Over the past week a number of articles have appeared in mainstream Western publications, penned by respectful Western authors, which are (in all likelihood unwittingly, I must add) out-Trifkovicing Trifkovic in their assessment of the tragedy in Ukraine. Having made many of the same points over the past nine months, I am glad to say...
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Russia, Ukraine, and the Return of Nationalism
The Russia-Ukraine War has become a proxy fight between American-led globalism and the alternative: a multipolar world of nation-states free from American hegemony.
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Borderlines
On January 1, something like 20,000 people marched by torchlight through the center of Kiev to celebrate the 105th anniversary of the birth of the Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera. Some of the older participants even wore their old uniforms from the Ukrainian National Army. In Western Ukraine, Bandera is regarded as the founder of...
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Cracks in the Narrative on Ukraine
Recent statements by Germany's foreign policy adviser, Jens Plotner, have exposed a general weakening of the narrative that asserts a perfectly monolithic Western world, rock-solid in its determination to punish Russia.
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What’s Really behind the State Department’s Meddling in Ukraine?
Letter from Pergamum-on-the-Potomac On March 31 the first round of Ukraine’s presidential election was held. In line with all polls, the top spot (with about 30 percent of the vote) was taken by Volodymyr Zelensky, a comic actor who played President of Ukraine in a popular TV series, making him the leading candidate for the...
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Putin, Russia, and Ukraine: Historical Roots of a Tragedy
When Vladimir Putin channeled history in his Feb. 21 speech justifying Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, many Western critics dismissed his remarks as a pack of lies, the ravings of a delusional madman. But things are not always as simple as they seem. While many of the claims Putin made to justify his aggression are...
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Borderlines, Part 2
Tanks make good pictures—the idea of an invasion of Ukraine sends shivers down the spines of most of Europe—and keeping the tanks at bay is what the political class is expected, indeed offers, to do. The price, however, will be for nations to surrender just about everything else. And that price is now about to...
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Ukraine’s Dilemma
Speaking at the end of the meeting of the EU-Ukraine Cooperation Council in Luxembourg on June 24, European Enlargement Commissioner Štefan Füle warned Ukraine that “time is running preciously short” for the government in Kiev to meet all European Union conditions in time to sign a free trade and association agreement in November. “Ukraine has made...
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Polemics & Exchanges: August 2022
Correspondence on "More Hand-Wringing About the Radical Right," by Paul Gottfried and "A Fork in Europe's Road," by Srdja Trifkovic.
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Ukraine: Yulia’s Breath of Stale Air
According to a seasoned observer of Moscow’s political scene, the Russian political class cringed last Wednesday morning on learning that Obama had suffered a humiliating political defeat. The Russian leaders don’t think much of Obama personally, but they are worried over what the Republican control of the House might mean for the fledgling “reset”...
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Putin to Biden: Finlandize Ukraine, or We Will
Either the U.S. and NATO provide us with “legal guarantees” that Ukraine will never join NATO or become a base for weapons that can threaten Russia—or we will go in and guarantee it ourselves. This is the message Russian President Vladimir Putin is sending, backed by the 100,000 troops Russia has amassed on Ukraine’s borders. ...
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Putin to Biden: Finlandize Ukraine, or We Will
Either the U.S. and NATO provide us with “legal guarantees” that Ukraine will never join NATO or become a base for weapons that can threaten Russia—or we will go in and guarantee it ourselves. This is the message Russian President Vladimir Putin is sending, backed by the 100,000 troops Russia has amassed on Ukraine’s borders. ...
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Ukraine: Yulia’s Breath of Stale Air
According to a seasoned observer of Moscow’s political scene, the Russian political class cringed last Wednesday morning on learning that Obama had suffered a humiliating political defeat. The Russian leaders don’t think much of Obama personally, but they are worried over what the Republican control of the House might mean for the fledgling “reset” in...
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Ukraine is a Long-Term Affair
In the latest issue of the Russian magazine Russkiy Mir (“Russian World,” December 10) our foreign affairs editor considers the implications of the crisis in Ukraine for Russia’s geostratigic position in the years to come. (Translated from Russian by the author) In Ukraine the United States presented Russia with its most serious challenge in the...
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The Brown Revolution: A Noxious Brew
The recent Brown Revolution in Ukraine, which saw the overthrow of the legitimate (if corrupt and bumbling) Yanukovych government, is a triumph of Western Ukrainian nationalism—an ideology characterized by a violent Russophobia and antisemitism. The rabid neo-Nazis of Oleh Tyahnybok’s Svoboda (“Freedom”) party and Dmytro Yarosh’s militant Right Sector are just the latest manifestation of...
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Has Putin Won Round One in Ukraine?
When NBC’s Lester Holt asked President Joe Biden what might prompt him to send U.S. troops to rescue Americans fleeing Ukraine, Biden replied: “There’s not. That’s a world war when Americans and Russia start shooting at one another.” “It’s not like we’re dealing with a terrorist organization. We’re dealing with one of the largest...
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Eastern Approaches
In April 1904, Scottish geographer Halford Mackinder gave a lecture at the Royal Geographical Society. His paper, “The Geographical Pivot of History,” caused a sensation and marked the birth of geopolitics as an autonomous discipline. According to Mackinder, control over the Eurasian “World-Island” is the key to global hegemony. At its core is the “pivot...
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Is a Russia-NATO Clash Over Ukraine Ahead?
When Hungarian rebels arose in 1956 to overthrow the Communist regime imposed by Joseph Stalin, President Dwight Eisenhower refused to send U.S. forces to aid the Hungarians. Ike would not take America to war with Russia over a small country in Central Europe. While the Hungarians were heroic and inspirational, Hungary was neither a member...
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Is There a Peace Deal Putin and Zelensky Can Accept?
In an interview with Reuters, Dmitry Peskov, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman for decades, made a startling offer. Moscow could end the Ukraine war immediately, said Peskov, if four conditions were met. Ukraine should cease all military action, recognize Crimea as part of Russia, accept the independence of the Luhansk and Donetsk separatist enclaves, and...
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U.S. Policy: Cheer Ukrainians On — and Keep Us Out!
After Friday’s NATO summit refused to establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky said the allies’ failure to “close the skies” to Russian military aircraft gives “a green light for further bombing of Ukrainian cities.” “All the people who will die starting from this day will … die because of you,” said...
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Biden Should Declare NATO Membership Closed
In 2014, when Russian President Vladimir Putin responded to a U.S.-backed coup that ousted a pro-Russian regime in Kyiv by occupying Crimea, President Barack Obama did nothing. When Putin aided secessionists in the Donbass in seizing Luhansk and Donetsk, once again, Obama did nothing. Why did we not come to the military assistance of Ukraine?...
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Who Wins, Who Loses Gen. Milley’s Long War?
Speaking of the seven-week war in Ukraine ignited by Vladimir Putin, Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is warning us to expect a war that lasts for years. “I do think this is a very protracted conflict … measured in years,” Milley told Congress. “I don’t know about a decade,...
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Putin & Xi Have Red Lines, Too
What are Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping up to? In recent days, Russian tanks, artillery, armor, trucks, and troops have been moving by road and rail ever closer to Ukraine, and Moscow is said to be repositioning its 56th Guards Air Assault Brigade in Crimea. Military sources in Kyiv estimate there are now 85,000 Russian...
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Polemics & Exchanges: July 2022
Letters from readers about Chronicles articles "Revolt of the Fatherless," "America's 'Female Future' Has Open Borders," and about the war in Ukraine.
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Moscow Rules
Spending the first three days of spring in snowy Moscow, especially after being in balmy Yalta and Sevastopol, is not my idea of fun. It is useful, however, when you write on foreign affairs and there’s a first-rate crisis under way between “Putin’s Russia” and the West. The overriding impression is that Moscow no longer...
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Is Ukraine’s Partition Zelenskyy’s Fate?
“It’s time to meet, time to talk … time to restore territorial integrity … for Ukraine,” said President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday. Zelenskyy added that the need to negotiate was even greater for Moscow. “Otherwise, Russia’s losses will be so huge that several generations will not be enough to rebound.” According to the Pentagon, Russia...
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‘Ukraine can’t have it both ways’
Srdja Trifkovic discusses the Ukraine energy crisis, RT live, April 10, 18:06 GMT RT: Ukraine’s economy is in a shambles and its people are suffering. Is it morally justified to turn the taps off? Srdja Trifkovic: Talking about “moral justification,” let’s remember the first OPEC oil crisis in the winter of 1973-74, after the Yom...
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Where Are the ‘High Crimes’?
[above: statue of Horace] “Quid pro quo” was the accusatory Latin phrase most often used to describe President Donald Trump’s July 25 phone call asking for a “favor” from the president of Ukraine. New Year’s prediction: The Roman poet Horace’s Latin depiction: “Parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus“—”The mountains went into labor, and brought forth a...
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Russia Is Not the Great Rival; China Is
While all facts are true, not all facts are relevant. And what are the relevant facts in this crisis where 100,000 Russian troops are now stationed along the Ukrainian border? Fact one: There is not now and never has been a vital U.S. interest in Ukraine to justify risking a war with Russia. History tells...
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Come Home, America
The proxy war in Ukraine is a globalist creation that has little to do with American interests. Americans should not emotionally invest in a fight that is not their own, but focus on more important matters at their own borders.
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Time to Allow a Cease-Fire in Ukraine
U.S. and UK officials have been sabotaging attempts to reach a cease-fire in Ukraine in an attempt to embroil Russia in a war of attrition. It’s time for a sober reassessment of a strategy that has backfired on Western leaders.
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Is Victory for Ukraine Worth Risking Nuclear War?
During the 70 years that the Soviet Union existed, Ukraine was an integral part of the nation. Yet this geographic and political reality posed no threat to the United States. A Russia and a Ukraine, both inside the USSR, was an accepted reality that was seen as no threat for the seven decades that they...
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Dispelling the Darkness of Secularism
Bolshevism evolved into religion, some kind of materialistic pagan religion, which worships Lenin and his like as demigods, while considering lies, deceit, violence, the oppression of the poor, the demoralizing of children, humiliation of women, destruction of the family . . . and the reduction of all the nation to extreme poverty as the principles...
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Is Putin Considering Using Nukes on NATO?
From his principal avenues of attack on Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin began this war with three strategic goals. Send an army south from Belarus to capture Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and replace the government. Send forces into northeast Ukraine to capture its second largest city, Kharkiv, with 1.4 million people. Third, extend the Donetsk enclave...
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Is Ukraine’s War Now America’s War?
The U.S. intelligence community bragging publicly about helping to sink a Russian ship raises the possibility of a wider U.S.-Russia war that could escalate into World War III.
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Media Windbags
Emotional outbursts and misleading rhetoric from our political class and TV opinionators leave Americans confused about everything from Putin's motives to Caitlyn Jenner's degeneracy.
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Ukraine Bosnified, Putin Hitlerized
On March 6 President Obama said in Washington that the Crimean authorities’ plans for a referendum “violate the Ukrainian Constitution and violate international law.” “Any discussion about the future of Ukraine must include the legitimate government of Ukraine. We are well beyond the days when borders can be redrawn over the heads of democratically elected...
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A Russophobe for Peace—Even More So
Events in the Russia-Ukraine situation have moved far faster than anyone imagined, and today we are watching Russian troops attempt to take Kiev as part of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine. This invasion will do to the reputation of Putin’s Russia what the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 did to the reputation of...
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U.S. and Ukraine, Goals in Conflict
Zelenskyy desires a Russian defeat, but the war is now generating greater risks and dangers for the U.S. than any additional rewards we might realize from "weakening" Russia with further fighting.
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Is Trump’s Russia Policy Being Hijacked?
In crafting the platform in Cleveland on which Donald Trump would run, America Firsters inflicted a major defeat on the War Party. The platform committee rejected a plank to pull us deeper into Ukraine, by successfully opposing new U.S. arms transfers to Kiev. Improved relations with Russia were what candidate Trump had promised, and what...
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Ukraine’s Crisis, Not Ours
Richard Engel of NBC, reporting from Maidan Square in Kiev, described what he witnessed as the Feb. 19 truce collapsed. Police began to back away from their positions in the square, said Engel. And the protesters attacked. Gunfire was exchanged and the death toll, believed to be in the dozens, is not known. In short,...
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Letter From the Crimea: The Price of Folly
On the night train from Kiev to Simferopol I share a compartment with Volodymyr Prytula, a Crimean journalist. Called “Vova” by his friends, this slender man with a Zhivagoesque mustache is my sole contact in the Crimea. He speaks little English, I no Ukrainian or Russian, but we communicate with the help of Ukrainian red...
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Message From Ukraine – Nukes Do Deter
When he arrived at Christ the Savior Cathedral to pay his respects to the ultra-nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who had died of COVID-19, Russian President Vladimir Putin carried a clutch of red roses. The man beside him was carrying a briefcase. That briefcase appeared to be Russia’s version of the “football” that is carried by a...
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What To Do About That Russian Ultimatum
“Get off our front porch. Get out of our front yard. And stay out of our backyard.” This might stand as a crude summary of two draft security pacts Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei A. Ryabkov delivered last week as Russia’s price for resolving the crisis created by those 100,000 Russian troops on Ukraine’s borders. Ryabkov’s...
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NATO—Strategic Asset or Liability?
Is the territorial integrity of Ukraine a cause worth America’s fighting a war with Russia? No, it is not. And this is why President Joe Biden has declared that the U.S. will not become militarily involved should Russia invade Ukraine. Biden is saying that, no matter our sentiments, our vital interests dictate staying out of...
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How Solid Are U.S. War Guarantees?
When several NATO nations revealed that they had dozens of Russian-made MiG-29s, the idea arose to fly them to Ukraine and turn them over to Ukrainian pilots familiar with the MiGs. America would provide F-16s to replace the MiGs. Poland had an even better idea. Warsaw would fly its 27 MiG fighter jets to the...
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Putin’s Miscalculation
“This is worse than a crime,” Talleyrand famously said of Napoleon’s execution of the Duke of Enghien: “it is a mistake.” The same can be said of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” in Ukraine, almost four weeks after it was launched. However the battle turns out–even if the Russian army achieves its operational...
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The Transnistrian Solution, Lost in Kievan Translation
On June 14 I was the keynote speaker at a press briefing in Kiev organized by The American Institute in Ukraine on the problem of Pridnestrovie (Transnistria). The Russian and Ukrainian majority of that self-proclaimed republic straddling the eastern bank of the Dniestr declared secession from Moldova after a brief but bloody conflict in...
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A U.S.-Russia War Over Ukraine?
“Could a U.S. response to Russia’s action in Ukraine provoke a confrontation that leads to a U.S.-Russia War?” This jolting question is raised by Graham Allison and Dimitri Simes in the cover article of The National Interest. The answer the authors give, in Countdown to War: The Coming U.S. Russia Conflict, is that the odds...
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Did We Provoke Putin’s War in Ukraine?
When Russia’s Vladimir Putin demanded that the U.S. rule out Ukraine as a future member of the NATO alliance, the U.S. archly replied: NATO has an open-door policy. Any nation, including Ukraine, may apply for membership and be admitted. We’re not changing that. In the Bucharest declaration of 2008, NATO had put Ukraine and...