’ve received messages all day from different people and media and politics and people just who follow me online who said, ’Wow, I didn’t realize how much we’ve been lied to.’ ‘Wow you really opened my eyes.’”
Loomer was welcomed with open arms
Ukrainian officials seemed to recognize the opportunity of winning over an ardent Trump ally with a large online following. In addition to her interview with Zelenskyy, Loomer had audiences with top Ukrainian officials and the country’s chief rabbi.
“It takes courage to come to Ukraine and not be deterred by Russian propaganda or air raid sirens,” Zelenskyy’s office wrote on social media.
“Laura is very powerful and she’s a very authoritative in the U.S., so I hope that everything she has seen by her own eyes will help her to spread the truth when she is back at the U.S.,” Tetyana Berezhna, the deputy prime minister and Ukrainian minister of culture told the AP. “I do really hope and I believe that her visit will have a huge impact on relations with the U.S. administration.”
While some have tried to downplay Loomer’s influence with the president, he has often followed her advice. She occasionally traveled with him during the 2024 campaign, and last year he purged his National Security Council staff after she raised concerns about their loyalty in an Oval Office meeting.
Trump appears to be tracking Loomer’s trip, sharing video of her conversation with Zelenskyy on social media.
“Very good!!!” he wrote on Thursday evening.
The conspiracist denounces conspiracy theories
Loomer has a long history of spreading conspiracy theories. She once shared a video that called 9/11 an “inside job” and amplified a lie about Haitian immigrants eating dogs and cats in Ohio, which Trump went on to repeat during a presidential debate with Kamala Harris.
Although Loomer may have changed her mind about Russia’s invasion, her bigoted views have not budged.
But in the interview, she bemoaned how influential podcasters can spread misinformation.
“They have been able to warp people’s minds to the point where people aren’t even capable of analyzing a subject with common sense anymore because they want to depend on these personalities to give them the opinion that they think they should have,” she said, calling the situation “a major national security threat.”
She said she thinks that “information war” has “the potential to be more destructive than any kinetic war that our country may ever face” and called on the Trump administration to take the threat of Russian propaganda, foreign interference and influence operations more seriously.
“I think that some of our leaders are being influenced by propaganda,” she said.
The White House has routinely downplayed the role of Moscow’s influence, especially because Trump has long chaffed at investigations showing that Russia worked to boost his 2016 candidacy.
Loomer has said repeatedly that Ukraine did not finance her trip and insisted she had traveled in her own capacity.
“I can guarantee you I wasn’t paid by anybody. I certainly wasn’t paid by the government of Ukraine to come here,” she said.
“If it’s fake, why did I risk my life? I’m in a bomb shelter right now. I barely slept this week,” she said.
Tokayev reads Putin the riot act in Omsk, 25 July 2026. Source: Vesti (Telegram)
Kazakhstani President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev proposed “freezing” the war in Ukraine during talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday, 25 July 2026, in Omsk. TASS published an excerpt featuring Tokayev’s statement and Putin’s reaction.
Tokayev made the remarks during a meeting with Putin at the Forum on Interregional Cooperation between the two countries, which took place 24–25 July. The President of Kazakhstan stated that at present, “no one knows how to resolve the situation, because each side has its own position.” At the same time, he suggested that “perhaps this conflict should already be frozen and we should return to the Istanbul Formula 2.0, since significant results were achieved there.”
According to Tokayev, in connection with the war in Ukraine, he has been “receiving many signals” from Europe and the U.S., about which he had previously informed Putin. And yet, the President of Kazakhstan added that his country refuses to act as a mediator in achieving peace between Russia and Ukraine.
Tokayev: The nature of this conflict is not entirely clear to many people
Tokayev emphasized that the war in Ukraine is an “interstate conflict” and “not some sort of civil war.”
“We have always treated the Ukrainian people, their culture, and their language with respect, and we believe that the nature of this conflict is not entirely clear to many, including us,” the Kazakhstani president noted. He added that “all of this must be stopped,” since the war in Ukraine “plays into the hands” of the opponents of both Moscow and Kyiv.
At the same time, Tokayev noted that Putin had shown “the utmost diplomatic flexibility” during his meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump in Anchorage in August 2025.
Briefly commenting on the Kazakhstani president’s remarks about the war, Putin for his part promised him that he would “definitely provide detailed information” within the day about what was happening on the “Ukrainian front.”
Vladimir Putin ventured out in public for the first time in months and walked smack dab into an ambush during a televised meeting that went off the rails.
Fresh off a tightly controlled publicity stunt in Irkutsk on Friday—where the Russian leader, flanked by bodyguards, made a show of inspecting aircraft—Putin sat down with Kazakhstan’s president in the Russian city of Omsk on Saturday.
The 73-year-old Russian president could barely conceal his nervous grimace as Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev used the meeting, which was supposed to be about Russia-Kazakh cooperation, to throw Putin under the bus.
“I will not hide that I am receiving many signals—which I have already informed you about by phone—from Europe and the United States regarding the current state of the conflict between Ukraine and Russia,” Tokayev told Putin as a slew of Kremlin-controlled TV outlets filmed the confrontation.
He went on to call BS on the Kremlin’s narrative of the war, saying, “The nature of this conflict is not entirely clear” and seems utterly pointless. Putin, meanwhile, appeared to tense up and stared down at his lap as Tokayev spoke, seemingly caught off guard.
“This all needs to stop,” Tokayev said, urging Putin to “freeze” the war and return to negotiations. He twisted the knife by adding that despite “proposals and appeals,” Kazakhstan “categorically refuses” to act as a mediator in helping to end the war, since “Russia is a great country” and can “manage on its own.”
At the end of Tokayev’s three-minute speech, Putin nervously thanked the Kazakh president and promised to give him a “detailed briefing” on the Ukraine war, before the broadcast abruptly ended.
The tense exchange came a day after Putin flew to Irkutsk, Siberia, for an unannounced visit to the Irkutsk Aviation Plant, his first trip to one of Russia’s regions for domestic issues in more than eight months. He has drastically reduced travel to Russia’s regions and avoided public appearances in recent months, purportedly out of fear of being assassinated. Instead, amid relentless Ukrainian drone strikes and growing public outrage over economic woes, Putin has largely retreated into fortified underground bunkers, where he is said to have at times remained for weeks.
Footage shared by the Kremlin showed him flanked by bodyguards as he inspected the Yak-130M combat jet trainer and an MC-21 passenger jet, which has been plagued by repeated production delays.
The plant had apparently been cleared out for his visit, and Irkutsk locals fumed on social media about the entire city coming to a standstill to make way for what was widely seen as a PR stunt.
“Burn in hell,” one resident commented in response to Putin’s visit on a local website, according to the independent outlet People of Baikal.
“Will we need to bow when the tsar passes through?” another quipped.
“How scared he is of his own people,” a third person noted, only to be reminded, “Well, every other person is ready to kill him.”
Enemy drones attacked Wildberries warehouses in Leningrad Region in the early hours of 24 July, reported Alexander Drozdenko, head of Russia’s 47th region.
Governor Alexander Beglov reported that, in Petersburg, “civilian infrastructure on Moscow Highway was targeted.”
The Russian Defense Ministry claimed it had downed 571 Ukrainian Armed Forces drones over Russia’s regions overnight.
Delovoi Peterburg reports below what we know about the latest series of attacks on warehouses in the Petersburg metro area.
Repelling the drone attack in Leningrad Region: Fire in Novosaratovka
Three people were injured and hospitalized in stable condition, Drozdenko said.
“A drone strike caused a fire at Wildberries warehouses in the village of Novosaratovka* in the Vsevolozhsk District,” the governor explained.
In addition, a warehouse belonging to the Severnaya poultry farm in the village of Sinyavino, Kirovsk District, Leningrad Region, sustained damage. No one was injured. Debris from the drone fell onto the grounds of the old hospital, according to Andrei Voropayev, head of the Sverdlov Settlement.
“They’re not letting anyone in there, including us. We don’t know what was there. Just warehouses and more warehouses. Definitely no chemicals. When it was shot down over the Neva, one drone fell on the old hospital in the village. There are only bare walls there, no people, and the firefighters have left,” Voropaev told 47news.
A drone alert was issued in Region 47 at 01:43 Moscow Time on 24 July 2. Drozdenko reported that fifty drones had been shot down over the region. The regional governor lifted the drone threat alert at 06:17 Moscow Time.
“The drone threat in the Leningrad Region has been lifted. Fifty-nine enemy UAVs have been shot down. I thank the anti-aircraft forces for their effective performance,” said Drozdenko.
The Investigative Committee reported that a criminal case had been opened regarding a terrorist act (per Article 205 of the Russian Federal Criminal Code) in connection with “an attack by Ukrainian armed groups on civilian targets in the Leningrad Region.” No further details of the attack were provided in the statement.
Attack on Petersburg: Shushary and Utkina Zavod
The company’s warehouses in Petersburg were also targeted. According to the RWB (Wildberries | Russ) press office, operations at two logistics complexes have been temporarily suspended.
“Operations at the company’s logistics complexes in Shushary and Utkina Zavod (both in Petersburg) have been temporarily suspended. Updates on the resumption of operations will follow,” the press office stated.
The company clarified that there had been no casualties at Wildberries facilities in Petersburg and the Leningrad Region.
Some of the warehouse space and merchandise was salvaged, and a swift evacuation was carried out at the warehouses, such that there were no casualties, Tatyana Kim later reported.
“Dear partners, up-to-date information on the situation is being published on the seller’s website. All our efforts are now focused on redistributing goods across warehouses to ensure more efficient inventory turnover and the economic stability of our partners,” the Wildberries founder wrote on her social media channel.
Eyewitnesses reported that Pyaterochka’s warehouses in Utkina Zavod may also have been hit, but X5 (the discount grocery store chain’s operator) denied this.
“The reports are false. The facility was not damaged and will continue to operate as usual,” X5 told DP.
Governor Beglov reported that efforts are underway to address the aftermath of the attack on a civilian infrastructure facility on Moscow Highway.
“The emergency response headquarters, which I personally head, has been coordinating the work of the municipal services and interagency cooperation,” the governor wrote on Max.
Drivers and eyewitnesses have reported that traffic on Moscow Highway has come to a standstill. The City Transportation Committee announced that, due to the impassability of Moscow Highway, bus lines 179, 192, 196, 197, and 388 have been temporarily rerouted.
“Bus routes Nos. 179, 192, 196, 197, and 388 are running via Danube Boulevard and Sofia Street, then continuing along their regular routes (in both directions). We recommend that residents of Slavyanka take suburban commuter trains. Trains are running every ten minutes,” the transportation committee announced.
Eyewitnesses report major traffic jams in the south and southeast of the city, on the Ring Road and on Sofia Street.
“A massive traffic jam has formed on Sofia Street heading toward the city: it starts past the intersection with Ust-Izhorsk Highway. There is also a major traffic jam on the inner ring road between Murmansk Highway and Moscow Highway; it is caused by the closure of the city-bound exit to Moscow Highway due to roadwork,” reported the city’s Megapolis channel on Telegram.
A live map of the traffic jams in question, in Petersburg’s far south. Image courtesty of Delovoi Peterburg
Residents of a building on Aleksa Dundić Street in the Frunze District were evacuated on the afternoon of 24 July, according to 78.ru. Residents of stairwells 8 through 19 were asked to leave their flats and go outside.
Pulkovo Airport imposed flight restrictions starting at 1:46 a.m. and resumed flight operations at 6:00 a.m. Moscow Time after the drone threat was lifted.
As of that time, over fifty flights had been delayed by two hours or more, and fourteen were waiting at alternate airports. By 8:20 a.m., Pulkovo had handled approximately thirty flights, both arriving and departing. Two flights arrived in Petersburg from alternate airports, according to the VVSS (Northern Capital’s Air Gateway) press service.
“All services are working to fulfill the daily flight plan per the revised schedule,” airport officials said.
UPDATE: As of 9:15 a.m., approximately sixty flights had been dispatched to their destination airports, and seven aircraft had arrived in Petersburg from alternate airports.
During the drone threat, restrictions on mobile communication were in effect in the metropolitan area, with the peak number of complaints occurring overnight.
A chart showing numbers of complaints about loss of mobile phone coverage in the Petersburg area during the 24 July 2026 drone attack. Image courtesy of Delovoi Peterburg
The damage from the attacks on Wildberries warehouses in the Leningrad Region and Petersburg could reach 76 billion rubles [approx. 861 million euros], according to preliminary estimates done for DP by Sergei Semko, lead analyst at Data Insight, conducted preliminary calculations for DP.
Attacks on Warehouses: A Timeline
In recent days, Wildberries warehouses have been targeted by enemy drones. Just yesterday, two logistics complexes sustained damage in Voronezh.
The first attacks on Wildberries warehouses in Russia took place on 18 July. The strikes targeted the company’s facilities in the Tambov and Moscow regions. At least eight people were killed, and more than sixty civilians were injured. Several of the injured were in critical condition.
On the night of 21–22 July, drones attacked large Wildberries warehouses in Krasnodar and Nevinnomyssk, Stavropol Territory. A local state of emergency was declared in Nevinnomyssk. The head of the Krasnodar Territory reported one fatality resulting from an attack on the oil depot in Armavir and provided an update on the condition of those injured at the warehouses in Krasnodar. The Investigative Committee classified the attacks as acts of terrorism. A criminal case has been opened under Article 205 of the Russian Federal Criminal Code.
DP has reported that the drone strikes on Wildberries warehouses have created problems not only for that particular and the sellers collaborating with it. In fact, a new reality has dawned for the entire Russian e-commerce and logistics market. Everyone will have to restructure their internal procedures and come up with new solutions.
* Here are some snapshots I took of Novosaratovka during a Sunday Cafe expedition there in December 2015:
Russian businesses have been feeling the effects of the war in Ukraine through tax increases, rising costs caused by fuel shortages, and supply chains disrupted by sanctions. Now, there is another risk to contend with: Ukrainian drone strikes on their facilities.
As Ukraine wages a campaign to bring the conflict home to ordinary Russians, it has opened a new front aimed at the online marketplace Wildberries, a pillar of the country’s retail economy and a potent symbol of modern life in Russia.
In recent days, Ukraine has hit five warehouses belonging to Wildberries, a Russian analogue to Amazon, as well as storage sites for other large retailers. Eight people were killed in attacks on Saturday and one person on Wednesday, the Russian authorities said. The strikes on Saturday alone were reported to have wiped out between 6 and 9 percent of the storage capacity of Wildberries.
Ukraine’s long-range strikes on Russian economic targets, including a months-long campaign of attacks on oil processing facilities, are intended to pressure President Vladimir V. Putin to end the war, in part by hampering his ability to finance it. The oil strikes have caused fuel shortages that have led to lines at gas stations, and they could affect the coming harvest season.
Mr. Putin has signaled no intention of backing away from his objectives in the conflict, and the economy, while weakened by the war, is not on the verge of collapse. Still, analysts said that if the attacks on Russia’s business infrastructure continued, the ripple effects could pose severe economic challenges on top of a range of other war-related strains, reducing tax collections and adding to inflation.
Ukraine has targeted Wildberries warehouses in five regions across Russia, including a reported strike early Thursday in the Voronezh region, south of Moscow. A fire at a warehouse in Elektrostal, a city in the Moscow region, took three days to extinguish.
The day after the initial strikes, Russia unleashed the largest missile attack on Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, since the war started in 2022, firing at least 35 ballistic and hypersonic cruise missiles.
Ukraine has said that its strikes are in retaliation for Russian attacks on its postal delivery hubs and other civilian infrastructure, a yearslong campaign by Moscow that has been far more devastating than Kyiv’s strikes against Russia. A Russian attack last week on a postal terminal in the northeastern city of Kharkiv left three people dead and 20 injured.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has also said that Wildberries facilities are a legitimate target because the company sells goods to the Russian military. The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, has denied the accusation.
Wildberries has a policy of not selling military-grade weapons, but it does sell goods used by soldiers, like commercial drones that can be jury-rigged with explosives, as well as fiber-optic cables, tactical clothing and other so-called dual-use items.
The Wildberries attacks have been calamitous for small Russian entrepreneurs who sell goods through the site, the country’s largest online marketplace.
One of them, Timur, woke up on Saturday morning to news that he had lost clothing and shoes worth about $25,000 as a result of the attacks on the Wildberries warehouses in Elektrostal and in Kotovsk, in the Tambov region, southeast of Moscow.
Timur, who was nervous about speaking with foreign journalists when reached by telephone and asked that his last name be withheld to avoid reprisals, said that his main concern was the uncertainty that he and other Russian entrepreneurs now faced.
He said on Tuesday that it was unclear what would happen next “because most likely they are not the only warehouses that will be attacked.”
Hours later, two more Wildberries warehouses that contained his apparel, in the southern Stavropol and Krasnodar regions, were hit by drones. His losses doubled.
Timur said he had been building his business for five years, “and it can just collapse in a week,” he said, a precarity that Ukrainians have been living with for nearly four and a half years.
He warned of the effects on the Russian economy, saying that continued strikes could cause the Wildberries business model to collapse, raising prices and bringing about shortages.
Alexander Kolyandr, director for Europe at the Eurasia Group, a consulting firm, echoed that view.
“The company itself and all the sellers will likely pay less in taxes than last year, and given the size, it might be pretty substantial, especially at a time when the Russian budget is experiencing a widening deficit,” Mr. Kolyandr said.
Additionally, the cost of protecting, rebuilding and insuring the warehouses will be passed on to consumers, he said, contributing to already high levels of inflation.
The attacks on Saturday in the Moscow and Tambov regions destroyed goods worth almost as much as Wildberries’ entire profit last year, according to expert estimates reported by Kommersant, a Russian newspaper, and by Forbes Russia.
The company’s chief executive, Tatyana Kim, promised financial compensation of about $25,000 to families of the workers who were killed and half of that amount to the injured.
At the beginning of the month, Wildberries and another large online marketplace, Ozon, changed their terms and conditions to stipulate that the companies had no legal obligation to compensate for losses caused by drone attacks.
On Wednesday, however, Ms. Kim announced payouts to small-scale sellers who were “most vulnerable.” She did not disclose the amounts.
Many sellers on Wildberries financed their products with loans, including Timur, who told of interest rates as high as 35 percent. Some vendors risk having their bank accounts frozen as soon as next week if they are unable to make tax payments due in the coming days, according to the business newspaper Vedomosti.
A civilian facility like a warehouse can become a lawful military target if it is being used, or is being prepared to be used, for military purposes, said Michael Schmitt, who teaches international law at the University of Reading in England and is a former legal adviser to the U.S. military.
Combatants, he said, must take into account exactly what kind of materials are inside, have a high degree of certainty about the site’s future military use and make efforts to mitigate harm to civilians.
Maria Snegovaya, a researcher at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that Russia’s economic slowdown, related in part to Ukraine’s long-range strikes, had coincided with declining levels of support for the war.
But some in Russia said that the increased drumbeat of attacks could rally Russians around their leader.
“The adversary started doing the job of our propaganda, which is to explain to the nation that a real war is underway, and no one can just lie low,” a Russian military blogger, Roman Saponkov, wrote on Telegram. “At first they switched off fuel at the petrol station, now they took on Wildberries warehouses. Next, it will be beer factories and nail salons.”
FBI Director Kash Patel is planning to visit Russia later this year, likely in mid-October, according to a U.S. official and a person familiar with the situation.
It would be an unusual and sensitive trip for an FBI chief to one of America’s top adversaries. The plans come as Washington and Moscow continue to be at odds over the war in Ukraine, with U.S. lawmakers demanding the imposition of heavy new sanctions on Russia.
Patel has a history of involvement in controversial Russia-related matters dating to President Donald Trump’s first term, including trying to cast doubt on investigations into whether Trump colluded with Russia to help him win the 2016 election — an episode he now calls the “Russiagate hoax.” Patel also is developing a track record of taking eye-catching trips in his role atop the FBI, drawing scrutiny from Congress.
According to the U.S. official familiar with the travel plans, Patel is scheduled to visit Russia on Oct. 14-15, first stopping in Moscow and then St. Petersburg. His host is likely to be the FSB, the Russian security service that is heir to the Soviet-era KGB, the official said.
The person familiar with the situation confirmed that Patel is planning to visit Russia in the fall, including stops in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Both people were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive travel plans.
It’s not clear if Patel will meet with Russian leader Vladimir Putin or any of his senior political aides. Also unclear is what is on his agenda for discussion.
As with any such plans by U.S. officials, they are tentative and subject to change.
Spokespeople for the White House referred a request for comment to the FBI. Spokespeople for the FBI and the Department of Justice did not respond to similar requests.
Though it has been years since an FBI director visited Moscow, other top intelligence officials have made the trip. In a 2018 letter, then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo said the open lines of dialogue were valuable, particularly in areas of mutual interest like combating terrorism.
“We vigorously defend America in these encounters and pull no punches,” Pompeo said at the time.
Robert Mueller was the last FBI director known to have visited Russia, in 2013. Mueller was later appointed as a special counsel to investigate ties between the 2016 Trump presidential campaign and Russia, as well as broader Russian efforts to interfere in U.S. elections.
U.S. intelligence officials have concluded for years that Moscow has been behind efforts to sow discord and interfere in U.S. elections, findings supported by documents Trump declassified last week ahead of a speech intended to bolster support for his long-shot effort to overhaul U.S. voting laws. The Kremlin has also been suspected to be behind major cybersecurity breaches of government agencies and private sector companies.
Patel rose to prominence as a result of the central role he played as a staffer to the House Intelligence Committee in 2017 and 2018, when the panel — led by then-Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) — investigated Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Although Republicans on the panel concluded that Russia mounted an influence operation to “undermine the U.S. liberal democratic order,” they rejected the intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia aspired to help Trump win the 2016 election. Late in Trump’s first term, Patel served on the National Security Council, where in 2020 he traveled secretly to meet with Syrian government officials in a bid to secure the release of two American hostages.
Patel spent the years between Trump’s terms amplifying doubts about the Russia probe’s origins and even writing children’s books that mock Democrats who spearheaded the investigation. He also faced questions about a $25,000 payment for his involvement in producing a film financed by a Kremlin-linked film company.
Patel’s past travel and spending decisions have blurred the lines between recreation and official business, prompting scrutiny across Capitol Hill and at times angering the White House.
The FBI director attended the gold medal men’s hockey final at the Winter Olympics in Italy, a trip he said was needed to extradite a Chinese hacker; went snorkeling last summer near a battleship sunk during the Japanese surprise attacks on Pearl Harbor; and has been accused of using a government jet to see his girlfriend, a country music singer, perform.
Earlier this month, the top Democrats on the House and Senate Judiciary committees launched a bicameral probe into Patel’s potential misuse of taxpayer-funded resources.
News of the trip also comes amid acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s effort to win Senate confirmation and could prompt new questions from lawmakers about the Justice Department’s decision-making.
After the Kremlin launched a full-scale war on Ukraine in 2022, senior Biden administration officials steered clear of visiting Russia, although the U.S. kept open its embassy in Moscow.
Trump has sought to ease tensions with Putin. During his second term, his special envoy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner have visited Russia multiple times, including meeting with Putin, to discuss ending the Ukraine war.
U.S. lawmakers, on a bipartisan basis, remain wary of Russia. Some members of Congress are currently urging Trump to support a bill that uses steep new penalties, including tariffs, to punish Russian entities. Trump has recently said he wants the bill to also include sanctions on Iran.
Rodney Mims Cook, Jr., chairman of the United States Commission of Fine Arts, old Atlantan, chum of King Charles, and unapologetic Russophile, recently gathered fifty guests inside a replica Roman triumphal arch, in downtown Atlanta, for an intimate performance by Mikhail Simonyan, a Russian violinist and a Deputy Minister of Culture. An hour before the show, Simonyan, who lives in Siberia, wandered into Cook’s office atop Millennium Gate Museum—the anomalous arch’s name. He walked by framed photographs of Cook with heads of state, looking for something to eat. “Is there any steaks around here?” he asked.
Cook, a ruddy-faced seventy-year-old, whose reading glasses teetered on the tip of his nose, directed Simonyan, whom he called “one of the greatest talents in the world,” to the first floor. Cook built the arch two decades ago, when resurrecting classical architecture in America was an eccentric idea. Now it’s an official plan. Empowered by his friend Donald Trump (“I had shrimp with him on his desk a few weeks ago,” Cook dropped), he’s focussing on the nation’s capital: more arches and monuments, huger facilities. It was Cook’s commission that green-lighted the plan for a ninety-thousand-square-foot White House ballroom that one prominent architecture critic described, in the Times, as a “huge, dumb box.”
“The White House has been insufficient since the Harrison Presidency,” Cook declared later, during a cocktail reception on his arch’s first floor. Among the attendees was a chronicler of Georgia’s waterfalls, two longtime members of Little Richard’s band, a retired Russian N.H.L. player, and a contingent from Atlanta’s country-club set. Cook went on, “Trump is fixing it, and I’m helping.” He added, “I assure you, you can paint things gold left and right, but you can also tone that down later. As long as the proportions are right—which they are—this man is going to leave us a legacy of such astonishing beauty!”
Another thing Cook considers beautiful is classical Russian architecture. He built a large turreted dacha in North Atlanta, “in the Russian wooden vernacular,” he said. In June, he showed photographs of the place at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, a gathering known as Putin’s Davos, which he said he’d attended as, “essentially, the Minister of Culture for the United States.” During a Senate hearing, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that he was “unaware” of an American delegation at the forum; none had attended in nearly a decade. Cook, however, insisted that “State pushed me to go. It was entirely designed around me.” His mission, he indicated, was soft diplomacy. He recalled a State Department official telling him,“Many guys in your position would say, ‘This is quite dangerous.’ ” The actor Steven Seagal, who has had Russian citizenship for ten years, attended, as did the far-right podcaster Candace Owens, although their seats weren’t as good as Cook’s. “My six State Department dudes had me first row direct center,” he said. He added, “I requested and received Coca-Cola—not sold there currently.” (Coca-Cola suspended business dealings with Russia in 2022, but the soda is imported through other countries.)
At a filmed Q. & A., Cook rose to address Putin. “I appreciate all of the hospitality that has been afforded to me on my return to St. Petersburg,” he said. “I love this city, and I think you’re aware of that.”
“Hooray, I also love St. Petersburg,” Putin, looking amused, responded, through a translator.
The State Department, Cook recalled, “was shocked but pleased” by his polite dialogue with the Russian leader, and also with the hockey puck he’d put on President Trump’s desk as a gesture of good will from Putin. (Cook obtained the puck himself, though he would not say from where.) Simonyan’s visit, Cook said, was a thank-you from Russia.
The violinist still hadn’t got any steak when he began to perform in the ersatz arch. He opened with Brahms, followed by Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff, and ended with a tune generally credited to an eighteenth-century British Army surgeon intent on mocking Colonial Americans. Members of the audience laughed as they began to recognize the strains of “Yankee Doodle Dandy.”
“I wanted ‘The Devil Went Down to Georgia,’ ” a lone dissenter said later.
Cook was misty-eyed at the music. Back in his office, he told an intern to order pizzas. As he waited for dinner, Simonyan sat on a couch with Little Richard’s bandmates Shawn (Swift) Johnson and James (Big J) Nelson, who both kept their sunglasses on. They’d come to pitch Cook on building a statue of the deceased rock-and-roll legend, in Macon, Georgia. “Anything monument-related, he’s the guy,” Johnson said.
As Cook made the rounds, pouring glasses of wine, Simonyan pitched Johnson and Nelson an idea of his own. “You know what we need?” he said. “A big peace concert at the residence of the American Ambassador. Then some stadiums in Siberia.”
“I’ve never been to Russia,” Nelson said. “We’ll bring the whole band. It’ll be like Live Aid.” They considered who else might join them.
“Steven Seagal can play guitar,” Simonyan said. “He’s actually pretty good.”
Chairman of the United States Commission of Fine Arts Rodney Mims Cook Jr. and the abbot of the monastery, Hegumen Varlaam. Photo: TASS
The President of the United States gifted an Orthodox icon to the Trinity-Sergius Hermitage in response to Vladimir Putin’s diplomatic gesture in Anchorage.
On June 2, 2026, the Chairman of the USA Commission of Fine Arts Rodney Mims Cook Jr., at the personal initiative of Donald Trump, presented a copy of the miraculous Sitka Icon of the Mother of God to the abbot of the Holy Trinity Sergius Coastal Hermitage, Hegumen Varlaam. This is reported by TASS.
Rodney Mims Cook Jr. said that this act was a response to Vladimir Putin’s visit to Anchorage in 2025. At that time, the head of state presented as a gift to the Orthodox community of Alaska an icon of Saint Herman, an early Russian missionary widely considered the patron saint of Orthodoxy in America. “I was deeply moved by President Putin’s visit to Alaska,” Cook Jr. shared details. “President Trump suggested that I ‘return’ this gesture here.”
The Sitka Icon of the Mother of God is permanently located at St. Michael’s Cathedral in the city of Sitka, USA, and is considered miraculous. Now a copy of this unique shrine has found its home in the Holy Trinity Sergius Coastal Hermitage. The American official admitted that his visit to Saint Petersburg and participation in the presentation of the icon became a very personal event for him.
Leo Hare, a pious Christian from Texas, recently joined the long list of foreigners who have been mugged by Russian reality over the decades. In 2023, disillusioned by his homeland’s perceived decadence (such as tolerance for gay people), he decided to move his family to President Vladimir Putin’s empire—a society that allegedly embodied solid Christian belief and traditional family values. The Russian government granted him asylum.
How shocking, then, when Leo was swindled out of $66,000 by a Russian contact he trusted, leaving his family homeless. He also said that he became “increasingly concerned about the state of Russia’s economy and restrictions on access to information.” Now he is predictably rueful: “I believed in the propaganda,” he told an interviewer.
I feel sorry for Leo’s family. I feel a bit less sorry for the editors of the Economist, who recently fell for yet another Russia scam. The renowned British magazine (or “newspaper,” as it quaintly persists in calling itself) devoted a substantial portion of its coveted real estate to touting the claims of a heavily sanctioned Russian billionaire named Andrey Melnichenko, depicting him as a prominent voice of reform. Yet the fawning 7,000-word profile by the magazine’s Moscow correspondent and the accompanying 3,000-word essay by Melnichenko himself failed to deliver the goods.
The essay, which was notably vague about specific demands for internal change but expansive in demands for recognition of Russia’s great-power status, said nothing that Putin himself could not have said. It contained no acknowledgment of the mind-boggling destruction and the myriad crimes against humanity committed by the Russians during their illegal invasion of Ukraine, whose sovereignty appeared to interest the author little. He inveighed against the unfair rules allegedly imposed on Russia by the heartless West, never mentioning that the Kremlin itself is a party to numerous international and bilateral agreements that it has violated over the years, including several that recognize Ukraine’s sovereignty and borders. Nor did his essay address the immense economic, social, and demographic damage that Putin’s war has inflicted upon Russians themselves.
As many Ukrainian readers were quick to point out, it’s highly unlikely that an oligarch of this stature would have dared to publish such a document in a Western publication without the tacit acceptance of the Kremlin. Indeed, Putin must be thrilled. The Economist has boosted the case for Russia’s global rehabilitation far more effectively than the Kremlin’s friends on the American or European far right could have done.
This is not entirely new. For centuries, Russian rulers have exploited the overactive imaginations of Westerners eager to project their own fantasies and desires on the empire to the east. The trend goes back at least as far as Voltaire, who conjured up an image of Russia as a tolerant civilization that he could contrast with the religious fanaticism of France. He praised Catherine the Great for imposing Enlightenment values on the barbaric peoples of the Eurasian interior, to the point that he even applauded some of her most brutal conquests. “If I were younger I would make myself Russian,” he once gushed—easy for him to say, since he never actually made it there. Catherine, who knew a PR bonanza when she saw it, was happy to subsidize his long-distance propaganda.
It’s easy, on some level, to understand the appeal. Russia has a rich cultural legacy (though foreign fans usually fail to spot the chauvinist sentiments that sometimes lie beneath). It is both part of Europe and decidedly non-European (three-quarters of its territory lies in Asia), a mixture that evokes mystery and exoticism. Indeed, an implicit racism sometimes seems to be in play: Many Russians “look European” (i.e., white), and Russian Orthodoxy is still recognizably Christian, prompting Westerners to make assumptions about the country that they would never dare to apply to other authoritarian societies in East Asia or the Middle East, whose political traditions are arguably far closer to Russia’s.
Whatever the reasons, Russophiles tend to see what they want to see and disregard the rest. The socialists who visited the Soviet Union—people like Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Paul Robeson, and the rest—overlooked obvious signs of impoverishment and terror and acknowledged only the utopian trappings that their hosts put in front of them. Russia, wrote George Bernard Shaw in 1931, “is led by men of impressive ability and unprecedented freedom of thought”—three years after Russian dictator Joseph Stalin launched his first wave of show trials. Leading media are no less prone to this sort of factual and moral contortionism: In his reporting from Moscow, New York Times correspondent Walter Duranty notoriouslydenied the disaster of forced collectivization and the resulting famines in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and southern Russia that took millions of lives.
In 1944, U.S. Vice President Henry Wallace visited Magadan, the city at the center of a huge web of concentration camps in the Soviet Far East, yet failed to notice anything out of the ordinary. His myopia derived not only from the usual socialist dogmas, but also an early enthusiasm for the woolly ideas of the Russian-born mystic Nicholas Roerich. This, too, is a characteristic pattern: Foreign enthusiasts frequently celebrate Russia as a place of deep and abiding spirituality—a stereotype that tends to overlook the Moscow Patriarchate’s long subordination to the state and resulting culture of authoritarianism and corruption.
MAGA Republicans now follow in the same tradition. When American right-winger Candace Owens traveled to Russia this spring, she gushed about the beauty of its churches, which she cited as evidence of Russia’s deep Christian piety—though she could have just as easily lavished praise on the beautiful cathedrals of Ukraine, which she regards with contempt. She was conspicuously silent when the Russians bombed the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra monastery, one of the holiest sites in the Orthodox world, a few days after her trip.
Nor did Owens seem to grasp that Putin’s Russia is also a country that persecutes Baptists and Jehovah’s Witnesses (which it sees as unwanted competition for state-supported Orthodoxy) even as it sponsors an aggressively Islamist regime in Chechnya. To some extent, modern-day fellow travelers like her are dupes of a regime that can draw on long memories of how to manipulate foreign sympathizers. In the United States, the Russian spy Maria Butina deftly catered to Republican notions that Putin’s traditional values must include the right to bear arms. (In fact, Russia has one of the world’s toughest gun-control regimes.) The Kremlin is happy to amplify friendly cranks like the neo-fascist Richard Spencer, who has touted Russia as the “sole white power in the world”—in flagrant ignorance of its ethnic diversity, including an enormous migrant population from Central Asia.
Tucker Carlson (of testicle-tanning fame) famously lavished praise on the shopping carts in a Moscow supermarket, which he claimed as evidence of Russia’s high level of civilization. This was revealing in ways that he clearly didn’t intend. Russia boosters rarely seem to travel beyond the boundaries of the big cities and have minimal contact with ordinary people. If they did, they might learn that Russians have to spend a far higher share of their incomes on food than Western Europeans, have extremely high rates of divorce, and are experiencing an epidemic of domestic violence, not least thanks to a law decriminalizing wife-beating that passed the Russian parliament a few years ago. Again and again, the fantasists of Russian power miss the country’s obvious signs of weakness, underdevelopment, corruption, and societal decay.
It would be wonderful if we could simply dismiss such voices as cranks. Unfortunately, though, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the Owenses and the Carlsons have proved highly effective amplifiers of Russian narratives. In 2024, U.S. prosecutors indicted two Russian agents for funneling money to conservative influencers who circulated pro-Putin views on their social media platforms.
Yet right-wingers aren’t the only ones guilty of wishful thinking when it comes to Russia. In 2009, then-U.S. President Barack Obama and his foreign-policy team stumbled badly when they seized upon Russia’s then-president, Dmitry Medvedev, as an imagined “moderate” and partner for reform. It became almost instantly apparent that the Americans had fallen for yet another Kremlin scam; Medvedev, far from being a free agent, was a temporary Putin puppet who had no interest in breaking with his patron’s policies. The eternal search for a reasonable Russian once again proved a mirage. (These days, Medvedev features as one of Moscow’s most rabid attack dogs on Ukraine.)
Indeed, the U.S. policy elite has long seemed to have a particular weakness for misreading Russia—from Cold War-era Sovietologists to U.S. President Donald Trump. As we’ve seen since the start of Putin’s war against Ukraine in 2014 and even more so since the full-scale invasion four-and-a-half years ago, there are plenty of military experts, academics, think-tankers, and journalists whose analyses have been warped by their overestimation of Russian capacities. In 2022, former Joint Chiefs of Staff chair Gen. Mark Milley told then-President Joe Biden that Kyiv could fall within 72 hours. Arch-realist John Mearsheimer has persisted throughout the war in predicting Ukraine’s imminent demise—long after it should have been apparent that the Russian military, however superior to Kyiv’s in resources and manpower, has been crippled by corruption, mismanagement, and technological backwardness. In 2023, the Washington analyst Samuel Charap deemed the war “unwinnable” by Ukraine.
All of these experts have, one suspects, simply succumbed to the myth of Russian immensity, power, and strength—the same characteristics that have so long convinced Trump that Russia is the side to bet on. We should be grateful to the Ukrainians for showing the world why it is time for that myth to die.
There has been no contact with political prisoner Andrei Trofimov since April. He has not responded to letters and has not been brought out to meet with a lawyer. The situation was reported by journalist Vladimir [Raevskiy], who has been corresponding with Andrei.
‘We have tried every possible avenue, but we are told that “he does not want to maintain contact with anyone” — which is nonsense, he is one of the most outgoing people I know — and that “he already has a lawyer”, which is untrue. On one occasion, a lawyer we had hired even travelled to Petrozavodsk at our request, but Andrei Trofimov was not brought out to see him,’ Vladimir [Raevskiy] wrote.
In March, it emerged that Andrei Trofimov had arrived at Penal Colony No. 9 in Petrozavodsk, Karelia. There has been no information to suggest he has since been transferred to another facility.
Andrei Trofimov was sentenced to ten years in 2023. According to the court, he had sent the Freedom of Russia Legion a completed candidate application form, which it classified as preparation for participation in an unlawful armed formation under Part 1 of Article 30 and Part 2 of Article 208 of the Russian Criminal Code. He was also convicted of incitement to extremism under part 2 of Article 280, and of disseminating ‘military fakes’ under paragraph ‘e’, part 2 of Article 207.3, in connection with posts on social media.
During the trial, Andrei Trofimov held up placards reading ‘No to War’ and ‘Putin is a dickhead’, and shouted ‘Glory to Ukraine!’ The trial was then closed to the public. He delivered his closing statement in an empty courtroom, but managed to have it published outside.
‘Honourable court, everything the prosecution says I wrote online, I did indeed write. I did the right thing, I admit no guilt and I have no regrets. I publicly justify, strongly approve of and support the explosion on the Crimean Bridge in autumn 2022 and the Ukrainian drone strikes on the Kremlin and other targets in Moscow and the Moscow region in May 2023. Because Ukraine is a victim of Russian aggression and has the right to carry out retaliatory strikes against military targets in the aggressor state. And for myself, I demand the maximum sentence. Because I despise you. I will not walk the same ground as you or live in the same state as you. Since I cannot now go to Ukraine, lock me up in prison for ever. Victory will belong to those who are destroying Putin’s scum with weapons. Glory to Ukraine! Putin is a dickhead,’ Andrei Trofimov said.
The statement became the basis for a new criminal case — for justification of terrorism under Article 205.2 of the Russian Criminal Code. In 2025, his sentence was increased to thirteen years. Before the second verdict was handed down, he addressed the court:
‘Honourable court, Russia’s attack on Ukraine on 24 February 2022 was made possible because modern Russia is a victim of negative selection. A country of cowards, fools and dreary filth. There is no place for me here, because I am neither the first, nor the second, nor the third.’
In 2019, Mediazona published testimonies from people who had served time at Penal Colony No. 9 in Karelia, and from their relatives, describing systematic and severe torture at the facility, which had in some cases led to the deaths of prisoners. In October 2019, a video appeared on YouTube showing a prisoner being beaten; the description stated that the beating was being carried out by the governor of the colony, Ivan Savelyev, and his deputy, Ivan Kovalyov. Both officers were initially transferred to other facilities following the video’s publication, and in 2020 were detained on charges of abuse of authority. Savelyev was held in remand custody for just over two weeks; Kovalyov spent around seven months under house arrest. In 2023, both were sentenced to seven years in a penal colony; in 2025, the unserved portion of their sentences was commuted to compulsory labour.
In 2020, a witness in the case concerning the murder of Anna Politkovskaya died in Penal Colony No. 9 in Petrozavodsk. His sister is convinced that his death was a consequence of torture.
6 July 2017, St. Petersburg, Russia. Photo by the Russian Reader
[…]
And so, on Friday night, the eve of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Trump flew to South Dakota to deliver a speech at Mt. Rushmore in which he claimed he and his supporters are at war against an enemy here at home: communists.
Before his trip to the state, Trump posted a video showing his own likeness on a golden sculpture of Mt. Rushmore, alongside the images of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln, with the voiceover saying: “I will be the greatest president for many, many years to come.” The video opens with the text “Art of the vision” spelled out over an American flag, an encapsulation—although perhaps an unintentional one—of how Trump has maintained political power by selling a false image to his followers.
Trump began his speech with a series of feel-good platitudes: “These are very, very special times. And this is a very special place. You live in a very special place. Congratulations, everybody…. We are a nation of dreamers and believers, warriors and explorers, doers and fighters…. There has never been anything like us anywhere on earth.” And then he tied together MAGA’s white nationalism with the claim that Trump’s political opponents want to destroy the economy.
Trump clearly thinks there is political gain in convincing his followers that his political opponents are communists, although this is a lie made up out of whole cloth after the victory of Democratic Socialists in Democratic primaries and the popularity of New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani. Communists call for the end of private ownership of the means of production, giving the state control of private enterprises. In today’s America, it is actually Trump, himself, who is taking government stakes in private enterprises.
Democratic Socialists are not communists or socialists, who want to see the end of private property. Democratic Socialists call for a robust system of private enterprise, alongside government control of the aspects of society required for people to participate in the economy on a level playing field. While Democratic Socialists embrace a wide range of policies, they generally don’t think schools, or medical care, or roads, should be profit-making industries.
In that, they echo Americans from the 1860s, when the Republicans established public colleges, or the 1900s, when Theodore Roosevelt called for public health insurance. Indeed, what today’s Democratic Socialists call for is much more limited than what the Republicans under President Dwight D. Eisenhower wanted in 1956, when the top income tax bracket in the United States was 91%.
Nonetheless, on Friday Trump tried to convince Americans that “there is now a resurgence of the communist menace in our land, including from newcomers to our country who embrace ideas totally opposed to our way of life and our great success.” “These are not mere political disagreements like differences over taxes or regulations,” he said. “Communism is a mortal threat to American liberty. It is the greatest threat to our country, including World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor, or even 9/11.”
He went on to say: “They don’t want good. They don’t love God and they don’t want God. They don’t love religion and they don’t want religion and they won’t have it.… They have no respect for law, justice, principle, tradition, or your God-given rights. It’s an ideology of mass theft, mass control, mass lies, and mass murder…. You can be a communist or you can be a patriot. You cannot be both.”
His false vision of the U.S. is aimed at the midterm elections. “America will never be a communist country,” he said. “We can only lose the midterms if we allow ourselves to lose the midterms, if we are foolish, stupid, and unwise.” He went on to demand that the Senate end the filibuster and Congress pass the voter-suppression SAVE America Act. If they do, he said, “we will not lose an election for a hundred years.”
On July 4, hundreds of masked white supremacists in khakis and blue shirts, carrying Confederate flags and flags with the logo of the neofascist white supremacist group Patriot Front, marched in Washington, D.C., chanting “Reclaim America.” The White House did not respond to a query from Gloria Oladipo of The Guardian about whether Trump condemns the march.
Trump continued his attacks on “communists” in a late-night speech on the National Mall after thunderstorms temporarily shut down his planned rally. “[A]ll these talks from the communists, they haven’t got a chance,” he told the drenched audience members, “not even a chance. We don’t want communists in our country.”
Trump’s drop into an anticommunism that exaggerates even the excesses of the McCarthy era seems to indicate panic rather than confidence. Today, July 5, he began posting on social media at 1:21 AM and over the course of the day posted more than 100 times, attacking Democrats and boasting extravagantly of what he says are his own successes while demanding Congress pass the SAVE Act or lose the presidency forever.
Trump’s people appear to be trying to push Trump’s vision, but it doesn’t seem to be sticking.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum made the rounds of the Sunday talk shows today, insisting that the problems with the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool were the work of vandals who have gashed its surface in multiple cuts that equal the 350 feet Trump claims and that there is video evidence, although the administration, which is famous for spinning everything to its own advantage, is choosing not to show it.
When CNN’s Dana Bash asked whether they actually had photographs of people cutting a gash in the liner, Burgum danced away from the question after commenting, “I’m not sure why you and others in the media think that you want to keep trying to question whether or not…”
And so the 251st year of American democracy begins with reality reasserting itself.
Russia has prepared a new edition of its official history textbook for 11th graders. The Russian business news outlet RBC reviewed the new version and found that the section dealing with the United States had been significantly revised. Among the changes: the textbook now credits the Trump administration with playing a “positive role” in settling the war in Ukraine. Meduza summarizes what else has changed.
Russia’s unified history textbook for 11th graders has been updated and published on the “Moya Shkola” (“My School”) digital platform. The textbook, co-authored by Vladimir Medinsky — an aide to the Russian president and chairman of the Russian Military Historical Society — and Anatoly Torkunov, rector of Moscow State Institute of International Relations, has now reached its third edition.
The Russian business news outlet RBC compared the new edition with last year’s and found that the most heavily rewritten section is the one titled “Russia Today. Special Military Operation (SVO)).”
The passages dealing with the United States were substantially altered. The subsection formerly titled “U.S. Pressure on Russia” has been renamed simply “Pressure on Russia.”
The previous edition stated that Europe’s energy independence “did not suit the United States” — in the new version, the authors replaced “the United States” with “the collective West.” Also cut is the claim that “in the name of their corporations’ profits, the United States constantly resorted to military and terrorist methods — as it did in Iraq, Syria, and Libya, and in many other parts of the world.” Similar edits were made to the section on the war in South Ossetia.
The new edition also drops a line about the United States’ determination to “fight to the last Ukrainian.” In its place, the textbook now credits President Donald Trump’s administration with playing a “positive role” in peace negotiations, and notes that Trump has repeatedly stated the conflict between Russia and Ukraine would not have happened had he been president in 2022. A reference to the meeting between the U.S. and Russian presidents in Anchorage in August 2025 has also been added.
The section on the war in Syria has been revised as well. The previous edition stated that the Western coalition had tried to “overthrow the legitimate government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria.” The new version says the United States and NATO, using opposition forces and Islamic State terrorists, launched military operations against the government of Bashar al-Assad. The line “hundreds of thousands of civilians fell victim to the Islamists, and millions of refugees fled Syria” has been removed.
Assad’s government was toppled in December 2024, and Islamists led by Ahmed al-Sharaa came to power in Syria. Assad and many of his associates fled to Russia.
Other additions include a mention of the Defenders of the Fatherland Foundation, headed by Anna Tsivileva, Putin’s cousin’s daughter, and information about a personnel program for combat veterans called “Time of Heroes.”
The new edition also references the terrorist attack at the Crocus City Hall concert venue and “the breakthrough of elite Ukrainian Armed Forces units toward the Kursk nuclear power plant.” Added as well are accounts of the killing of Alexander Dugin’s daughter Darya Dugina and the “war correspondent” Vladlen Tatarsky, whose real name was Maxim Fomin, and the assassination attempt on writer Zakhar Prilepin.
RBC also noted that Apti Alaudinov, commander of the Akhmat battalion, has been dropped from the textbook’s list of “heroes of the SVO,” along with the line “fighters of the celebrated Chechen special unit ‘Akhmat’ strike terror into the Nazis.”
Vladislav Kononov, a staff member of the presidential administration’s department for state policy in the humanitarian sphere, described the new edition as “routine editing during a reprint — so-called topical revision,” in which the text is updated to reflect events that occurred after the previous edition was released. “There are no hidden meanings here,” he said.
The history textbook for 11th graders by Medinsky and Torkunov was first presented in 2023. In 2026, its third edition was released.
In recent years, “ideological diversity” has become one of the principal demands made upon American academia, not only by the yahoo right but also by many moderate conservatives and centrists. The former rarely manages to rise above crude insults of the “all professors are communists” variety, as it applauds the Trump administration’s brutal assaults on academic institutions. Unfortunately, while the latter are much more thoughtful, they often make a very misguided case. There is an argument to be made for ideological diversity—a surprisingly simple, and also limited one. But it involves giving more credence to the academic left than most critics are prepared to do.
A classic example of the case wrongly made is the report recently released by the chancellors of Vanderbilt and Washington Universities and written by a distinguished group of academics (including two Princeton colleagues). It is nuanced and careful, takes a mostly moderate tone, and certainly doesn’t deserve the label “diabolical” that some have attached to it. But it also falls into some predictable traps.
Its basic arguments are as follows. Positions in the humanities and the humanistic social sciences today are held overwhelmingly by academics on the left. These academics, especially those who define themselves as “scholar activists,” too often let political goals drive their work, thereby betraying the core mission of academia, which is disinterested inquiry. They discriminate against people who do not share these political goals. And this politicization is both inspired and justified by “relativist” post-structuralist theories that deny the very idea of objective truth.
Let’s take these points one by one. First, yes, the report is obviously correct to state that academics lean very strongly to the left. But this fact by itself says nothing about how left-leaning scholars actually function in the academy or the work they produce.
The second point is much more complicated. What does it mean for scholarship itself to be “political,” or “politicized”? You don’t have to be a dyed-in-the-wool Foucauldian to acknowledge that the production of knowledge is always, in some senses, implicitly political. Scholars, like everyone, exist within structures of power whose operations influence their conduct in ways seen and unseen. Feminist scholars did more than simply expand the scope of scholarly inquiry by bringing new attention to women, gender and sexuality. They showed how earlier generations of scholars, by not treating these subjects as even worthy of attention, participated in largely unspoken practices of exclusion. This point should not be terribly controversial. Nor should it be controversial that many past schools of scholarship that presented themselves as disinterested and objective were clearly driven by strong political motives. Just think of the “Dunning School” of American history that celebrated the southern “Lost Cause” and sought to discredit Reconstruction.
Acknowledging these points in no way means erasing the distinction between scholarship and propaganda—and contrary to widespread views on the right, this erasure has not taken place. One can accept that scholarship is implicitly political while also insisting that its production properly requires adhering to rules of evidence, and to making logical and well-supported arguments. I have been a professor for thirty-five years and have taken part in a very (!) large number of hiring decisions, promotion and tenure decisions, editorial decisions for journals and presses, personnel decisions for scholarly societies, and the like. I have occasionally seen these decisions made badly, because of personal animus, or incompetence. For what it is worth, I have never seen them made on an explicitly political basis, and very rarely even on an implicitly political one. In almost all cases, the principal criteria invoked have been classic scholarly ones: the strength of evidence, the strength of argument, the innovative and engaging qualities of the work as a whole.
Do academic fields discriminate against conservatives? It is certainly true that conservatives will not feel welcome in many fields of the humanities and social sciences. This is particularly the case for fields born out of the liberation movements of the 1960’s, such as Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies, or African-American Studies, where many scholars still define themselves in relation to the goals of these movements and proudly call themselves “scholar activists.” An opponent of abortion or affirmative action will not find these fields congenial places. But in my experience, at least, the absence of conservatives in them is almost entirely the result of self-selection, not discrimination. That element of self-selection may itself be problematic, but it does not call for the same sort of response that active discrimination would.
And it is simply a mistake to attribute the “politicization” to poststructuralist philosophy and relativism. To the extent that the alleged politicization began in the 1960’s, it began well before the heyday of poststructuralism in American humanities departments, and it has continued long afterwards. Whole generations of literary scholars have now gone through the PhD to jobs and tenure without ever reading Jacques Derrida, let alone becoming his adepts (for that matter, Derrida’s work can in no way be described as a simple denial of the idea of truth). The overwhelming majority of works derided as “woke”—at least the ones I have read—do not say that one group’s claims on truth is as good as another’s. To the contrary, they say that the claims made by a “subaltern” group are stronger and more convincing than ones generated from within an oppressive structure of power. That argument might be wrong, but it is not relativist. Jonathan Kramnick made some of these points at length in an excellent rebuttal to the Vanderbilt Report in The Chronicle of Higher Education.
In sum, whatever the massive overrepresentation of the left in academia, and despite some undoubted excesses, this overrepresentation has not resulted in an illegitimate distortion of the academic enterprise, the suppression of free inquiry, or large-scale violations of academic freedom. It would be a violation of academic freedom, on the other hand, to censor or dismiss academics for such alleged infractions. The Vanderbilt report does not call for any such disciplinary actions, although one could imagine unscrupulous university overseers citing it as justification for them.
But there is one set of academic decisions where politics does often dictate the outcome in a much more straightforward sense than in the cases just discussed: decisions on which fields to hire in. Professors do not normally make these decisions. Deans and other high-level administrators do. They do so in consultation with professors and normally take into consideration academic judgments as to which fields of inquiry look strongest and most promising. But, of necessity, they also take into consideration finances, student interest, the likely availability of expertise—and politics. To take the most prominent recent example, after the killing of George Floyd and the subsequent protests in 2020, more than half of the jobs advertised in North American history the next year were specifically for specialists in African-American history and related fields such as the history of slavery. A very high proportion of jobs advertised in French were for specialists in “Francophone” literature—i.e. literature produced outside of France, mostly in colonies and former colonies. These decisions were justifiable on academic grounds, for the fields in question are vibrant ones. But they were obviously made for political reasons, above all to address concerns about the underrepresentation of people of color in university faculties. Were these concerns themselves valid? Absolutely. It can also be argued that addressing this underrepresentation brings previously neglected points of view into academic conversations. But this doesn’t change the fact that the decisions were political ones—a response to an immediate political crisis, and to political pressure.
Again, to be clear: there was nothing illegitimate about university administrators bringing political considerations to bear. Decisions on what fields to hire in are central to a university’s identity, to the sort of community it is. Politics is inescapably part of this picture.
But if there was an argument for using hiring decisions to address racial inequalities, there is an argument for using them to address ideological imbalance as well. Even if there is nothing illegitimate about the strong leftward tilt of the humanities and humanistic social sciences, it does create a large gulf between the professors and much of the American population whom they are serving. Even if there is nothing illegitimate about certain fields being dominated by self-proclaimed “scholar activists,” it discourages students who don’t share the activists’ agendas from studying those fields. A heavy concentration of academic resources in certain areas of research leaves other areas neglected, including ones that university leaders may see as central to undergraduate education. And the heavier the emphasis on shared political goals, the easier it is to generate groupthink and stifle the sort of originality universities should be placing a premium on.
Actual hiring decisions should always be made by the specialists themselves. They are the ones with the requisite expertise. Dictating whom to hire would be a violation of their academic freedom. But that freedom does not extend to faculty themselves dictating which areas to hire in.
It would not be such a bad idea if humanities and social science departments themselves took more initiatives in this direction. In recent years, much of the hiring done for reasons of ideological diversity has taken place in new academic units such as Florida’s Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Education. Attempts to create positions within existing departments, going back to the Bass Family’s attempt to endow a “Western Civilization” program at Yale in the 1990s, have sometimes ended in messy failure. But placing the new faculty in separate units leaves the original fields dangerously exposed to damaging cuts, either for brute ideological reasons, or because they do not have enough of a constituency to protest when the budget axe swings for financial ones. It should be obvious to anyone who knows anything about the “Western tradition” that neither the thinkers in question, nor current specialists on them, are anything like homogenously conservative—hiring in the field does not mean hiring the next Harvey Mansfield. But would it be such a bad thing to hire a few more scholars who dissent from the prevailing politics of their fields? Robust political debate is generally preferable to groupthink, after all.
