Netanyahu and Israel Must Learn to Quit Putin’s Russia

Benjamin Netanyahu is returning as Israel’s prime minister at a time of worldwide geopolitical crisis. Prices are still rising. Currencies are depreciating. The permanent revolution of Iran’s Islamic Republic is facing the most serious threat to its existence since its foundation. Afghanistan is collapsing under the weight of Taliban cruelty and incompetence, amid a growing and savage Islamic State insurgency. Refugee crises mass at the borders of the world’s rich countries. 

Lukashenko Courts Disaster by Following Putin Into Ukraine

The president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, is a fool. His countrymen know this well. They have lived under his rule for almost thirty years, and their country is poor and underdeveloped. Lukashenko used to wear with pride a title awarded to him by the international media, “Europe’s last dictator.” His most recent fiscal tactic, intended to fight inflation, has been to ban price increases by state decree. Obviously, he is not a deep thinker. 

Macron’s Mediations

On May 30, French journalist Frederic Leclerc-Imhoff, who was 32, was killed by Russian artillery shrapnel. He was covering a humanitarian evacuation in eastern Ukraine and was killed during an apparent humanitarian ceasefire. 

Where Will the War Go Next?

Almost every night in Russia, it seems, a government building bursts into an unexplained fire. Fuel depots, office buildings, infrastructure hubs — and once a bridge. No doubt people have their theories. Insinuation abounds. ‘Karma is a cruel thing,’ one Ukrainian official has said on Telegram. But in the main, both the Russian government and Ukraine maintain an eloquent silence.

The Macron Doctrine

Five years ago, Emmanuel Macron was elected president of France. He stood for office on a platform of radical change and a departure from the status quo.

He promised to reinvent the French state, revitalise its economy, and change the country in social terms. In foreign policy, Macron’s stated policy was no less bold.

Russia’s African Empire

Last week, at roughly the time that photographs and stories began to filter out of liberated Bucha in Ukraine, the NGO Human Rights Watch published a report of similar massacres which took place contemporaneously in rural Mali. What linked the two was the identity of the perpetrators. In Ukraine and across Africa, these atrocities are committed by Russians.

Vladimir Zhirinovsky: Clown Prince of Russia’s Managed Opposition

The beginning of the year has not gone as well as it could have for Vladimir Zhirinovsky. Mostly because he is now dead, but also because Zhirinovsky, a Russian politician of the ‘managed’ (pro-Kremlin) opposition, predicted and vigorously supported Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. If Zhirinovsky were able to follow the campaign from his hospital bed, it could not have met his expectations. The imperial Russia of his imagination ought to have come into glorious existence, but its armed forces instead suffered reversal and humiliation.

The Return of Navalny

As Alexei Navalny, a Russian opposition leader, travelled back to his home country on a plane filled with media this week, everyone knew what was going to happen next. It had been extensively trailed in advance.

Hope and Fear for Belarus

In his not uncontroversial White House memoir, The Room Where It Happened, John Bolton describes how the administration he was part of protractedly failed to liberate Venezuela. 

In Sight of Sochi

After weeks of threat and portent, the people of Idlib have been granted a stay of execution. The regime of Bashar al-Assad and its Russian backers will not, for now, rampage through the northern province and bomb it to rubble. Their incipient offensive has been delayed, though it has not been cancelled.