
Escalation in the Donbas Risks a Disastrous War
Russian president Vladimir Putin has sent tanks into the Donbas on dubious pretexts. But a far bigger danger awaits if the West seeks an escalation that will only pour fuel on the fire.

Russian president Vladimir Putin has sent tanks into the Donbas on dubious pretexts. But a far bigger danger awaits if the West seeks an escalation that will only pour fuel on the fire.

This summer, European states hiked military spending and swallowed a poor trade deal in order to win favor with Donald Trump. Yet the US president’s negotiations with Vladimir Putin all but ignored their proposals.

Emmanuel Macron is a lame duck president without a parliamentary majority. He’s turned to the international stage to show off his continued influence — but France seems unlikely to weigh on the final outcome in Ukraine.

Elections to Ukraine’s parliament produced the first one-party majority since the end of the USSR. But as nationalist violence persists, comedian-president Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s base is anything but stable.

In Sunday’s election Ukrainian voters dealt a decisive rebuttal to the post-Maidan establishment. Yet well-organized nationalist forces represent a time bomb under the new president-elect.

German chancellor Olaf Scholz has just committed €100 billion to defense spending. The move is widely touted as a strong response to Russian aggression — but is more about showing Germany’s fealty to US global foreign policy objectives.

In Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands, Hitler and Stalin are one and the same. And the partisans — Jewish fighters included — only encouraged German crimes.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine transformed the energy politics of Europe: America became Germany’s main importer of liquid natural gas and Putin pivoted east. This new order is likely to generate more conflicts than the one that came before it.

In recent months, Emmanuel Macron insisted on the need to slash public debt, yet now he calls for huge military spending. The call to remilitarize has become the center of the French president’s agenda — and offers a pretext for even further cuts to welfare.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a reminder that military conscription remains foundational to modern warfare. It is a reckless, self-defeating, and criminal practice that makes us all less safe — and it should have been abolished long ago.

This week, 27 foreign policy experts called for a no-fly zone in Ukraine that would lead to the shooting down of Russian planes — an idea that could lead to a nuclear holocaust. Their message is being bankrolled by arms manufacturers and fossil fuel interests.

US officials just admitted they don’t know where their arms shipments to Ukraine will actually end up, and that they could fall into dangerous hands.

Sweden’s left has historically been opposed to joining NATO. But as the war in Ukraine made joining the alliance popular, Sweden’s Social Democrats changed tack, alienating many of their supporters and exposing deep divisions among the Left in the process.

The invasion of Ukraine is not simply a product of Vladimir Putin’s expansionist mindset. It corresponds to a project for Russian capitalism that he and his allies have pursued since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

After weeks on the sidelines, Bernie Sanders and other progressives are taking a forceful stand on the Ukraine crisis. They’re navigating a dangerous climate created by mainstream media — including liberal outlet MSNBC — that casts antiwar opinion as disloyalty.

Both official and liberal media in Russia told the population that war wasn’t coming — until suddenly it did. Vladimir Putin’s failure to mobilize public opinion has drawn him into a potentially long and unpopular war.

Since 1945, Finland has sought cordial relations with its vast Russian neighbor. But Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine has emboldened champions of Finnish NATO membership — and made things harder for left-wing critics of the military alliance.

Adam Schiff, the liberal hero of impeachment, is a wholly owned subsidiary of the military-industrial complex and a fervent exponent of permanent war.

In today’s Russia, feminists form one of the most active social movements defying state repression. Now they’re uniting to resist Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine.

For decades, Georgian neoliberals have justified obedience to Washington, relentless pro-market reforms, and soaring inequality in the name of Westernization. But Russia's war has only revived claims that Georgia needs to bind itself tighter to the West.