Leningrad, 1987. Donald Trump and his first wife, Ivana Zelníčková.
The businessman visited the USSR with his wife hoping to make real estate deals, but was confronted by Soviet laws which did not permit foreigners to own more than a 49% stake in a business venture.
So, no deals were made, and Trump was left disappointed by the Soviet system. But he was impressed by the architecture.
Tomorrow, the current U.S. president and Vladimir Putin will meet in Alaska, formerly Russian territory.
“Let’s stand up for the truth.” A military recruiting billboard photographed earlier this summer in Kaluga, promising five million rubles (approx. 56,000 euros) for one year of “contract” (voluntary) military service, a one-time signing bonus of two and a half million rubles, and a monthly salary of 210,000 rubles for service in the “Special Military Operation zone.” Photo: Alexander Gronsky (Facebook). Thanks to Sergei Medvedev for the heads-up.
An American father who moved to Russia to avoid LGBTQ+ “indoctrination” for his kids is being sent to the front line in Ukraine, despite being assured he would serve in a non-combat role.
Derek Huffman, 46, feels he is being “thrown to the wolves” after being told that his job in the military would be as a correspondent or as a welder, his wife, DeAnna, said in a recorded plea for prayers, which has since been removed from her YouTube page.
Huffman has no prior military experience, DeAnna said, adding that his limited training was conducted in Russian. She suggested the language barrier has made her husband particularly unprepared for the horrors of combat.
“Unfortunately, when you’re taught in a different language, and you don’t understand the language, how are you really getting taught?” she pondered. “You’re not. So, unfortunately, he feels like he’s being thrown to the wolves right now, and he’s kind of having to lean on faith, and that’s what we’re all doing.”
Huffman joined the military in the hope of gaining Russian citizenship for his family through an expedited process. He also felt such service would allow him to “earn” the respect of his new countrymen, which is something he once said migrants in the United States refuse to do.
“The point of this act for me is to earn a place here in Russia,” he told Russian state media last month. “If I risk myself for our new country, no one will say that I am not a part of it. Unlike migrants in America who come there just like that, do not assimilate, and at the same time want free handouts.”
Undocumented migrants cannot join the U.S. military during peacetime. A program launched by former President George W. Bush allowed such immigrants to seek citizenship by serving in the military, but that pathway was shuttered during President Donald Trump’s first term.
DeAnna, 42, suggested her husband had been misled during the military recruiting process. She added that, after a month of service, her family had yet to receive any pay.
“When he signed up and had all of that done, he was told he would not be training for two weeks and going straight to the front lines,” she said. “But it seems as though he is getting one more week of training, closer to the front lines, and then they are going to put him on the front lines.”
Huffman moved his family to a village outside Moscow in spring. It was launched by American blogger Tim Kirby—who has lived in Russia for two decades—in 2023 to attract Americans seeking to escape the “liberal gender norm.” That project has been a flop, with United24Media reporting that only two families, including the Huffmans, have moved in.
Huffman, a native Texan, brought his wife, three daughters, and their family Husky, “Baby,” with him to Russia. The couple also have three sons from prior marriages who opted to remain in the United States.
Huffman’s admiration for Russia runs deep. The Russian state-operated news agency RIA Novosti reported last month that the couple honeymooned in Moscow.
“The city charmed us with its rich history, vibrant culture, and welcoming atmosphere,” DeAnna told the outlet. “Before that, we figured out whether moving to Russia would fit our family’s needs and values. However, it wasn’t until we saw Moscow in person that we truly felt a connection.”
DeAnna said that she was not surprised that her husband wanted to volunteer for the Russian military, even as it is in its third year of a bloody war with Ukraine. Ukrainian officials estimated this week that more than 1 million Russian soldiers have died in the conflict, which continues to rage on despite President Trump’s demands for peace.
”It didn’t come as a surprise to me,” she said of his joining the military. “He always spoke so highly of the country, its president, and its people, and he has a strong passion for doing the right thing.”
“I got upset when the doctor told me I had diabetes,” said Yurii. “Because uneaten sweets are waiting for me at home, and we’ve already bought lemonade for New Year’s.”
Yurii is 16 years old, and every day he starts with a long-acting insulin injection. Later throughout the day, ten minutes before each meal, he measures his blood sugar levels, calculates the amount of carbohydrates he will get from food, and injects the appropriate dose of insulin.
Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease that changes your life forever and can be triggered by infections or, as it is in Yurii’s case, by severe stress – especially after what happened to his brother.
Chronic stress has been rising among Ukrainians since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, as Moscow continues to shell the country daily. The continuous sleepless nights and the fear of being hit by a drone or missile are affecting both the mental and physical health of the people in Ukraine.
In June 2025, Russians increased the number of drones and missiles launched at Ukraine increased by 60 percent, according to Oleksandr Syrskyi, the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. In addition, June saw the highest number of civilian deaths since April 2022 as a result of military actions: 232 people.
The invisible effects are compounding: Ukrainian children have begun to experience health conditions that could affect the rest of their lives.
Statistics show a rise in the number of patients with type 1 diabetes in the frontline Kharkiv region, and the number of people diagnosed with diabetes in general is also on the rise across the country.
Before the invasion, Yurii lived with his parents in the central Ukrainian city of Cherkasy. They tried to get out of town every weekend — whether that meant going fishing or mushroom-picking in the forest.
“Children need to breathe fresh air,” Olena, Yurii’s mother, told The Counteroffensive with a nostalgic smile on her face.
She begins the conversation by saying, “I am the mother of two wonderful sons.”
Yurii has a brother, Volodymyr, also known as Vova, who is 10 years older and who looked after Yurii from an early age.
“We walked all over Cherkasy together, went to parks, squares, the Dnipro River, and he treated me to McDonald’s. Vova [a nickname for Volodymyr] always told me, ‘When you grow up, we’ll go out with girls together. ’ And Vova loved everything related to the army,” said Yurii.
When Olena talks about her eldest son, her voice begins to tremble.
Vova died on May 3, 2022, while defending Mariupol at Azovstal, a strategic steel factory that was besieged by Russian forces for almost three months, a famous last stand.
He died after his car rolled onto an enemy mine.
The family only learned about his death six months later.
“One day, Vova’s commander called me, introduced himself, and asked how I was doing. I replied, ‘Do you know where my son is? Wasn’t he in captivity with you?’ He told me that Vova had died on May 3 and asked, ‘Didn’t you know?’ It felt like half my heart had been cut out of my chest at that moment,” remembered Olena.
Volodymyr was only buried in February 2023. After the tragedy, Olena began to have health problems: she constantly felt weak, and eventually doctors had to remove her thyroid gland so that she could get better.
In the fall of 2023, months after Volodymyr’s funeral, the family went to the Carpathians for a break. During the trip, Olena noticed that Yurii, then 14 years old, was drinking more water than usual and had lost a significant amount of weight. Despite being naturally thin and 1.74 meters tall (5 feet 9 inches), he weighed just 45 kilograms (99.2 pounds).
“Yurii took his brother’s death very hard. It wasn’t that he cried a lot, but as if something inside him had burned out,” said Olena.
Yurii and Olena returned to Cherkasy and went to see the doctors. While Olena had developed a problem with her thyroid, everything seemed normal in Yurii.
But when the doctor routinely tested Yurii’s blood sugar levels, they found he had developed type 1 diabetes.
“It felt like I was beaten to death with feet, after all the horror we had already gone through,” said Olena.
Many autoimmune diseases of the endocrine system occur in childhood or young adulthood, as these are periods of active growth and hormonal changes, said Natalia Pogadaeva, head of the endocrinology department at Okhmatdyt, Ukraine’s largest pediatric hospital, which was hit by a missile strike last year.
Genetics plays a significant role in the onset of diabetes, as in other autoimmune diseases. However, the trigger for their onset is usually stress, she added. The following six months after the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the number of patients with diabetes and other immune diseases surged, she added.
Due to full-scale Russian invasion and the displacement of the Ukrainian population both within Ukraine and abroad, it is very difficult to determine the actual extent of the increase in diabetes, Pogadayeva says.
“Children who lived in Kyiv could have gone abroad and realized they were sick, or vice versa: a child moved from Kherson to Kyiv and is being treated in Kyiv, not where they lived,” she added.
Still, some statistics hint at the broader toll. For example, 398 patients with type 1 diabetes under the age of 18 were registered in the first 9 months of 2023 in the Kharkiv region, a frontline region in the northeast of Ukraine. During the same period in 2024, the number had already increased to 501 patients – a more than 25 percent increase.
According to the Ministry of Health of Ukraine, 531,200 people were diagnosed with different types of diabetes in 2023, the first full year of the full-scale invasion. In 2022, the number was 489,934 – an 8 percent increase.
Many of the children who went to Okhmatdyt to get treated had either survived Russia’s occupation, had experienced the aggression firsthand, or had evacuated from Mariupol or Bakhmut, Pogadaeva said.
“At the beginning of the full-scale invasion, among other things, logistics were also greatly changed,” said Pogadaeva, the head of the endocrinology department at Okhmatdyt.
Children who already had diabetes had a hard time accessing insulin and the supplies needed to measure their blood sugar. As a result, they had to be hospitalized.
Diabetes can have severe complications if not taken care of properly. Uncontrolled blood sugar can damage blood vessels, which are present in every organ of the body. If affected, the kidneys, the limbs, and the eyes are the first to suffer. In the long run, it can lead to kidney failure, loss of sensitivity, loss of vision, and even to the amputation of limbs.
Pogadaeva explains that our bodies have a stress hormone called cortisol, which can be released during periods of prolonged stress, such as experiencing daily shelling, night-time air raid alarms, and lack of sleep — all situations Ukrainian children have been experiencing for the past three years.
The release of cortisol leads to uncontrolled fluctuations in blood sugar levels, she added.
Yurii will start college this year. Olena fears that having to prepare for exams will add to the stress of the war. She said that while at her house, they have adapted to a diet appropriate for the disease.
Yet Yurii’s blood sugar levels are still fluctuating.
They relocated to a village near the regional centre to be closer to nature. There, Yurii has his workshop and chickens, for which he recently built a drinking trough.
The family fondly remembers his older brother, Volodymyr, who was posthumously awarded the Order for Courage, a state award given by the President of Ukraine for heroism shown in emergencies.
“It’s hard to say that anything in our lives has changed significantly because of the illness. Now it’s just a way of our life.
My husband is only sometimes dissatisfied, saying, ‘I don’t want porridge, I don’t want salads. When will we have varenyky [Ukrainian dumplings]?’ But that’s it, if the child can’t have it, then no one can,” Olena said.
A BBC Russian investigation can reveal that at least 240 Russian eighteen-year-olds have been killed fighting in Ukraine in the past two years. Many joined up straight from school taking advantage of new rules allowing them to bypass military service and go straight into the regular army as contract soldiers. Some of those on our list were killed within weeks. BBC Russian has been speaking to bereaved families to find out why school leavers whose lives are only just beginning, are signing up to die in Putin’s brutal war.
On 7 May 2025, pupils at School No. 110 in Chelyabinsk took part in a ceremony to mark the eightieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War.
Dressed in tunics and khaki-coloured shorts, the older children paraded into the school hall waving Russian and Soviet flags. The younger ones followed behind – little girls in knee-high socks and boys in smart shirts. The children were also carrying pictures of former pupils who had gone on to fight in the full-scale war in Ukraine.
One of the pictures was of Aleskandr Petlinsky who joined up two weeks after his eighteenth birthday, and was killed just twenty days later. His mother Elena, and his aunt, Ekaterina stood side by side in the hall, tearfully watching the ceremony.
After a minute’s silence to honour the dead, Ekaterina took to the stage to speak about her nephew.
Sasha, as she called him was a determined and passionate boy who dreamed of a career in medicine and had got a place at the Chelyabinsk Medical College.
“But Sasha had another dream,” Ekaterina added after a pause. “When the special military operation began, Sasha was fifteen. And he dreamed of going to the front.”
She was referring to the full-scale war in Ukraine, which Russia launched in February 2022.
Sasha Petlinksy is one of at least 240 eighteen-year olds killed in Ukraine over the past two years, according to open source information compiled and confirmed by BBC Russian.
How did someone so young and barely out of school end up dead on the frontline, and what does his story tell us about the choices facing young people in Russia today?
Red lines and rule changes
Since the first months of the war in Ukraine, the involvement of very young people in combat has been a subject of debate in Russia.
At first, the focus was on army conscripts.
Vladimir Putin has pledged several times that no young men called up to do their obligatory military service at the age of eighteen would be sent to fight in Ukraine. However, in March 2022, just four days after Putin promised no conscripts were involved in the ‘special military operation’ the Defence Ministry admitted that some had indeed been sent into the combat zone.
The BBC has confirmed the names of at least 81 conscripts killed in Ukraine during the first year of the full-scale war. The Ukrainian authorities claim to have captured “hundreds” more.
The army is no longer sending conscripts to fight in Ukraine, but there are other ways that very young people are being drawn into the conflict.
When Ukrainian troops occupied parts of Russia’s Kursk Region in August 2024, conscripts guarding the border were among the first to come under fire.
But according to data gathered by the BBC the way most eighteen-year-olds end up on the battlefield is by signing up as contract soldiers.
In the spring of 2022, the Russian authorities changed the law in order to actively encourage men of fighting age to join up. And since 2023 regional authorities have been offering big cash payments to new recruits.
Initially young men who wanted to take advantage of the new rules had to have at least three months’ conscript service under their belts. However, in April 2023 this restriction was quietly dropped, despite protests from some MPs, and now any young man who has reached the age of eighteen and finished school can sign up to join the army.
MP Nina Ostanina, who is head of the Duma Committee on Family, Women, and Children, warned that the changes would have dire consequences for vulnerable school leavers.
“Children just out of the classroom who want to earn money today by signing a contract will simply be unprotected,” she said.
“Contract service — a worthy future”
Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Russian teachers have been required by law to hold classes dedicated to the ‘special military operation’. And as the war has ground on, it’s become normal for soldiers returning from the front to visit schools and talk about their experiences.
Children are taught how to make camouflage nets and trench candles, and even nursery school pupils are encouraged to send letters and drawings to soldiers on the frontline.
Since eighteen-year olds were allowed to sign contracts to join the army, many Russian independent media outlets have reported that schools are increasing efforts to promote contract service.
There are many examples from across the country.
In Perm, schoolchildren were given leaflets with a photo of a middle-aged man in military uniform hugging his wife and young son, and the slogan: “Contract service — a worthy future!”
In the Khanty-Mansisk Autonomous Region, posters appeared on school noticeboards urging everyone to “Stand shoulder to shoulder for the Motherland”.
In Krasnoyarsk a poster with the slogan “Call now” was put up on a classroom board.
At the start of the new school year on 1 September 2024, a new subject was brought into the curriculum.
In a throwback to the Soviet era, senior students are once again being taught how to use Kalashnikov rifles and hand grenades as part of a course called “The Basics of Safety and Homeland Defence”.
In many regions, military recruiters now attend careers lessons in schools and technical colleges, telling young people how to sign up as contract soldiers after they graduate.
In April 2024, Konstantin Dizendorf, head of the Taseyevsky District in the Krasnoyarsk Region, visited a local technical college to talk to the children about their futures. He singled out one particular student for praise. Eighteen-year-old Aleksandr Vinshu had already announced that he wanted to join the army. Vinshu was held up as local hero and allowed to take his final exams early in order to sign up as soon as possible. Seven months later in November 2024 news came that Vinshu had been killed.
Counting Russia’s young war dead
As part of our ongoing project using open sources to count Russia’s war dead, BBC Russian has looked at casualty figures from April 2023, when the law changed allowing school leavers to skip conscription and sign up to join the army.
We have identified and confirmed the names of 240 eighteen-year-old contract soldiers killed in Ukraine between April 2023 and May 2025.
All were enlisted as contract servicemen and judging from published obituaries, most joined the armed forces voluntarily. However, twenty-one were very recent school leavers who signed contracts while they were doing their military service. Families of some of these young men allege they were pressured to join up by senior officers.
Our data shows that the regions with the highest number of deaths among eighteen-year-olds are all in Siberia or the Russian Far East: We confirmed eleven deaths in Novosibirsk Region, another eleven in Zabaykalsky Region, and ten more in the Altai and Primorsky regions, respectively.
The BBC’s figures are based on open-source information and because not every death is publicly reported, the real losses among eighteen-year-old contract soldiers are likely to be higher.
However, it’s important to note that these losses, devastating as they are for the families concerned, are still dwarfed by the casualty figures for older men signing contracts to join the army.
From the open source data gathered by the BBC since the start of the full-scale invasion we have identified the names of 486 individuals aged 18–20 years who have been killed in Ukraine fighting as contract soldiers. This compares to 3,703 deaths of men aged 48–50.
While older soldiers may face higher fatality rates due to being in poorer physical shape, the stark imbalance likely also reflects a lower willingness among younger men to enlist, even when substantial financial incentives are offered.
This aligns with аn opinion poll conducted by the independent Levada Centre in May 2025, which showed thirty-five per cent of 18–24 year olds supported the war in Ukraine, compared to forty-two per cent of 40–54 year olds, and fifty-four per cent of those aged over fifty-five.
Taken together, these figures suggest that as a whole younger Russians are more reluctant to participate in the conflict and less ideologically aligned with its objectives. However, as the young men featured in this story show, some are still either susceptible to propaganda narratives or to pressure from the authorities.
Shining eyes
According to his friends, Aleksandr Petlinsky was a gentle young man who liked to help others. He loved drawing and was always ready to do sketches of favourite cartoon characters for his friends. He was also an active member of a local youth organisation, collecting books for local libraries, going on visits to local museums, and organising a meeting with a nurse who had worked on the frontline in Ukraine.
Everyone we spoke to told us Aleksandr dreamed of becoming a doctor, but no-one seemed to know why he also dreamed of joining the army and going to fight in Ukraine.
Was his romanticizing of the war a result of the patriotic education he’d been subjected to at school? Did he really understand that he would be involved in killing soldiers of a neighbouring country? Had he given any serious thought to all the peaceful civilian lives being destroyed in the war?
On 31 January 2025, Aleksandr turned eighteen. The first thing he did was to apply to take a year out of college so that he could sign a contract with the Defence Ministry.
“When he submitted the request I asked him what his mother would say,” the college secretary later told local journalists. “He said – what’s it got to do with my mum? It’s my choice. His eyes were shining.”
Just three weeks later Aleksandr had already signed a contract and joined his training unit. Just before he set off, he met up with his friend Anastasia.
The two former classmates sat on a bench talking about drawings. Aleksandr drew a torch with a flame on Anastasia’s wrist as a farewell gift.
It was the last time she would ever see him.
Handcuffed and beaten
The story of how eighteen-year-old Vitaly Ivanov from Irkutsk region in Siberia ended up in the army could not have been more different.
He was born and raised in Tayturka, a small working-class settlement two hours from Irkutsk, with a population of just 5,000 people.
In high school, he and his friend Misha, had worked part-time at a local boiler house and helped dig potatoes in gardens. In the summer, he earned money by taking inflatable bouncy castles round neighbouring villages.
During that time, he met a young woman who we’ll call Alina. They began dating, and Vitaly often visited her. He helped her too—digging potatoes at her dacha and fixing things around the house.
“He used to tell me that I was under his wing, under his protection,” Alina says. But sometimes, when they argued, Vitaly would threaten to leave and sign up for the army. “It was like, I’ll go and I’ll be fine,” Alina remembers.
When he turned sixteen, Vasily left school and got a place as a trainee mechanic in a local college. But he soon dropped out. When he turned eighteen he planned to do his compulsory military service and then go to Kazan to work shifts road building, his friend Misha told the BBC.
But in November 2024 everything changed. There was a robbery at a local shop and when the police looked at the CCTV they decided that one of the perpetrators looked like Vitaly.
Vitaly’s mother Anna told the BBC he was known to the police because the previous year he had been arrested after getting into a fight with someone she says was a local drug dealer. He was charged and sentenced to community service.
Vitaly was summoned to the police station and held there for several hours. When he was finally released he sent his girlfriend a Telegram video message, which she shared with the BBC. In it, Vitaly is crying as tells his girlfriend he was handcuffed and beaten up by the police. “Those devils were so horrible,” he says between sobs. “I was just so fucking shocked.”
Vitaly told his mother and his girlfriend that the police wanted him to confess to the robbery. His mother thinks it was the police who told him to sign a contract to join the army. “It’s understandable, he was scared, he was just eighteen,” she says. “They handcuffed him and beat him for two hours.”
Straight out of the police station Vitaly met Misha and told him he had decided to sign up to join the army. Misha was shocked: “I said, what do you want to do that for?” Come to Kazan with me to do the road building, You’ll be much better off.”
Misha told the BBC another friend also had tried to dissuade him but Vitaly deleted all their messages and cut off contact.
The day before leaving home, Vitaly called his mother, who had left for work.
“Mum, I’m leaving soon.”
“For Kazan? Okay, off you go.”
“No Mum you don’t get it. I’m going to the special military operation.”
Anna says she “cried all night”. “He was so secretive about it all. He didn’t tell me anything. Never complained. And did everything behind my back,” she says.
Alina remembers that during their last meeting Vitaly seemed completely calm. He bid her a restrained goodbye to her and told her not to cry. Then he calmly went home, packed his things, and left for the train station.
On the advice of a friend who had already been to the front, he decided to sign up in Samara Region instead of Irkutsk.
In the autumn of 2024, Samara Region that was offering some of the highest sign-up bonus payments in the country. Vitaly would have received about four million roubles in regional and federal bonus payments — that’s the equivalent of around fifty thousand US dollars, an almost imaginable sum for an eighteen-year-old village boy with little education and even less prospects.
A first and last mission
By their very different routes, and both just turned eighteen, Vitaly and Aleksandr arrived at the front at about the same time — in February 2025.
Alina recalls that while Vitaly was still in training, they stayed in constant contact. “He wrote that he regretted it. That he was having trouble sleeping,” she says.
“Mum, I’ve realized this is no joke,” his mother Anna remembers him telling her. After just two weeks training, Vitaly was assigned to a role in military reconnaissance.
“Son, did you learn anything in training?” Alina asked him.
The answer was not reassuring.
“Mum, to become a real recon soldier, you have to study for three years!” he replied. “I’ve only learned just a little bit.”
The last time Anna heard from Vitaly was on 5 February. He wrote that he was being sent on a combat mission.
“It was his first and last mission,” Anna says.
On 4 March, officials from the military enlistment office called Anna and told her that her son had been killed in action on 11 February 2025. He had served just one week at the frontline.
His body was brought back to Tayturka in a zinc coffin. Several dozen people came to pay their respects and then the coffin was taken to the local cemetery.
Officials from the city administration gave speeches at the funeral.
“They said he gave his life for our homeland, that he was brave and went off to fight. The usual stuff,” says Misha. “But everyone was asking why he did it, and saying it was pointless to go to war at such a young age. Many people still couldn’t believe it – including me.”
Vitaly’s family and friends did not comment on the fact that his participation in the war could have led to the deaths of Ukrainian soldiers or civilians.
Deeply upset
A month after Vitaly’s death, on 9 March, Aleksandr Petlinsky was also killed.
His friends from the local youth movement posted a memorial message online noting that he had “died in the line of military duty during the Special Military Operation”.
“How could he have even been there if he had only just turned eighteen a month before???” someone wrote in the comments underneath.
Aleksandr’s funeral took place in the memorial hall of the Russian Railways hospital in Chelyabinsk. “Everyone cried a lot,” his aunt told the school event. “You could hear the sobbing in the room.”
Officials gave speeches, but Aleksandr’s friends “preferred to stay silent” as one of them told the BBC.
Anastasia says they were all deeply upset by the fact that he had lived less than two months after turning eighteen and had spent just a couple of weeks at war before being killed.
Aleksandr’s mother, Elena, told the BBC: “As a citizen of the Russian Federation, I am proud of my son. But as a mother — I can’t cope with this loss.” She declined to say more.
The BBC was only able to reach Vitaly’s mother, Anna, on the second or third attempt — in the first minutes of the call, she was sobbing and unable to speak. She said keeps replaying her last goodbye with her son in her mind. “It still feels like it happened yesterday.”
Anastasia, Aleksandr’s friend, says that for her, the fact that eighteen-year-olds are signing contracts to join the army is now a very “painful subject”.
“They’re young and naïve, and there’s so much they don’t understand,” she says. “They just don’t grasp the full responsibility of what they’re doing.”
Vitaly’s friend Misha thinks the same. He spoke to the BBC from Kazan where he’s now working on the road-building project he and Vitaly were planning to do together. Asked whether he might decide to sign a contract to join up himself he said: “I don’t even want to think about it.”
“No one’s interested and no one cares”
Although the deaths of Aleksandr and Vitaly have deeply affected their friends and family, the fact that eighteen-year-olds are signing up and getting killed in Ukraine does not so far seem to have had wider resonance in Russian society.
The family of another very young man who joined up from school and was killed very soon after did try to campaign to stop high school graduates being sent to the frontline.
Daniil Chistyakov from Smolensk, was less than two months past his eighteenth birthday when he was killed. Like Aleksandr and Vitaly he had just arrived at the front. His family only found out he was joining the army on the day he signed up.
“I wrote to many agencies, trying to reach someone, to get the law repealed that allows eighteen-year-olds to sign contracts,” one of his relatives told the BBC. “But no one was interested or cared.”
Vitaly’s mother Anna has tried and failed to get the authorities to investigate the police officers who detained her son and who she believes are responsible for his sudden decision to sign up.
In her efforts to “get justice”, she also wrote a long letter about her son’s case to the state TV Channel One talk show Men and Women in Moscow. The letter was sent by recorded mail but no-one from the show ever came to pick it up from the post office.
“A volunteer legal observer says she was left bruised after being detained by ICE,” KPBS Public Media
Earlier this week—in a story that reads as a perfect encapsulation of abuses by Trump’s immigration enforcement—masked ICE agents roughed up and detained a 71-year-old U.S. citizen volunteering as a legal observer to monitor them at a federal courthouse in San Diego.
Grandmother Barbara Stone says she was documenting the detention of asylum-seekers with the group “Detention Resistance” at San Diego’s immigration court when she was baselessly accused of pushing an officer. Multiple masked agents then pursued Stone, grabbed and handcuffed her (leaving bruises), confiscated her phone and purse, and detained her for over eight hours, she says.
Once Stone was released, ICE returned her bag but kept possession of her phone. Why? Stone says an ICE agent compared the situation to “a drug bust where they keep a drug dealer’s phone because I had used it in the crime.”
But the only “crime” of which Stone says she’s guilty is documenting immigration enforcement. If this is true, the episode would track with other apparent attempts by ICE agents to avoid accountability of late, for instance, by wearing masks so they can conduct raids and arrests anonymously.
In a statement to a local outlet, ICE accused Stone of assaulting an officer, citing “a 700% increase in assaults” against its agents over the last year (a statistic the agency uses to justify agents concealing their identities, as well).
That 700 percent increase, it should be noted, is a somewhat misleading way to say there have been 79 alleged assaults against ICE agents this year, compared to 10 in the same timeframe last year. Meanwhile, ICE interactions have become dramatically more frequent and aggressive.
ICE’s numbers unfortunately deserve further scrutiny, as the agency has been defining “assault” quite loosely. In another high-profile arrest of a U.S. citizen, for example, ICE last month detained New York City Comptroller Brad Lander for assault—an accusation not unlike when a schoolyard bully accuses his victim of getting in the way of his fist, as Washington Post columnist Philip Bump put it.
One might add, to this list of questionable ICE allegations, its new claims about Stone.
“Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.” – Alexis de Tocqueville
In the Soviet Union, where I grew up, any expression of faith was met with ridicule and harassment under anti-religion propaganda. This experience deepened my appreciation for the freedom to worship and inspired DEO FAVENTE wine—a tribute to God’s grace and providence.
As we approach Thanksgiving, let us reflect on the foundation of America’s greatness: her faith in God. It is through that faith and the values rooted in His word that our nation remains a true Land of Promise, guided by His hand.
Source: Land of Promise emailing, 14 November 2024
“We chose the name Terra de Promissio, latin for the Land of Promise. because as farmers, the land is about the “promise”. The promise that every new season brings the possibility AND the hope of a bountiful harvest.”
“and as we were both born, have lived and worked overseas, It is the promise of AMERICA, one nation under god AND the American Dream. We very much appreciate what this country represents. America is truly the land of promise and we are grateful for the freedom, liberty and opportunities that these united states offers to all of us.”
Charles and Diana bought a former dairy ranch in 1999 and then over the next 3 years, oversaw the planting of 33,000 vines. During the summer of 2002, they bought a used trailer to live in and then brought Diana’s Dad and sister Alina from Russia to help manage the vineyard. We welcomed Diana’s Family to the USA with an American Flag. And from that day on, the American Flag has proudly flown every day here at the vineyard. Terra de Promissio had its first harvest in 2005 and sold to 3 wineries. In 2007, after renting a house in Petaluma, they converted a barn into a home and moved to the vineyard full time. In 2012 and 2013, they planted an additional 18,000 vines to bring the total planted acreage of Terra de Promissio to 50 acres.
[…]
Diana KARREN
Diana was born in the Soviet Union. She was a Young Pioneer in the Communist System. But in the 1980s as the Soviet Union began to collapse, she put herself thru college and at the same time, worked for western companies that were investing in the now Former Soviet Union. Her hard work and great grades paid off and she was accepted to the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, where she graduated with a Masters of Business Administration in 2003.
During a two year period (2001-2003) Diana single-handily designed, gained government approvals and oversaw the planting of Terra de Promissio, while being pregnant and giving birth to Christian and doing it as a full time MBA Ivy-League student. In 2005, Diana oversaw the first harvest to Siduri, Flowers and Lynmar. In the ensuring years, as the grape production ramped up, Diana added multiple wineries including Kistler, Kosta-Browne and Willams Selyem. In 2011, Kosta Browne received the Wine Spectator’s Wine of the Year for the 2009 Sonoma Coast, which was primarily using grapes from Terra de Promissio.
Since day one, every row and block is custom farmed per each of the winemakers specific instructions. Because of this attention to detail by Diana, Terra de Promissio is now the most vineyard designated pinot noir in Sonoma County with over 10 wineries using the TdP name on their label. Beginning with the 2013 harvest, Diana began overseeing the winemaking process for Land of Promise. She now makes 4 Land of Promise Pinots and one Rosé. For more info, please click here or the link below.
In addition to managing the vineyard and the winery, Diana spends her Sunday mornings at Calvary Chapel Petaluma where she volunteers watching the babies and toddlers during the busy first service, so their parents can enjoy and listen to the sermons.
Just one week has passed since Donald Trump’s electoral triumph, and already Russian President Vladimir Putin—one of the strongman leaders Trump admires most—is messing with his head.
First, Putin waited two days before congratulating Trump on his victory. One can imagine Trump receiving phone calls from kowtowing leaders the world over—Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, the Palestinian Authority’s Mahmoud Abbas, the chief of NATO, the European heads of state—all the while wondering about the man whom he’s admired publicly and privately for the past eight years: When is Vladimir going to call?
Then, in response to Trump’s claim that during their phone call, he asked—in some accounts, warned—Putin not to escalate the war in Ukraine, a Kremlin spokesman denied that the two had spoken on the phone at all. (Putin issued his belated congratulations at a news conference.)
I don’t know who’s telling the truth, a practice for which neither man has a sterling reputation. But either way, in the next few weeks, when Putin orders 50,000 fresh recruits (including 10,000 imported North Korean soldiers) to go on the next rampage—ousting Ukrainian soldiers from the thin slice of Russian territory they hold, then retaking soil across the border in Donbas province—he can tell a complaining Trump that he doesn’t recall any such conversation. If Trump thinks Putin actually will refrain from stepping up attacks on Ukraine as a friendly favor … well, maybe our once-and-future president will learn a lesson about the limits of personal relations in the face of perceived national interests early in his second term.
The final twist of this saga came on Monday, when Nikolai Patrushev, an aide to Putin who was previously director of Russia’s Federal Security Service, made the following comment in an interview with the Moscow newspaper Kommersant:
The election campaign is over. To achieve success in the election, Donald Trump relied on certain forces to which he has corresponding obligations. As a responsible person, he will be obliged to fulfill them.
This is a mind-blowing bit of psychological warfare! The Russians are basically telling Trump: We put you in office. Now it’s time for you to pay us back.
When you woke up yesterday the idea that Pete Hegseth—a philandering morning TV host who has never run anything bigger than a frozen banana stand—could serve as the secretary of defense was the most preposterous idea in the history of the federal government.
By the dinner time Trump issued two nominations that made Hegseth look like Bobby Gates.
The Matt Gaetz appointment is getting most of the attention because of the irony. The DoJ being controlled by a man who was recently investigated by the same department for having an alleged sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl, whom he (allegedly) paid to travel with him? It’s too good.
Also, in the near term, the attorney general can a lot of damage to America. The AG has the power both to turn the state against its citizens and to shield wrongdoers from accountability.
But it’s the appointment of Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence that worries me more. Because for a decade Gabbard has looked and behaved like a Russian asset.
In four terms as a congresswoman her most notable actions were ongoing defenses of two war criminals: Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin.
Popular creeps are talking bad about us when our back’s turned….
Russia in Contemporary World History: A Hinge Nation in a Multipolar World?
Putin’s Russia, a successor state to the Soviet Union, is challenging American and Western foreign policy by offering a “Multipolar World Order,” an alternative to Western capitalism, liberal democracy, globalization, and the rules-based liberal order. This ideological vision includes an anti-democratic and populist development model, authoritarian male leadership, reinforcement of the civilizational and religious foundation of the nation-state, and conservative cultural values that privilege an abstract community over individual rights.
Foreign policy experts are aware of Russia’s successful diplomatic outreach in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Latin America, many of which are built upon Soviet-era (or even pre-Soviet) relationships and a shared critique of Western colonialism and globalization. This conference, “Contemporary Russia in World History” brings scholars together to offer an in-depth exploration of such historical relationships, to periodize, contextualize, and connect contemporary Russia’s place in the rapidly evolving world order, and to create a coherent ideological response to Russia’s global outreach.
Most research in American universities perpetuates a Western and Eurocentric understanding of Russian history. The dominant “Russia and the West” paradigm significantly constrains our academic analyses and foreign policy choices while simplifying the complexity of Russia and the so-called “West” as historical actors. This forum builds on the intellectual bedrock of the “Russia and the West,” paradigm that has sustained the field for over a century but seeks to analyze how various states have found common cause with Russia/the Soviet Union over time while advancing national, economic, energy, and technological, and regional interests. Bringing these cases together, we can cast a new light on Russia’s network of multilateral alliances that span the globe, including significant pockets of support within the West itself. Researching Russia’s global entanglements and considering Russia from multiple outside perspectives will allow us not only to move beyond “Russia and the West,” but also to better understand the geopolitical patterns, rivalries, and coalitions of the twenty-first century.
Russia’s changing position on the global stage, from the vanguard of the proletarian revolution to a proponent of the theory of the “civilizational state,” resonates with cultural imperatives, political developments, and economic policies in various parts of the globe. Conference participants will be asked to consider changes and continuities in Russia’s network of alliances over time, and evaluate how they impact the contemporary world order.
Conference Schedule
DAY ONE
Friday: November 1
Building/Room: William C. Powers Hall (WCP) 2.302
9:30 – 10:00 AM – Coffee and Pastries
Panel 1: OPENING DISCUSSION 10:00 – 11:45 AM Conference Co-organizers: Mary Neuburger (UT Austin) Moderator and Discussant Karen Petrone (University of Kentucky, Lexington) Discussant Choi Chatterjee (California State University, Los Angeles) Discussant
Russian Perspectives on the Ukraine War and its Origins Anatole [sic] Lieven (Quincy Institute)
Russia’s Long Relations with Western Critics of Liberalism Jeremi Suri (UT Austin)
The Russian Economy Under Sanctions James Galbraith (UT Austin)
Break for Lunch 11:45 AM – 1:00 PM
Panel 2: AFRICA and LATIN AMERICA 1:00 – 2:30 PM (Karen Petrone, Moderator)
Anti-Westernism: The Persistent Factor in Russian Relations with Africa Thomas Loyd (University of Augusta)
Ghana and Soviet (Russian) Relations from 1957 to the Present Nana Osei-Opare (Rice University)
Homeward Bound: Russia’s Return to Latin American and Caribbean Contemporary History Sandra Pujals (University of Puerto Rico)
Break 2:30 – 3:00 PM
Panel 3: THE MIDDLE EAST 3:00 – 4:30 PM (Choi Chatterjee, Moderator)
The Legacy of Soviet Rhetoric in Middle Eastern Public Discourse Margaret Peacock (University of Alabama)
Russia’s Global Outreach to the Dreamworlds of Socialist Modernity Alexey Golubev (University of Houston)
DAY TWO
Saturday: November 2
Room/Building: Robert L/ Patton Hall (RLP) 1.302 E (Glickman Conference Center)
Panel 4: ASIA 9:00 – 10:30 AM (Degi Uvsh, UT Austin, Moderator)
Russia and China: Ideological Allies in the Quest for an Alternative Global Order? Agreement and Divergence. Jeanne Wilson (Wheaton College)
Russia’s Relations with Central Asia: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives Sarah Cameron (University of Maryland, College Park)
Russia-India: Geopolitical Habit and the Politics of Goodwill Sudha Rajagopalan (University of Amsterdam, Netherlands)
Break 10:30 – 11:00 AM
Panel 5: EUROPE 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM (Steven Seegel, UT Austin, Moderator)
From “World Language” to the “Russian World”: Russian in Soviet and Post-Soviet International Relations Rachel Applebaum (Tufts University)
“Active Measures”: Subterfuge as Foreign Policy Faith Hillis (University of Chicago)
Russia’s Influence in Central and Southeast Europe: Before and After the Full-scale Invasion of Ukraine Dimitar Bechev (University of Oxford)
Break for Lunch: 12:30 to 2:00 PM
Panel 6: CONCLUDING THOUGHTS 2:00 – 3:30 PM Karen Petrone, Mary Neuburger, and Choi Chatterjee
In July 2024, leading Western media published texts with disappointing forecasts for Ukraine several times. Initially, more than 60 American analysts demanded that NATO not invite Ukraine to the Alliance, so as not to provoke an even bigger war and conflict between the USA and Russia. On July 10, eight analysts called on the West to start negotiations on ending the war as soon as possible. Both letters were signed by analysts of the American Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. This Institute is an influential think tank that consistently urges not to provoke Russia, to avoid escalation, and to force Ukraine to a ceasefire. In addition, the Institute disseminates theses beneficial to Russian propaganda, which Russians are happy to quote. Babel correspondent Oleksandr Myasishchev researched dozens of works of the Quincy Institute and the biographies of its members and tells where this American think tank came from and why its analytics should be treated with caution.
The Quincy Institute was founded in 2019. Its official goal is to “advance ideas that make US foreign policy less militaristic.” The institute advocates military restraint and peace. It is symbolic that the Institute was named in honor of US President John Quincy Adams, who was against the active participation of the US in European politics and participation in wars on other continents.
“We are building a world where peace is the norm and war is the exception,” the researchers write.
The Institute receives money for its work from donors and philanthropists, mostly charitable funds. The Institute received the first million from the George Soros Foundation and the billionaire Charles Koch Foundation. According to the publication by Texty media, at least three more analytical centers are associated with Koch brothers, which have an isolationist position regarding the war.
“Kochs were the traditional donors of the Republicans, mainly the part of the party that supports traditional capitalism and a cautious, non-military foreign policy. And Soros was donated to the Democrats. But Soros and Koch were united by a common desire to limit the participation of the United States in “endless wars” and to bet “on energetic diplomacy,” Nataliya Kononenko, political scientist and leading researcher of the Department of Political Institutes and Processes of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, explains.
Over the past six months, Quincy Institute has received at least $500,000 each from venture investor Michael Zack, the Peaceshares Fund organization, Charles Kochʼs libertarian Stand Together Trust, and from the largest US donor, Fidelity Charitable. The institute also received funds from the Ford Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation.
The instituteʼs chief analyst on Ukrainian issues is a Briton and professor at the Kingʼs College in London, Anatol Lieven. Lieven has been writing about Russia and its international relations for many years. As a journalist, he covered the wars in Afghanistan and Chechnya. Subsequently, he wrote books about the Chechen wars, the independence of the Baltic states, and in 1999 — the book “Ukraine and Russia: Fraternal Rivalry”. Until 2022, he regularly wrote for the Russian Valdai club, where Putin regularly speaks, and was an expert of this club. He also regularly contributes to the Russia Matters project and has lectured at Russian universities.
Anatol Lieven
The founder of the Institute is historian and colonel of the US Army Andrew Bacevich, who headed it until March 2024. Bacevich is a veteran of the Vietnam War, and his son was killed during the invasion of Iraq. Andrew Bacevich is an ardent opponent of American militarism.
Since March 2024, the Institute has been headed by Steven Heinz. Prior to that, he managed the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation, which holds the assets of the Rockefeller companies and engages in philanthropy, for more than 20 years. Since 2002, the foundation has worked on rapprochement and negotiations between the United States and Iran, and also advocated for the independence of Kosovo. Heinz personally played a big role in this.
“Heinz is focused on cooperation with the centrists of both parties. He is a supporter of realpolitik in foreign policy,” explains Natalia Kononenko from the National Academy of Sciences. It was after Heinzʼs arrival that the Quincy Institute became more influential and began working with Democrats.
The institute has its own online publication Responsible Statecraft, where it publishes its research. Itʼs often quoted by well-known Western media. For example, letters signed by Institute employees were published by The Hill, FT, Politico and The Nation.
Institute representatives regularly distribute typical cliches of Russian propaganda. Lieven doesnʼt call the cause of the conflict in Donbas the Russian invasion, but the “nationalist revolution” and “the violent overthrow of President Yanukovych.” He also called the war in Donbas “a civil one” and said that people there have been seeking autonomy for decades. At the same time, Levin admitted that since 2014, the Russian military has been fighting in Donbas, and the separatists are completely dependent on Russia.
The Institute also repeated the Russian thesis that Ukraine should become a federation — because the differences in language and culture in different parts of Ukraine seem to be too strong.
The first study on Ukraine was published by the Institute in June 2021, against the background of news about Russiaʼs preparations for a new invasion. Then the Institute called on the US and its partners to put pressure on Ukraine and Russia to sign a ceasefire based on the Minsk agreements. The institute proposed to return the occupied parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions under the control of Ukraine, but under the conditions of autonomy. And postpone the issue of Crimea to “future generations.”
The Institute urged not to expand NATO, in particular not to include Ukraine in any case. It stated that there are almost no important countries left in Europe outside of the Alliance, and NATOʼs expansion will do little. In addition, the accession of Ukraine to NATO would harm the national security of the United States and create a risk of war with Russia for the States. All because of Putinʼs “legitimate concerns” that NATO weapons will be near Russiaʼs border.
Instead, the US should seek complete neutrality of Ukraine. The Institute did not see any other option — they said, “a new war between Ukraine and Russia can only end with the military defeat of the Ukrainians.” Therefore, before the invasion, the Institute also opposed the supply of weapons to Ukraine.
“This is an extremely bad idea. Helping partisans to maim and kill Russian soldiers may well cause an irreparable rift between Russia and the West,” they explained.
On February 24, 2022, the Institute condemned the Russian invasion and supported Ukraineʼs right to self-defense. At the same time, there were calls to impose the strictest sanctions on Russia, to punish and isolate it.
“Regardless of the legitimacy of at least some of Russiaʼs images regarding the policies of the West and Ukraine, nothing can justify this flagrant violation of international law. Although Russia had legitimate reasons to protest against Ukrainiansʼ discrimination of the linguistic and cultural rights of Russian-speakers in Ukraine, nothing justifies President Putinʼs lies about the Ukrainian genocide and Nazism,” wrote Anatol Lieven.
At that time, Lieven predicted a partisan war and only two options for the development of events: either Russia would occupy Kyiv and create a puppet government, or the countries would agree on the expanded Minsk agreements.
When, at the end of March 2022, Ukraine resisted and liberated the north, Lieven admitted that Ukraine was capable of defending itself. However, he doubted that the country was capable of a major successful counteroffensive. Therefore, in order to prevent a protracted losing war, Ukraine should make “painful compromises”, he stated.
At the same time, Russia cannot suffer a major defeat in the war, wrote another institute analyst, William Hartung. Like, it would undermine the Russian regime and give the world a nuclear failed state, so it is necessary to return to diplomacy, “no matter how difficult it is.”
When Ukraine conducted the Kharkiv counteroffensive in September 2022, the Institute was skeptical. The offensive there was called the “liberation of the countryside”, the institute claimed that the successes were exaggerated. They also believed that in the future it would be difficult for Ukraine to liberate cities, in particular Kherson. One of the reasons is that the people there are supposedly culturally and ethnically closer to Russia. Two months after this statement, Kherson was liberated by the Armed Forces of Ukraine — the soldiers were greeted there with flowers and flags.
“Further successes of Ukraine will threaten Russian control over Crimea and create the risk of nuclear war. Territories whose population is actually loyal to Russia were returned to Ukraine,” the analysts explained.
Since the beginning of the war, the Institute has criticized the active armament of Ukraine. It considered this an escalation. The institute representatives said the weapon supply increases the risk of nuclear war and a confrontation between the US and Russia. In addition, weapons will only prolong the war, make it more destructive, and eventually end up on the black market. The Institute also believes that only American arms manufacturers profit from the war.
“If Ukraine were a US state, it would be in 11th place in terms of the amount of federal funding it receives. The question is not whether the US should support Ukraine, but how much Washington should support it,” Hartung wrote.
Negotiations and peace are the main topic for the Institute regarding Ukraine. Analysts constantly say that it is time to start negotiations, regardless of how successfully the Ukrainian armed forces are fighting.
For the first time, Anatol Lieven wrote about this back on March 3, 2022, when negotiations between Ukraine and Russia began in Belarus. Then he offered the Russians to withdraw to their positions by February 24, and Ukraine to officially establish its neutrality. As soon as Russia withdraws its troops, all sanctions should be lifted. Instead, according to Lieven, Ukraine should have given up Crimea and possibly Donbas for the sake of peace.
“Here, respect for international law must be tempered by considerations of reality, prevention of future conflicts, and the interests of ordinary people in the region. Ukraine has already lost Crimea and cannot get it back due to an endless war, which it will almost certainly lose. The fate of the territories should be decided in democratic referendums under international supervision. This should also apply to the separatist republics of Donbas,” Lieven said.
For Ukraine, the Institute promotes the model of Finland in the middle of the 20th century. Then the country lost the war with the USSR, ceded territories, and in 1948 signed an agreement on friendship and neutrality with the USSR. In this version of the future, according to analysts, Ukraine should become a bridge country between Russia and the West and have good relations with both sides.
The Instituteʼs rhetoric became tougher after the 2023 counteroffensive. According to the Instituteʼs analysts, Ukraine is simply not capable of winning. They explain: Russia has become better at fighting, Ukraine has lost “hundreds of thousands of soldiers”, the West is running out, and sanctions have not stopped Russia. Since then, Lieven no longer suggests going to the borders on February 24, but advises to stop right at the front line. He proposes to decide the fate of the occupied territories “in the future” at negotiations under the auspices of the UN.
“Ukraine has already won in key aspects. “Putin has no hope of subjugating all of Ukraine as a vassal state in the foreseeable future,” Lieven says.
The Institute denies that the concessions will provoke Russia to even greater aggression. Lieven says that only those who do not understand history and international politics think so.
“By this logic, Pakistanʼs claim to Kashmir is a prelude to Pakistanʼs invasion of Myanmar, and Argentinaʼs invasion of the Falkland Islands was part of a plan to invade Brazil. “For ethnic, historical, strategic and political reasons, Donbas, Crimea and the geographical location of Ukraine are vital issues for Russia,” he believes.
Due to this position of the Institute, two key analysts left it in June 2022. Namely, nuclear weapons specialist Joe Cirincione and retired General Paul Eaton. The latter was engaged in the training of Iraqi troops in 2003, when the country was controlled by a coalition led by the United States.
Cirincione says he worked in Quincy because he believed in a more restrained U.S. foreign policy, one that would focus on diplomacy rather than military intervention.
“However, I was shocked when the Instituteʼs leaders applied these principles to the Russian invasion,” Cirincione explains in a commentary to Babel.
Cirincione said that for many months he tried to change the position of his colleagues regarding Ukraine. He failed, and the Institute continued to justify Russia. The “diplomatic solution” promoted by the Institute means the transfer of occupied territories and people to Russia. However, in reality, such a decision would undermine Ukraineʼs defense capabilities and greatly weaken its independence, Cirincione explains to Babel.
“The Institute ignores the dangers and horrors of the Russian invasion, focuses almost exclusively on criticism of the USA, NATO and Ukraine. They justify Russiaʼs actions because they believe that they were provoked by US policy,” Cirincione said. According to him, now the Institute has little influence on the decisions of the White House. However, his strategy is to win the favor of the far-right MAGA movement and its isolationists.
When in the middle of 2022 accusations of isolationism and a pro-Russian position poured down on the Institute, they decided to explain their attitude to the war. Then the Institute again condemned Russia for crimes, but repeated that negotiations and a peace agreement are the only option.
Despite these statements, many publications of the Institute are cited by Russian propagandists. In particular, TASS, Vesti and Russkaya Gazeta. The Instituteʼs research is cited there as proof that the Americans are tired of the war, and that Ukraine is incapable of winning and must agree to Russiaʼs demands.
“Everything I see from them is very friendly to the Kremlin. They either deny Russiaʼs imperial ambitions, which led to the invasion, or actively try to promote Putinʼs appeasement,” Peter Dickinson, a researcher at the Atlantic Council, told Babel.
The ridiculous Meduza strikes again, now deliberately misnaming the (nonexistent) “Network” (and, by the by, passing off the FSB’s torture-“collaborated” fairytales as facts) after just as deliberately, three years ago, torpedoing the broad-based solidarity movement that had finally sprung up in support of the defendants in the so-called Network Case.*
There is unprecedented public outrage at the verdict and the prison sentences requested by the prosecutor. Hundreds of open letters and appeals—from musicians, poets, cinematographers, book publishers, artists, teachers, and municipal councilors—are published. For the first time in Russia, the practice of torture by the special services is openly and massively condemned. The verdict is called an attempt to intimidate the Russian people. The public demands a review of the Network Case and an investigation of the claims of torture. People stand in a huge queue on Moscow’s Lubyanka Square to take turns doing solo pickets.
But a week later, the wave of indignation is shot down. Meduza publishes a controversial article, “Four Went In, Only Two Returned,” in which a certain Alexei Poltavets confesses to a double murder that he committed, allegedly, with defendants in the Network Case. There had long been rumors about the so-called Ryazan Case—the murders of Artyom Dorofeyev and Ekaterina Levchenko in the woods near Ryazan—within the activist community, but the story had never surfaced, because there was no evidence. There is no evidence now, either: the Network’s involvement in the murder is not corroborated by anything other than the claims made by Poltavets. Poltavets himself is in Kiev, and no formal murder charges are made against the Network. But it is enough to discredit the solidarity campaign. Now, in the eyes of society, those who take the side of the Network Case defendants are defending murderers. Public outrage fades, and the verdict remains the same
Western “observers” of Russian politics have the strangest notions of which Russian sources can be trusted. I was told earlier today, by a subscriber to the late Louis Proyect’s Marxmail list, that if I (meaning me, the guy who lived in Russia for twenty years) wanted to know what was really happening in Russia nowadays, I should read Boris Kagarlitsky.
— Meduza, who in the halcyon pre-war days discredited themselves so many times, but especially when they destroyed the burgeoning grassroots solidarity campaign in support of the Network Case defendants by publishing a thoroughly scurrilous “investigative report” implicating some of the defendants in an unsolved double murder.
— Boris Kagarlitsky, the man who in 2014 did more than anyone else to peddle to gullible westerners the obnoxious hogwash that the Russian takeover of parts of the Donbas was really a grassroots populist uprising against the bad guys in Kyiv, a man whose flimsy “institute” and odious opinion website Rabkor were financed directly by the Kremlin back in the days when the Kremlin still regarded him as a useful idiot. (The Kremlin doesn’t see him that way anymore, clearly, but now it should be too late for him to redeem himself in the eyes of progressive humanity.” ||| TRR
The success of Putin’s Russia has been determined by a correct-minded approach to solving problems of the development of Russia. Putin’s domestic, socio-economic and international policy ensured great support for him from the majority of Russian citizens. He was supported by the nation not only as a politician, but first of all as a national statesman, responsible for the country and its development.
—Ivan S. Kuznetsov, Elena V. Katyshevtseva (Nikulina), and James Douglas Stuber, Modern Russian History: A Textbook, trans. Liudmila I. Katyshevtseva (Gwangju: Chonnam National University Press, 2012), p. 188
Since the beginning of the year, the number of political prisoners in Russia has increased from 349 to 410. According to the Memorial Human Rights Center (included in the register of foreign agents), the vast majority of them were deprived of their liberty due to their religious affiliation. The list also includes people who were deprived of their liberty after participating in protests in support of Alexey Navalny in January of this year.
—Alina Pinchuk, “‘The growing repressiveness of the regime’: there are more political prisoners,” Radio Svoboda, August 17, 2021
Photo and translation of second quotation by the Russian Reader
Стирание людей с помощью дезинформации: Сирия и “анти-империализм” дураков
Недобросовестные писатели и СМИ, часто действующие под эгидой “независимой журналистики” с якобы “левыми” взглядами, распространяют агрессивную пропаганду и дезинформацию, целью которой является лишение сирийцев политической свободы.
[Следующее oткрытое письмо было совместным усилием группы сирийских писателей и интеллектуалов и других лиц, которые солидарны с ними. Она подписана активистами, писателями, художниками и учеными из Сирии и 34 других стран Африки, Азии, Европы, Ближнего Востока, Северной Америки, Океании и Южной Америки и выходит на нескольких языках: английском, арабском, французском, испанском, греческом и итальянском.]
С начала сирийского восстания десять лет назад, и особенно с тех пор, как Россия вмешалась в Сирию от имени Башара Асада, произошло любопытное и пагубное развитие событий: появление сторонников Асада во имя “анти-империализма” среди тех, кто в противном случае обычно идентифицирует себя как прогрессивных или “левых”, и последующее распространение манипулятивной дезинформации, которая обычно отвлекает внимание от хорошо документированных злоупотреблений Асада и его союзников. Изображая себя “противниками” империализма, они обычно проявляют крайне избирательное внимание к вопросам “вмешательства” и нарушениям прав человека, что часто согласуется с правительствами России и Китая; тех, кто не согласен с их строго контролируемыми взглядами, часто (и ложно) клеймят как “энтузиастов смены режима” или обдураченных западными политическими интересами.
Раскольническая и сектантская роль, которую играет эта группа, безошибочна: с их упрощенной точки зрения, все движения за демократию и за достоинство, которые идут против российских или китайских государственных интересов, обычно изображаются как нисходящая работа западного вмешательства: ни одно из них не является автохтонным, ни одно из них не связано с десятилетиями независимой внутренней борьбы против жестокой диктатуры (как в Сирии), и ни одно по-настоящему не представляет желания людей, требующих права на достойную жизнь, а не угнетения и насилия. Их объединяет отказ бороться с преступлениями режима Асада или даже признать, что имело место жестоко подавленное народное восстание против Асада.
Эти авторы и средства массовой информации выросли в последние годы и часто ставят Сирию на первый план своей критики империализма и интервенционизма, которую они характерно ограничивают западом; российское и иранское участие, как правило, игнорируется. При этом они стремились присоединиться к давней и почтенной традиции внутренней оппозиции злоупотреблениям имперской властью за рубежом, не только, но и довольно часто исходящей от левых.
Но они не принадлежат к этой компании по праву. Никто из тех, кто явно или неявно присоединяется к пагубному правительству Асада, этого не делает. Никто из тех, кто избирательно и оппортунистически выдвигает обвинения в “империализме” из соображений своей конкретной версии “левой” политики, вместо того чтобы последовательно противостоять ей в принципе по всему миру — тем самым признавая империалистический интервенционизм России, Ирана и Китая, — этого не делает.
Часто под прикрытием практики “независимой журналистики” эти различные авторы и средства массовой информации функционировали в качестве главных источников дезинформации и пропаганды о продолжающейся глобальной катастрофе, в которую превратилась Сирия. Их реакционная, перевернутая Реалполитика так же зациклена на нисходящей, антидемократической “политике власти”, как и Генри Киссинджер или Сэмюэл Хантингтон, только с обратной валентностью. Но этот сводящий с ума упрощающий риторический ход (“переворачивание сценария”, как однажды выразился один из них), каким бы привлекательным он ни был для тех, кто стремится определить, кто такие “хорошие парни” и “плохие парни” в любом конкретном месте на планете, на самом деле является инструментом специально подобранной лести для своей аудитории о “истинной работе власти”, которая служит укреплению дисфункционального статус-кво и препятствует развитию действительно прогрессивного и международного подхода к глобальной политике, в котором мы так отчаянно нуждаемся, учитывая планетарные проблемы реагирования на глобальное потепление.
Доказательства того, что мощь США сама по себе была ужасающе разрушительной, особенно во время холодной войны, ошеломляют: по всему миру, от Вьетнама до Индонезии, Ирана, Конго, Южной и Центральной Америки и за ее пределами, массовые нарушения прав человека, имевшие место во имя борьбы с коммунизмом, очевидны. И в период после окончания холодной войны, так называемой “Войны с террором”, американские интервенции в Афганистане и Ираке не сделали ничего, чтобы предложить фундаментальную национальную перемену.
Но Америка не играет центральной роли в том, что произошло в Сирии, несмотря на то, что утверждают эти люди. Идея о том, что это так или иначе, несмотря на все доказательства обратного, является побочным продуктом провинциальной политической культуры, которая настаивает как на центральной роли власти США в глобальном масштабе, так и на империалистическом праве определять, кто “хорошие парни” и “плохие парни” в любом данном контексте.
Идеологическое сближение правых поклонников Асада с такого рода авторитарно-дружественной “левизной” симптоматично и указывает на то, что очень реальная и очень серьезная проблема заключается в другом: что делать, когда народ подвергается такому же насилию со стороны своего правительства, как сирийский народ, удерживаемый в плену теми, кто охотно прибегают к пыткам, исчезновениям и убийствам людей даже за малейший намек на политическую оппозицию их власти? По мере того как многие страны все ближе и ближе приближаются к авторитаризму и отходят от демократии, нам кажется, что это чрезвычайно важный политический вопрос, на который пока нет ответа; и поскольку ответа нет, во всем мире растет безнаказанность со стороны сильных и растет уязвимость для бессильных.
Об этом у этих “антиимпериалистов” нет полезных слов. О глубоком политическом насилии, которому подвергли сирийский народ Ассады, иранцы, русские? Нет слов. Простите нас за то, что мы указываем на то, что такое стирание жизни и опыта сирийцев воплощает саму суть империалистических (и расистских) привилегий. Эти писатели и блогеры не проявили никакой осведомленности о сирийцах, в том числе подписавших это письмо, которые рисковали своей жизнью, выступая против режима, которые были заключены в пыточные тюрьмы пыток Ассадов (некоторые в течение многих лет), потеряли близких, у которых есть друзей и родственников, которых насильственно исчезли, бежали из своей страны – хотя многие сирийцы пишут и говорят об этом опыте в течение многих лет.
В совокупности сирийский опыт от Революции до настоящего времени представляет собой фундаментальный вызов миру, каким он представляется этим людям. Сирийцы, которые напрямую противостояли режиму Асада, часто ценой больших потерь, сделали это не из-за какого-то западного империалистического заговора, а потому, что десятилетия злоупотреблений, жестокости и коррупции были и остаются невыносимыми. Настаивать на обратном и поддерживать Асада значит пытаться лишить сирийцев всякой политической воли и поддержать давнюю политику Асадов по внутренней политике, которая лишила сирийцев какого-либо значимого права голоса в их правительстве и обстоятельствах.
Мы, сирийцы и сторонники борьбы сирийского народа за демократию и права человека, воспринимаем эти попытки “исчезнуть” сирийцев из мира политики, солидарности и партнерства как вполне соответствующие характеру режимов, которыми так явно восхищаются эти люди. Это “анти-империализм” и “левизна” беспринципных, ленивых и дураков, и только усиливает дисфункциональный международный тупик, демонстрируемый в Совете безопасности ООН. Мы надеемся, что читатели этой статьи присоединятся к нам в противостоянии этому.
Подписанты [Институциональная принадлежность указывается только для целей идентификации, полный список можно найти тут]
Ахмад Айша, журналист и переводчик (Турция)
Али Акил, основатель и представитель Сирийской солидарности в Новой Зеландии (Аотеароа/Новая Зеландия)
Амина Масри, активистка/педагог (США)
Асмаэ Дачан, сирийско-итальянский журналист (Италия)
и многие другие.
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Источник: New Politics. Перевод яндексовских роботов с моей посильной помощью. Спасибо Гаральду Эцбаху и другим за подсказку. Фото: “Дейли Бист”/Дэвид Грей/Рейтерс
The duck-billed platypus. Photo courtesy of WEST 1
I have been a fan of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation‘s mighty Radio National (ABC RN) for many years now. I especially enjoy programs like “Late Night Live” with the redoubtable Phillip Adams, an Australian national treasure. ABC RN has definitely changed the way I think about lots of things by giving me a variety of Australian and non-Australian perspectives on Australia and the rest of the world.
And yet, like any other human endeavor, ABC RN is capable of getting it badly wrong, as in this interview on “Late Night Live” with former Australian diplomat Tony Kevin. Mr. Kevin is a card-carrying Putinist, apparently, and doesn’t mind painting an unbearably rosy picture of Russia today that is so at odds with reality you’ll find your hair standing on end if you listen to the interview.
To be honest, I turned off my radio when Mr. Kevin launched into his “debunking” of the Skripal case and the Douma gas attack.
It’s not my place to do it, but I hope Australian taxpayers, who foot the bill for the ABC, go after the corporation for this shameless platforming of utter mendacity and useful idiocy in the service of the neo-imperialist Russian police state.
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The new cold war
Tony Kevin has worked in Russia as a diplomat and has been writing about foreign policy in relation to Russia for years.
He believes that there are false narratives being pushed by the West to maintain the status of Russia as the evil enemy.
Could there be a path forward towards detente between the West and Russia?
Here is my transcription of the personal message from his Ambassador, Dr A Pavlovsky to me, that the Russian Embassy’s Deputy Ambassador Mr A Ovcharenko read out at my Canberra booklaunch 19 November 2019:
“I am pleased to take part in this presentation of a new book by Tony Kevin, Russia and the West – the last two action-packed years 2017-19.
In my personal view, Tony is a unique Australian author. Being a [former] career diplomat, he clearly sees and comprehensively analyses political forces. He spent many years in Russia, which helped him to understand deeper my country, its history, culture, political and social traditions. Such works as Return to Moscow and this new book offer realistic and honest views on Russia, which are fundamentally different from what are distorted images imposed by mainstream Western media, portraying Russia as an aggressive and hostile country. Tony Kevin stands against such biased approaches towards Russia. He advocates for good relations between Russia and Australia based on common interests and mutual respect. I believe that Tony Kevin‘s new work will help many Australians to understand the real situation around Russia.”
Leningrad, 1987. Donald Trump and his first wife, Ivana Zelníčková.
The duck-billed platypus. Photo courtesy of