#Lessons from Russia Ukraine war

[snovyda]

[...] A major international media outlet asked me recently to join its educational platform. I had to record a video message in English and talk about my experience of serving in the armed forces of Ukraine, so children around the world could learn English from these videos and accompanying materials. I recorded it and did everything according to their instructions.

I got a cheerful message the other day from the editorial office, saying: “We’ve launched!” I opened the presentation and had a panic attack. The lesson was structured around eight speakers, each talking about their war experience: four Ukrainians (including me) and four Russians. A Russian journalist and armed forces “deserter”. A Russian teacher. A Russian medical director. Another Russian journalist. The lesson ended with a slide. The Russian flag was at the top. The Ukrainian flag at the bottom. The question proposed for discussion: “What similarities and differences did you notice when listening to the experiences of people from Russia and Ukraine?”

The emotional negligence of this makes me want to scream. [...] I am sickened by how my story has become an ideological tool to equalise the experience of the defender and the attacker. [...]

I’ve been living with the acute feeling that the world is tired of restraining its unquenchable love of Russia. The west wants to believe in the Cinderella story, that one day the dictatorship will fall and a wonderful democratic world will emerge.

Instead of imposing further sanctions and restrictions on Russia, the west is ready to crown the film Anora with all the awards, despite the fact that the Russian actor Yura Borisov, who appears in the film, also starred in a biopic of Mikhail Kalashnikov, the inventor of the AK-47, which was partly filmed in Crimea after its annexation.

The world is ready to listen to Russia again: a UK television channel last year released the film Ukraine’s War: The Other Side by Sean Langan. The film doesn’t just give the other side a voice; it gives a human dimension to the stories of the occupiers and repeats the narratives of Russian propaganda. This is as consistent with journalistic standards as asking an executioner, how are you feeling as you do this, and do you miss your family who are waiting for you at home?[...]

[...] If during the first term of Trump’s presidency we talked of the post-truth era, now we find ourselves in a world in which the truth is taken out, tortured and shot. This means that there will be no justice. This means that anything goes.[...]

[...] The world is looking at the body of truth that is dying and bleeding before our eyes. I beg you, if you can’t stop the bleeding, at least don’t turn away from the sight of blood.[...]

[maidservant-hecubus]

My father is an Ashkenazi Jew. His parents were first generation Americans. Their parents escaped the pogroms in Russia and Ukraine and came to find their American dream. They fought in wars and opened businesses and assimilated and my generation barely has a few words of Yiddish between us. My mother is as much of a WASP as it gets. American Revolutionaries and Signers and some household name civil war feature players. Not old money, but old America and undoubtedly white. I'm patrilineal. Not a Jew to a lot of Jews. Not a Jew to a lot of my Jewish family. Even though i was raised Jewish. Even though I look like my father. Even though i got enough of something in my DNA to get asked "What are you?" more often than not. More often than I'm just accepted at face value as "white". When i was little we lived in an Irish Catholic neighborhood. Like the 5-10 kids in every family sort of Irish catholic neighborhood. The kids calling me a christ killer and refusing to play with me because they heard it from their parents sort of irish catholic neighborhood. For some reason my parents tried to send me to the catholic school down the street. I lasted less than a week because i didn't understand their rituals and their language and they found out my father was a Jew and they couldn't have a christ killer in their midst. I was just sad i didn't get to wear the cute plaid skirt anymore. So i went to the public school and my well meaning shiksa mother who never converted but learned the Chanukah prayers and helped cook Seder dinners came to the school to teach the class about Chanukah. She taught them songs and all the kids got dreidels and had so much fun spinning the top for chocolate coins. It was nice to feel normal. A few weeks later a boy in a higher grade attacked me on the way to the bus and smashed my art project (we had made pig noses from solo cups to celebrate reading charlotte's web) into my face and called me a filthy jew. I didn't understand, i was more upset to lose the project i was so proud of. Other things happened. Things I wont talk about because putting them in context would doxx me. But a million reminders that i wasn't one of them. I wasn't welcome because i was Jewish. My parents divorced. My mother left. Far away so I'd only see her a handful of times growing up. And I went to live with my Dad in a city that seemed like it was overflowing with Jews. Everyone knew my holidays! In public school the teachers looked like my family and had familiar sounding names. We had the high holy days off just like christmas or easter. We sang Chanukah songs in the winter recital and nobody's mom had to come teach them to the class. Finally I belonged! My friends and cousins started planning for their b mitzvah celebrations and i asked for my own. I asked to go to hebrew school so i could be more like the people i belonged with and celebrate the things i loved about myself and them. "But you're not jewish." My father would say. This was news to me. The christ killer. The filthy jew. But a 10 year old has little power over their lives. So i didn't go. I didn't have a bat mitzva while my cousins had theirs. It was okay because i still belonged more than i ever had. But i was still jewish enough to keep the holidays and pray and fast and get sent with a box of matzo to my WASP grandmothers for easter, and have matzo packed in my lunch to eat in AP algebra in 7th grade and get asked if I'm a "Yid" by the teacher. And still to this day not know if it was endearment or insult but by then I knew even in this magical city being a Jew wasn't always safe. in highschool I tried to take hebrew lessons with a friend in a similar situation as me. She was also hungry to reconnect. I don't remember why the classes or the friendship fell through, but they did. My next "friend", a goy raised catholic from another neighborhood, liked to accuse me of being money driven when i picked up a penny on the sidewalk or tried to ask who was going to pay for the zine's she wanted to publish.

 "What are you?" I'd get asked a lot on the street by curious strangers, "Where are you from?" "Are you Italian?" Always Italian. I never really understood that, but its become code in my head for "You look like you're white but something about you is very not white and I just can't place it, so Italian seems safe and polite." I'm not here to unpack the Italian part of all that. I don't even know what I'm unpacking for myself by writing this except I've been sick for days and I'm so tired and this is all that my foggy brain can wrap itself around. Later I'm an adult and on my own and getting bloodwork done. The Nurse is a black woman and so sweet to me. She can tell I'm nervous about the needles because I've already stumbled through my apologies for my herd to find veins. So she distracts me with small talk. Where do i live? I tell her. She looks worried for me. Tells me that it used to be a nice neighborhood before white people took it over and she warns me like she's my own mother to be careful because they aren't safe. I doublecheck the skin she's putting a needle into. Whatever she sees isn't white. I love her for it. For a moment I belong there with her. She doesn't ask what I am or where i'm from, but she knows what i'm not. I'm the only one keeping the holidays with my family. We celebrate Passover because I go home to my fathers and cook the dinner and print out the Haggadah and lead the Seder to the tune of my drunk catholic stepmother eating my food and telling me i'll never be a jew. She's more of a jew than I'll ever be because she grew up in a jewish neighborhood and her friends were all jews and she married a jew and i was just playing pretend. I stopped going home for holidays and they stopped observing anything except Christmas. I marry a goy. "Is he a jew?" is the first thing my father asks and he's disappointed when i say no. He's abusive, i run. I end up living in the attic of this older old money WASP couple who need a live in house sitter. They're pillars of their church and they know someone from the WASP side of my family very well and its a funny coincidence and they think i belong there. I know from their divest from Israel bumper stickers that i don't. Then they find out I consider myself Jewish and i see the light in their eyes die and its replaced by something hard and disappointed. Now, while writing this, i can laugh about being the jew in someone's attic. But then, it was only a few months after that they started coming up with excuses for why I needed to move out. I did, their excuses never manifested into reality. I got married again. A jew this time! a Jewish medical professional liek grandma always wanted. She's a convert and her ex was a rabbinical student. I think maybe i'm home finally. She has to understand. I'm not Jewish enough for her. We don't keep holidays at home because i'm not a jew. I cry every year when pesach comes and goes and i haven't recited the plagues or eaten matzo piled high with horseradish. She insists on putting up a christmas tree. She turns abusive. I run.

I'm alone now and no longer in that magic jewish city. I'm far away and surrounded by mega churches and cows and the bagels suck and people quote the bible at me like some call and response that i don't have the cheat code for and I don't belong here at all but i'm finally finally free to light my menorah and recite the plagues and study torah with the group i found here on tumblr who love and accept me even though i'm patrilineal. Oct. 7th happened a few weeks after I moved here. I worry about my family back home and i think no one will look for Jews here among the cows and mega churches, so I can be a safe place for them to run if things get bad again. But i still don't fit in here. I don't look right. The last name I have now is common here and too white for whatever people see when they look in my face. I get interrogated about it a lot. But i learned quickly how to smile and say "have a blessed day". I hide my menorah when maintenance comes to work on my apartment. I flew home last month. Just for a visit. I've never been away from home this far or this long. And I'm the type that covers nerves and anxiety with chattiness, so at the airport i made a for-now-friend while we both waited for the plane to board. She's Puerto Rican. We talk about our lives. Our families. Her twin sister and i go by the same nickname and so we're family now. We talk about food. So much food and how much we love cooking and how important food was at home. "Are you Italian?" she asks as we're stepping through the hatch into the plane. Why always Italian? I wonder for the millionth time in my life. And I freeze up for a moment between fighting my carry-on over the gap and terror that I'm about to see the light go out behind her eyes and i'll lose this for-now friend. "No," i laugh but its not a real laugh and i see the concern in her face as we squeeze through the aisle because she can hear the apprehension in my voice, "I'm Jewish." And something strange happened because her face lit up and she smiled and said "No way?! You guys have GREAT food!"

[contemplatingoutlander]

The bully gets punched in the nose

More and more Americans are summoning the courage to fight back against President Donald Trump.

President Donald Trump makes his way to Marine One at the White House on Thursday. (Demetrius Freeman/For The Washington Post)

Dana Milbank is a gifted opinion writer. His May 30th column sums up all the ways that the Trump administration has recently been unraveling. He also makes the case that as a bully, Trump might only respond to a figurative "punch in the nose." This is a gift 🎁 link, so there is no paywall. Below are some excerpts from the article.

The various components of Trump’s rapid, unscheduled disassembly tumbled into the Oval Office Wednesday during an antic Q&A session with reporters.

Was Russia being disrespectful in calling him emotional?

What does his “playing with fire” threat mean?

Could he really have prevented the Ukraine invasion, given that Putin “doesn’t seem willing to do anything that you want him to do”?

What’s his reaction to Musk criticizing his “big, beautiful bill” of tax cuts?

And, from CNBC’s Megan Cassella: “Mr. President, Wall Street analysts have coined a new term called the TACO trade. They’re saying Trump Always Chickens Out on your tariff threats, and that’s why markets are higher this week. What’s your response to that?”

“I kick out?” Trump inquired.

“Chicken out,” Cassella repeated.

“Oh, isn’t that — I chicken out. I’ve never heard that,” Trump said, before launching into a rambling explanation of why he is not a barnyard bird. “Six months ago, this country was stone-cold dead. We had a dead country. We had a country — people didn’t think it was going to survive, and you ask a nasty question like that.”

He admitted his 145 percent tariff against China had been “a ridiculous high number” before returning to scolding Cassella. “Don’t ever say what you said. That’s a nasty question. To me, that’s the nastiest question.” The reporters moved to other topics, but Trump, clearly ruffled, went on squawking about the fowl insult.

“Now, when I make a deal …. They’ll say, ‘oh, he was chicken, he was chicken.’ That’s unbelievable,” Trump protested. “I usually have the opposite problem. They say, you’re too tough.”

It was the classic case of the bully getting punched in the nose. Trump had imposed outrageous tariffs on much of the world, and his treasury secretary warned trading partners, “Do not retaliate.” But they did retaliate. China imposed steep tariffs against the U.S., and the E.U. was preparing to do the same. Trump folded — and now he’s squealing about the unfairness of it all.

In the case of the trade war, it’s a blessing for the U.S. economy that Trump retreated. In the case of Putin, it’s a disaster that Trump won’t back up his threats. In all cases, though, the lesson is clear: The targets of Trump’s bullying rarely win him over with obeisance; he simply demands more. The better course is to do (metaphorically speaking, of course) what Musk described to his biographer, Walter Isaacson: “They might beat the s**t out of me, but if I had punched them hard in the nose, they wouldn’t come after me again.”

Try it, and the president might just serve up another TACO.

[edited]

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Jennifer Rubin at The Contrarian:

Are we in a “constitutional crisis”? You have likely heard that question innumerable times over the past three months, followed by a discussion as to whether our president has actually, explicitly, openly violated a court order (make that a Supreme Court order). When a question is so pervasive, it is safe to assume that yes, we are already there. When does the combo of authoritarian bullying, revenge seeking, stooge-nominating, retaliatory prosecuting, contemptuous litigating, and lawless usurpation of congressional power become a “crisis”? The word is defined by Merriam-Webster as “an unstable or crucial time or state of affairs in which a decisive change is impending…especially one with the distinct possibility of a highly undesirable outcome.” Frankly, we have been in that “crisis” since the first day of the Trump presidency.

When a Republican Congress allows the president to seize the power of the purse and does nothing, when the secretary of defense commits the worst breach of national security protocols in memory (and evidently doesn’t learn his lesson), or when Republicans refuse to reclaim the power to lay tariffs—despite a recession-inducing presidential trade war—the question is not if we are in a constitutional crisis, but just how bad it is. For Kilmar Ábrego García, Rümeysa Öztürk, Mahmoud Khalil, Mohsen Mahdawi, and scores of others who are legally present in the United States have been snatched up, incarcerated (or are facing incarceration) in a foreign gulag, and are deprived of their right to contest their confinement and visa revocation, the “constitutional crisis” is well underway. When the Supreme Court convenes “literally in the middle of the night” to stop the government from spiriting away Venezuelans in apparent contradiction of their instruction to give every individual a meaningful opportunity to oppose their deportation, the “constitutional crisis” has arrived.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) knows a constitutional crisis. When asked explicitly whether we were in one on Meet the Press, he affirmed, “Yes, we are.” He had to fly down to El Salvador to see for himself Ábrego García’s condition, and upon his return, called out the president and his flacks for abject lies, even revealing the clumsy attempt to stage a scene suggesting he and Kilmar were tossing down margaritas on a tropical holiday. When such steps are required to confirm whether or not a lawful American resident is alive, we know this is not only the least trustworthy White House in modern history, but one seemingly eager to foment a constitutional crisis.

[...]

For the thousands of government workers fired, the law firms and universities bullied, the millions of Americans harmed by illegal cuts and firings, the charitable organizations living under the cloud of a possible IRS dragnet, and the former Trump officials and assorted Trump nemeses targeted for persecution, the “constitutional crisis” is here. When Trump betrays Ukraine, cozies up to the evil aggressor Russia, wrecks the international trading system, stokes inflation, and sends us hurling into a recession, that crisis extends beyond the Constitution. [...]

Media, politicians, activists, and courts must stop waiting for a checkered flag to start responding. We need every person, every officeholder, and every facet of society to tell Trump: “NO.” No obeying in advance, No bullying, No court defiance, No executive overreach, No betrayal of allies, and No gaslighting. Then, voters must defeat any MAGA enablers, henchmen, and cowering politicians who are encouraging or complicit in these unprecedented assaults on our democracy. And when Democrats (because, let’s be honest: there is no critical mass of Republicans prepared to return to democratic norms) regain power, they will need to rebuild government and erect a series of reforms (e.g., Supreme Court term limits or expansion; serious civil and criminal penalties for abrogating others’ constitutional rights or blocking congressionally appropriated funds; bright red lines on private citizens assuming governmental powers; complete divestiture of presidents’ business interests while in office) to secure our democracy.

Jennifer Rubin wrote a solid column on why Americans should stop waiting for a formal declaration of a constitutional crisis, as we’re already in one.

[mariacallous]

...

In Zaporizhzhia, on the mainland, I met my favorite Europeans at a history lesson. I had been invited to join in the opening ceremonies of a new, underground school in the city. The school is underground not in some metaphorical sense, but physically. Russian missiles take about forty seconds to reach Zaporizhzhia, which is not enough time to get to shelter. And the Russians target schools.

Some of the children of Zaporizhzhia have departed for other places in Ukraine. At the same time, many children now in Zaporizhzhia have fled from nearby cities under Russian occupation, such as Melitopol. So that they can be schooled, basements of schools have to be used full-time, and new entirely-underground schools are constructed. The underground school that I visited was cheerful, well-lit, and generally a delight.

It was in that school that I met my favorite Europeans.

For the previous three weeks, I had been meeting Europeans in universities, government departments, and cafés. And I was glad to do so and enjoyed the discussions. I kept having to answer some of the same questions, though. What will Trump do? And what will Putin do? What about the fascists? And the chaos they bring?

And, of course, I did my best to answer, although in some sense the line if questioning was itself the problem. Russia has gone the way it has gone, and America is going the way that it is going. Europeans have to act. To sit and wait for Putin or for Trump is to choose a passivity that itself has consequences. Europe's connections to Ukraine should be obvious enough, and not just from the past. Ukraine is Europe's chance to act, a chance that has to be taken.

I have a video of favorite Europeans that I wish I could show you. The kids were beautiful in their Ukrainian embroidered shirts (vyshyvanky); one freshly crewcutted boy was wearing a suit. Their parents had treated this day as a special occasion.

This was the first time in their lives, I realized, that these boys and girls had been in an actual classroom. The Russian invasion began right as covid was ending. Two years of covid seclusion had been followed directly by three years of war. The kids were buoyant. For me, it was the first time during a long trip when I could pose the questions.

And so I asked them: "Is coming here better than remote school at home?" And they all started talking at once. “Yes! Yes! Yes!” The teachers got them to raise their hands. Then the answers came in beautiful, fully-rounded Ukrainian sentences. I am watching the video again right now... "You can meet with your friends... If you don't understand something you can raise your hand and ask... The teacher can make sure you understand… You can be together..."

The underground school was built in half a year. That would be impressive under any circumstances, let alone those of an active war. Leaving Zaporizhzhia, heading back on the main boulevard in the direction of the the train station, I appreciated again the brickwork of the buildings. In many buildings there are two colors, because some bricks are older and some are newer.

My favorite Europeans take matters in to their own hands. This is what Europeans in general will have to do.

Tomorrow will mark the end of the third year of Russia’s war against Ukraine and its people. If you wish to help Ukrainians, consider supporting Come Back Alive (Ukrainian NGO that supports soldiers), United 24 (the Ukrainian state platform for donations, with many excellent projects), RAZOM (an American NGO, tax-deductible for US citizens, which cooperates with Ukrainian NGOS to support civilians), or Documenting Ukraine (a project I help run that helps to give Ukrainians a voice, also tax-deductible for Americans).

[savage-daughter-of-nikitie]

This French Senator's fiery speech on the collapse of the American Empire is required reading.

Mr. President, Mr. Prime Minister, Ladies and Gentlemen, Ministers, my dear colleagues. Europe is at a critical turning point in its history. The American shield is crumbling, Ukraine risks being abandoned, Russia strengthened. Washington has become the court of Nero, a fiery emperor, submissive courtiers and a ketamine-fueled jester in charge of purging the civil service.

This is a tragedy for the free world, but it is first and foremost a tragedy for the United States. Trump’s message is that there is no point in being his ally since he will not defend you, he will impose more customs and duties on you than on his enemies and will threaten to seize your territories while supporting the dictatorships that invade you.

The king of the deal is showing what the art of the deal is all about. He thinks he will intimidate China by lying down before Putin, but Xi Jinping, faced with such a shipwreck, is probably accelerating preparations for the invasion of Taiwan.

Never in history has a President of the United States capitulated to the enemy. Never has anyone supported an aggressor against an ally. Never has anyone trampled on the American Constitution, issued so many illegal decrees, dismissed judges who could have prevented him from doing so, dismissed the military general staff in one fell swoop, weakened all checks and balances, and taken control of social media.

This is not an illiberal drift, it is the beginning of the confiscation of democracy. Let us remember that it took only one month, three weeks and two days to bring down the Weimar Republic and its Constitution. I have faith in the strength of American democracy, and the country is already protesting. But in one month, Trump has done more harm to America than in four years of his last presidency.

We were at war with a dictator, now we are fighting a dictator backed by a traitor. Eight days ago, at the very moment that Trump was rubbing Macron’s back in the White House, the United States voted at the UN with Russia and North Korea against the Europeans demanding the withdrawal of Russian troops. Two days later, in the Oval Office, the military service shirker was giving war hero Zelensky lessons in morality and strategy before dismissing him like a groom, ordering him to submit or resign. Tonight, he took another step into infamy by stopping the delivery of weapons that had been promised.

What to do in the face of this betrayal? The answer is simple: face it. And first of all, let’s not be mistaken. The defeat of Ukraine would be the defeat of Europe. The Baltic States, Georgia, Moldova are already on the list. Putin’s goal is to return to Yalta, where half the continent was ceded to Stalin.

The countries of the South are waiting for the outcome of the conflict to decide whether they should continue to respect Europe or whether they are now free to trample on it. What Putin wants is the end of the order put in place by the United States and its allies 80 years ago, with its first principle being the prohibition of acquiring territory by force. This idea is at the very source of the UN, where today Americans vote in favor of the aggressor and against the attacked, because the Trumpian vision coincides with that of Putin: a return to spheres of influence, the great powers dictating the fate of small countries.

Mine is Greenland, Panama and Canada, you are Ukraine, the Baltics and Eastern Europe, he is Taiwan and the China Sea. At the parties of the oligarchs of the Gulf of Mar-a-Lago, this is called “diplomatic realism.” So we are alone. But the talk that Putin cannot be resisted is false. Contrary to the Kremlin’s propaganda, Russia is in bad shape. In three years, the so-called second largest army in the world has managed to grab only crumbs from a country three times less populated. Interest rates at 25%, the collapse of foreign exchange and gold reserves, the demographic collapse show that it is on the brink of the abyss. The American helping hand to Putin is the biggest strategic mistake ever made in a war.

The shock is violent, but it has a virtue. Europeans are coming out of denial. They understood in one day in Munich that the survival of Ukraine and the future of Europe are in their hands and that they have three imperatives.

Accelerate military aid to Ukraine to compensate for the American abandonment, so that it holds, and of course to impose its presence and that of Europe in any negotiation. This will be expensive. It will be necessary to end the taboo of the use of frozen Russian assets. It will be necessary to circumvent Moscow’s accomplices within Europe itself by a coalition of only the willing countries, with of course the United Kingdom.

Second, demand that any agreement be accompanied by the return of kidnapped children, and prisoners, and absolute security guarantees. After Budapest, Georgia and Minsk, we know what agreements with Putin are worth. These guarantees require sufficient military force to prevent a new invasion.

Finally, and this is the most urgent, because it is what will take the most time, we must build the neglected European defense, to the benefit of the American umbrella since 1945 and scuttled since the fall of the Berlin Wall. It is a Herculean task, but it is on its success or failure that the leaders of today’s democratic Europe will be judged in the history books.

Friedrich Merz has just declared that Europe needs its own military alliance. This is to recognize that France has been right for decades in arguing for strategic autonomy. It remains to be built. It will be necessary to invest massively, to strengthen the European Defense Fund outside the Maastricht debt criteria, to harmonize weapons and munitions systems, to accelerate the entry into the Union of Ukraine, which is today the leading European army, to rethink the place and conditions of nuclear deterrence based on French and British capabilities, to relaunch the anti-missile shield and satellite programs.

The plan announced yesterday by Ursula von der Leyen is a very good starting point. And much more will be needed. Europe will only become a military power again by becoming an industrial power again. In a word, the Draghi report will have to be implemented. For good.

But the real rearmament of Europe is its moral rearmament. We must convince public opinion in the face of war weariness and fear, and especially in the face of Putin’s cronies, the extreme right and the extreme left. They argued again yesterday in the National Assembly, Mr. Prime Minister, before you, against European unity, against European defense. They say they want peace. What neither they nor Trump say is that their peace is capitulation, the peace of defeat, the replacement of de Gaulle Zelensky by a Ukrainian Pétain at the beck and call of Putin. Peace for the collaborators who have refused any aid to the Ukrainians for three years.

Is this the end of the Atlantic Alliance? The risk is great. But in the last few days, the public humiliation of Zelensky and all the crazy decisions taken in the last month have finally made the Americans react. Polls are falling. Republican lawmakers are being greeted by hostile crowds in their constituencies. Even Fox News is becoming critical.

The Trumpists are no longer in their majesty. They control the executive, the Congress, the Supreme Court and social networks. But in American history, the freedom fighters have always prevailed. They are beginning to raise their heads.

The fate of Ukraine is being played out in the trenches, but it also depends on those in the United States who want to defend democracy, and here on our ability to unite Europeans, to find the means for their common defense, and to make Europe the power that it once was in history and that it hesitates to become again.

Our parents defeated fascism and communism at great cost. The task of our generation is to defeat the totalitarianisms of the 21st century. Long live free Ukraine, long live democratic Europe.

Claude Malhuret is a French physician, lawyer and politician who has served as a member of the French Senate since 2014, representing the department of Allier. A member of Horizons, a center-right party that was created to attract support for Emmanuel Marcron in the 2022 French presidential election, he has presided over the The Independents – Republic and Territories (LIRT) parliamentary group in the Senate since 2017.

[yourreddancer]

The terrifying perils of appeasing a warlike Russia

THE ECONOMIST

Finland’s cold-war past offers urgent lessons for Ukraine’s future

Nov 16th 2024

IN BARRACKS SQUARE in old Helsinki stands an unusual monument to a war. A towering sculpture of a soldier’s winter snowsuit, its polished steel body is pierced with large round holes, as if still standing after a strafing by cannon fire. It is Finland’s national memorial to the winter war of 1939-40. During that conflict, Finnish troops withstood a huge Soviet force for 105 days, inflicting heavy casualties on the invaders before succumbing to the Red Army’s larger numbers. The Soviet Union imposed harsh terms, taking 10% of its neighbour’s territory. Peace proved fragile, and Finland was soon swept up into the second world war, fighting with Nazi Germany against the Soviet Red Army from 1941-44.

Unveiled in 2017, the memorial’s message is more timely than ever. The winter war has new resonance for Finns. Their country has known 80 years of peace. It boasts one of Europe’s most capable armies, backed by extensive military service for young men and large reserves. Yet even after ditching decades of neutrality to join NATO in April 2023, Finland remains haunted by Russia, its former imperial ruler and neighbour along a 1,340km shared border. “When Russia attacked Ukraine it was as if Finland’s wars were happening yesterday,” says a member of Finland’s tight-knit establishment. Indeed, this old hand worries about younger Finns being “too bold” in denouncing Russia. Membership of the European Union and NATO is all very well. But Finland is a small country whose fate has often been decided by great powers, and Russia will always be there. “We know that the big guys can always agree things above our head. We can always be alone.”

This is a moment for all Europe to ponder that memorial in a Helsinki square. For that battered, but still-recognisable uniform—hollow and headless, with the sky visible through its many holes—presents an important question. What can a country afford to lose, and what must it preserve, and still be true to itself? ���

[rusalkaaa]

i really wish people understood that no one wins the genocide olympics

The impulse to argue whether Israel or Russia is the greater aggressor, or whether Ukrainians or Palestinians suffer more, reduces mass suffering to a grotesque competition, erasing the horrors faced by both groups of people and usually at the hands of people living comfortably in the west.

Such comparisons often rely on flawed metrics: body counts that fail to account for the full scope of destruction, the unknowable fates of those trapped in occupied areas, which media is covering which atrocity + how much coverage is being delivered, and selective outrage deployed to serve political narratives rather than justice.

Worse still is the disgusting tendency to treat war crimes and acts of genocide like a blood-soaked version of sports rivalry, where allegiance to one side demands the total vilification of the other. As if cross-cultural solidarity is impossible and anti-imperial/anti-colonial consistency can't exist.

Condemning all Ukrainians to death or suffering because of the necessity to ask for aid from the west, the existence of the Azov Battalion or other far-right factions is just as morally bankrupt as condemning all Palestinians for authorities meeting with Russia and the existence of Hamas, or other extremist groups.

To deny the existence of, downplay, or attempt to justify one genocide does nothing but dehumanize and reveal how deeply inconsistent your understanding of solidarity truly is.

A great example of this is Russia’s use of the Soviet Union’s fight against Nazi Germany—after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, of course (which Russia conveniently fails to mention)—as the foundation for its entire imperial ideology and national identity, enshrined in the mythos of "The Great Patriotic War." This legacy is cynically wielded to justify Russia’s modern-day aggression, from Georgia to Ukraine, as if past sacrifices grant an eternal license for imperial terror.

And then some Western leftists, clinging to a long-dead Soviet “ideal”, foolishly invoke this history to defend modern-day (capitalist) Russia’s brutal actions, mistaking authoritarian revanchism for anti-fascism. Meanwhile, others—eager to deny Russia any rhetorical “win”—downplay or outright ignore the well-documented collaboration of some Eastern Europeans with the Nazis, as if acknowledging this history somehow validates Russian propaganda. The result is an absurd ideological battleground where historical atrocity becomes little more than a tool for internet argument victories or nationalistic fairytales rather than a lesson in what must never be repeated.

i am very tired.

[tomorrowusa]

We told you something like this might happen.

In 1994 the US, UK, Russia, and Ukraine signed an agreement which became known as the Budapest Memorandum. Ukraine agreed to give up its nuclear weapons in return for security guarantees.

Of course Russia violated the Budapest Memorandum with its illegal invasions and Trump is in the process of cutting off aid and intelligence to Ukraine.

The lesson learned is that the US will not honor its security agreements and the only way to prevent attaick by neighbors is to acquire nuclear arms.

So Poland, a victim of Russian aggression in the past, now wants access to nukes.

Poland will look at gaining access to nuclear weapons and also ensure that every man undergoes military training as part of an effort to build a 500,000-strong army to face off the threat from Russia, Prime Minister Donald Tusk told the parliament on Friday. Poland's dramatic military expansion comes as fears grow across Europe that U.S. President Donald Trump is aligning with the Kremlin and turning his back on America's traditional western alliances — a geopolitical shift that Warsaw regards as a potentially existential threat. Tusk said that Poland "is talking seriously" with France about being protected by the French nuclear umbrella. President Emmanuel Macron has opened the possibility of other countries discussing how France’s nuclear deterrent can protect Europe. Tusk also stressed that Poland cannot restrict itself to conventional weapons. "We must be aware that Poland must reach for the most modern capabilities also related to nuclear weapons and modern unconventional weapons ... this is a race for security, not for war," he said. He pointed to the example of Ukraine, which gave up is nuclear arsenal and is now being attacked by Russia.

Poland will also withdraw from some conventional arms treaties.

He also said Poland would take steps to withdraw from international treaties banning the use of anti-personnel landmines and cluster munitions.

Ukraine may not currently have nuclear weapons but that doesn't mean it can't make them.

Ukraine Can Go Nuclear — Should it?

Trump's abandonment of Ukraine is setting off a chain reaction which could easily spiral out of control.

[engin-program]

Welcome to the ENGin Program!

What is the ENGin Program?

The ENGin Program is a non-profit organization geared towards helping young Ukrainians gain English skills. The organization also aims to establish cross-cultural connections between Ukrainians and people in other countries across the globe. Through English fluency and culture literacy, ENGin wants to connect Ukraine to the world.

How does the program work?

ENGin pairs young Ukrainians with English-speaking volunteers. In weekly virtual sessions, these Ukrainians practice their English and share and learn from different cultures. These sessions are free of charge and available to Ukrainians age 9-35.

How does ENGin support Ukraine during the war?

When the war is over, Ukraine will need to rebuild itself from the ground up. This rebuilding can only happen through investment from foreign companies and international organizations. But for this to be possible, more Ukrainians need to learn to communicate confidently in English. And, in a time when Russia is trying to isolate Ukraine from the rest of the world, it's more important than ever for Ukrainians to connect with people worldwide.

By giving free English lessons through people of countless different backgrounds, ENGin hopes to create a generation of English-fluent, culturally competent young Ukrainians to rebuild their homeland.

Does the ENGin Program work?

The numbers speak for themselves!

As of 2022, ENGin has served 16,350 Ukrainians. In the next five years, the program hopes to reach its goal of 100,000 students.

93% of ENGin students see significant progress within three months of enrollment. As for the volunteers, 95% of them are happy with their student match!

How do I get involved with ENGin?

It's easy! Just go to the volunteer tab on our home page. Becoming a volunteer is an incredibly easy process. ENGin only has three requirements for applicants:

Must be fluent in English.

Must be 13 or older.

Must be able to commit to at least one hour of sessions per week. If you want to volunteer more hours, we can accommodate that!

Volunteer today and make a difference in a young Ukrainian's life!

[memoires-en-mouvement]

A historic speech on our European future by Senator Claude Malhuret in France’s upper house on March 4:

‘Europe is at a critical turning point in its history. The American shield is crumbling, Ukraine risks being abandoned, Russia strengthened.

Washington has become the court of Nero, a fiery emperor, submissive courtiers and a ketamine-fuelled jester in charge of purging the civil service.

This is a tragedy for the free world, but it is first and foremost a tragedy for the United States. Trump’s message is that there is no point in being his ally since he will not defend you, he will impose more customs duties on you than on his enemies and will threaten to seize your territories while supporting the dictatorships that invade you.

The king of the deal is showing what the art of the deal is all about. He thinks he will intimidate China by lying down before Putin, but Xi Jinping, faced with such a shipwreck, is probably accelerating preparations for the invasion of Taiwan.

Never in history has a president of the United States capitulated to the enemy. Never has anyone supported an aggressor against an ally. Never has anyone trampled on the American Constitution, issued so many illegal decrees, dismissed judges who could have prevented him from doing so, dismissed the military general staff in one fell swoop, weakened all checks and balances, and taken control of social media.

This is not an illiberal drift, it is the beginning of the confiscation of democracy. Let us remember that it took only one month, three weeks and two days to bring down the Weimar Republic and its constitution.

I have faith in the strength of American democracy, and the country is already protesting. But in one month, Trump has done more harm to America than in four years of his last presidency. We were at war with a dictator, now we are fighting a dictator backed by a traitor.

Eight days ago, at the very moment that Trump was rubbing Macron’s back in the White House, the United States voted at the UN with Russia and North Korea against the Europeans demanding the withdrawal of Russian troops.

Two days later, in the Oval Office, the military service shirker was giving war hero Zelensky lessons in morality and strategy before dismissing him like a groom, ordering him to submit or resign.

Tonight, he took another step into infamy by stopping the delivery of weapons that had been promised. What to do in the face of this betrayal? The answer is simple: face it.

And first of all, let’s not be mistaken. The defeat of Ukraine would be the defeat of Europe. The Baltic States, Georgia and Moldova are already on the list. Putin’s goal is to return to Yalta, where half the continent was ceded to Stalin.

The countries of the south are waiting for the outcome of the conflict to decide whether they should continue to respect Europe or whether they are now free to trample on it.

What Putin wants is the end of the order put in place by the United States and its allies 80 years ago, with its first principle being the prohibition of acquiring territory by force.

This idea is at the very source of the UN, where today Americans vote in favor of the aggressor and against the attacked, because the Trumpian vision coincides with that of Putin: a return to spheres of influence, the great powers dictating the fate of small countries.

Mine is Greenland, Panama and Canada, yours is Ukraine, the Baltics and Eastern Europe, his is Taiwan and the China Sea. This is called, in the evenings of the oligarchs of the Gulf of Mar-a-Lago, “diplomatic realism”.

So we are alone. But the talk that Putin cannot be resisted is false. Contrary to the Kremlin’s propaganda, Russia is in bad shape. In three years, the so-called second largest army in the world has managed to grab only crumbs from a country three times less populated.

Interest rates at 25%, the collapse of foreign exchange and gold reserves and the demographic collapse show that it is on the brink of the abyss. The American helping hand to Putin is the biggest strategic mistake ever made in a war.

The shock is violent, but it has a virtue. Europeans are coming out of denial. They understood in one day in Munich that the survival of Ukraine and the future of Europe are in their hands and that they have three imperatives.

Accelerate military aid to Ukraine to compensate for the American abandonment, so that it holds out, and of course to impose its presence and that of Europe in any negotiation.

This will be expensive. It will be necessary to end the taboo of the use of frozen Russian assets. It will be necessary to circumvent Moscow’s accomplices within Europe itself by a coalition of only the willing countries, with, of course, the United Kingdom.

Second, demand that any agreement be accompanied by the return of kidnapped children, prisoners and absolute security guarantees. After Budapest, Georgia and Minsk, we know what agreements with Putin are worth. These guarantees require sufficient military force to prevent a new invasion.

Finally, and this is the most urgent, because it is what will take the most time, we must build the neglected European defence, to the benefit of the American umbrella since 1945 and scuttled since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

It is a Herculean task, but it is on its success or failure that the leaders of today’s democratic Europe will be judged in the history books.

Friedrich Merz has just declared that Europe needs its own military alliance. This is to recognise that France has been right for decades in arguing for strategic autonomy.

It remains to be built. It will be necessary to invest massively, to strengthen the European Defence Fund outside the Maastricht debt criteria, to harmonise weapons and munitions systems, to accelerate the entry into the Union of Ukraine, which is today the leading European army, to rethink the place and conditions of nuclear deterrence based on French and British capabilities, to relaunch the anti-missile shield and satellite programs.

The plan announced yesterday by Ursula von der Leyen is a very good starting point. And much more will be needed.

Europe will only become a military power again by becoming an industrial power again. In a word, the Draghi report will have to be implemented. For good.

But the real rearmament of Europe is its moral rearmament.

We must convince public opinion in the face of war weariness and fear, and especially in the face of Putin’s cronies, the extreme right and the extreme left.

They argued again yesterday in the National Assembly, Mr Prime Minister, before you, against European unity, against European defence.

They say they want peace. What neither they nor Trump say is that their peace is capitulation, the peace of defeat, the replacement of de Gaulle Zelensky by a Ukrainian Pétain at Putin’s beck and call.

The peace of the collaborators who have refused any aid to the Ukrainians for three years.

Is this the end of the Atlantic Alliance? The risk is great. But in the last few days, the public humiliation of Zelensky and all the crazy decisions taken in the last month have finally made the Americans react.

Polls are falling. Republican lawmakers are being greeted by hostile crowds in their constituencies. Even Fox News is becoming critical.

The Trumpists are no longer in their majesty. They control the executive, the parliament, the Supreme Court and social networks.

But in American history, the freedom fighters have always prevailed. They are beginning to raise their heads.

The fate of Ukraine is being played out in the trenches, but it also depends on those in the United States who want to defend democracy, and here on our ability to unite Europeans, to find the means for their common defence, and to make Europe the power that it once was in history and that it hesitates to become again.

Our parents defeated fascism and communism at great cost.

The task of our generation is to defeat the totalitarianisms of the 21st century.

Long live free Ukraine, long live democratic Europe.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Timothy Snyder at Thinking About...:

Fascism places emotion over reason. Words are to become just tools to achieve the vision of the Leader. In our post-truth world, this takes the very special form of the inversion of meaning: fascists call other people "fascists" and antisemites call other people "antisemites." This is taking place right now, in the United States, before our eyes, at the highest levels of our government. An example from abroad might help us to see what is happening. The notion that all of Russia's enemies are the "fascists" has become more entrenched as the Russian state has become fascist. Putin has for fifteen years justified his actions by reference to the leading Russian fascist thinker. Russian authorities ludicrously justified their full-scale invasion of Ukraine as a struggle against antisemitism. They claimed, absurdly, that it would amount to "denazification" if they overthrew the democratically-elected president of Ukraine, who is of Jewish origin, and installed their own government. This is fascism in the name of "fighting fascism." And it is antisemitism in the name of "fighting antisemitism." Russian officials have handled the contradiction in various ways. Vladimir Putin says that the Ukrainian president is not really Jewish, implying that Putin himself decides who is Jewish and what that means. This is a central trope of modern antisemitism, associated most famously with Karl Lueger, who was mayor of Vienna when young Adolf Hitler arrived there in 1908, and who set the ideological tone of the city. Hitler's Holocaust killed about two million Jews in what is now Ukraine, including members of Zelens'kyi's family. The Russian foreign minister claimed that Hitler was Jewish. The idea was to suggest that the Ukrainian president, because he is of Jewish origin, is like Hitler. The Russian foreign minister has also questioned whether Zelens'kyi is fully human. The point of repeating antisemitic tropes while claiming to fight antisemitism is to evacuate any meaning from the term "antisemitism" and to erase the lessons of the Holocaust. And there can hardly be a more antisemitic action than that. Antisemitism is a terrible problem in our battered world, and it is worse from year to year, moment to moment. There are antisemites among Americans, among American young people, and among college students. This is no reason, however, to attack higher education or undermine the legal and moral basis of the American republic. Antisemites claim that they themselves can make up what they like about history, they can decide who is a real Jew, that the Jews brought suffering upon themselves. Antisemites meanwhile apply the word "antisemitic" to other people who are simply doing things that the actual antisemites do not like. The absurdity is part of the point: the claim that Jewish democrats are the real antisemites or the real Nazis or the real Hitlers is meant to disorient well-meaning people who assume that there must be some logic somewhere, and to provide guidance for malicious people who actually wish to further antisemitism. I remember a certain feeling of confusion from February 2022 and the initial Russian war propaganda. I am afraid that the same confused atmosphere prevails now in the United States. The American government's war on higher education and freedom of expression is proceeding according to the same antisemitic rules of engagement as Russia's war against Ukraine.

[...] "Anti-American activity" is a very broad category of behavior, and of course, when simply defined at a given by the president, perfectly arbitrary. Manufactured fear of Islam and of Palestinians and their allies is being used to justify an assault on the rule of law in the United States. At the same time the word "antisemitism" is also being deployed in a familiar and concerning way. The notion is that antisemitism is such a problem that we should accept obviously authoritarian policies to combat it. But will authoritarianism help Jews? And is this particular policy of deportation in any way designed to support Jewish Americans? This seems unlikely to be the motivation of those who made the policy. Deporting a Muslim who has committed no crime in the name of Jews is not exactly a favor to Jews. It looks more like a provocation by the federal government, designed to generate strife among communities. And making exceptions to constitutional protections of free speech and free assembly in one case undermines the rule of law as a whole. The specific target of the campaign is also revealing. Khalil was a student at Columbia University, now the showpiece of a larger federal assault on higher education. There will be an investigation of sixty American universities for supposedly allowing antisemitic discrimination against their students. This investigation, like Khalil's arrest, is framed as opposing antisemitism and as supporting Jews. (I should say that I have worked for more than two decades at Yale University, one of the targeted institutions, where I have taught the history of the Holocaust, sat on the advisory group of the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism, and served as faculty advisor for the Fortunoff Archive of Video Holocaust Testimonies, one of the early initiatives to collect survivor testimony. I say this for transparency about my own affiliations and commitments, not to speak for colleagues at any of these institutions or for these institutions themselves.) But why was Columbia put first? It is in New York. More than twenty percent of its undergraduate students are Jewish. No matter the experiences or attitudes of these students, their university suddenly losing four hundred million dollars is unlikely to improve their education and life chances. Columbia students can speak for themselves. My guess is that Columbia was selected as the symbolic first target less because of the presence of antisemitism than because of the presence of Jews. And I think that this is something that actual American antisemites will immediately have grasped. The city of New York is coded for antisemites as Jewish. The antisemites in America, seeing Columbia and New York punished, will see Jews being punished -- and they will be pleased by this. The same goes for universities as a whole. Universities are often understood by antisemites to be Jewish. The attempt to bring universities to heel will be met by antisemites with approval.

[...] Rulers who deploy the word "antisemitism" can themselves be antisemites or promoters of antisemitism. The abuse of the word "antisemitism" is meant to generate a sense of plausibility, confuse opposition, and create more space for the actual phenomenon of antisemitism. And this misdirection is an integral part of the effort to replace a constitutional order with an authoritarian one. Jews in the United States are being instrumentalized in an effort to build a more authoritarian American system. The real and continuing history of the oppression of Jews is transformed into a bureaucratic tool called "antisemitism" which is used to suppress education and human rights -- and so, in the end, to harm Jews themselves.

Timothy Snyder wrote a solid column calling out the co-opting the term “antisemitism” being used as a cudgel to silence speech that less than 100% deferential to Israel Apartheid while looking the other way or even spread actual instances of antisemitism.

See Also:

Daily Kos: Dozens of colleges now under attack as Trump's racist rampage spreads

[mariacallous]

When Vance took the stage in Munich, most people were expecting him to hold forth on the topics that had animated the huddles and discussions around the venue leading up to his speech: European defense spending and the fate of Ukraine.

But those subjects only got a passing sentence each. Instead, Vance spent the bulk of his 20 minutes on stage criticizing what he characterized as a European retreat from the West’s “shared democratic values” driven by excessive censorship of free speech.

“The Cold War positioned defenders of democracy against much more tyrannical forces on this continent. Consider the side in that fight that censored dissidents, that closed churches, that canceled elections—were they the good guys? Certainly not, and thank God they lost,” Vance said.

“Unfortunately, when I look at Europe today, it’s sometimes not so clear what happened to some of the Cold War’s winners,” he added, before rattling off a list of examples aimed at illustrating his point: European Union officials’ threats to shut down social media “the moment they spot what they’ve judged to be ‘hateful’ content,” Germany’s raids on people posting misogynistic speech online, Sweden’s jailing of an activist who burned the Quran in public, and “safe access zones” around abortion clinics established in the United Kingdom.

For Europeans and others watching, Vance had a MAGA message: “In Washington, there is a new sheriff in town, and under [U.S. President] Donald Trump’s leadership, we may disagree with your views, but we will fight to defend your right to offer it in the public square,” he said, to scattered and hesitant applause—one of the few times he got any.

“Utterly, utterly frightening.” Several times in his speech, Vance singled out Romania, which late last year annulled its elections due to alleged Russian interference uncovered by Romania’s security services and is scheduled to hold them again. “You can believe it’s wrong for Russia to buy social media advertisements to influence your elections—we certainly do—you can condemn it on the world stage, even. But if your democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred thousand dollars of digital advertising from a foreign country, then it wasn’t very strong to begin with,” he said.

The U.S. vice president also spoke at length about the alleged threat posed by immigration, a major right-wing talking point on both sides of the Atlantic that he described as the most “urgent” challenge the nations represented in Munich face. “In England, they voted for Brexit—agree or disagree, they voted for it,” he said. “And more and more all over Europe, they’re voting for political leaders who promise to put an end to out-of-control migration.”

Most of the speech was met with stunned silence. “Gobsmacked” was a word used repeatedly in the aftermath, and SitRep overheard one attendee walking out of the Bayerischer Hof describe the speech as “utterly, utterly frightening.”

One senior European official, who spoke to SitRep on the condition of anonymity, said Vance “did something whilst being in Germany that Germans are pretty good at: Teaching lessons to others.”

Another official had far stronger words. “It was total bullshit. We don’t know what planet he is on,” the official said. “At least when we met Keith Kellogg, we could talk geopolitics,” they added, referring to Trump’s special envoy for Russia and Ukraine. “With Vance, we can’t even agree what a democracy is.”

Whither Europe? While Vance told Europe early on in his speech that “we are on the same team,” the more lasting impression appears to have been left by his final words: “Good luck to all of you, God bless you.”

Conversations we’ve been having with European officials in Munich over the last two days have betrayed deep concerns about the United States’ status as a reliable partner, even amid a recognition that Europe must do more for its own defense. “A stronger Europe works with the United States to deter the threats we have in common as partners, and this is why we believe that trade wars and punitive tariffs make no sense,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said onstage to loud applause earlier in the day, a veiled swipe at Trump’s Thursday move to slap reciprocal tariffs on all U.S. trading partners.

Vance, who took the stage right after her, didn’t mention trade at all. But his speech drove home a key message for former Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis. “If that wasn’t a wake-up call for Europe, I don’t know what is,” Landsbergis told Foreign Policy. “We have to get our act together and figure out how to manage our problems on our own.”

[weekendviking]

Transcript of a speech to the French Senate: Mr. Claude Malhuret. I am not sure of his leanings politically, as I am not familiar with French politics, but it's apt in it's descriptions of the current US coup regime.

“President, Mr. Prime Minister, Ladies and Gentlemen Ministers, My dear colleagues,

Europe is at a critical turning point in its history. The American shield is crumbling, Ukraine risks being abandoned, Russia strengthened.

Washington has become the court of Nero, a fiery emperor, submissive courtiers and a ketamine-fueled jester in charge of purging the civil service.

This is a tragedy for the free world, but it is first and foremost a tragedy for the United States. Trump’s message is that there is no point in being his ally since he will not defend you, he will impose more customs duties on you than on his enemies and will threaten to seize your territories while supporting the dictatorships that invade you.

The king of the deal is showing what the art of the deal is all about. He thinks he will intimidate China by lying down before Putin, but Xi Jinping, faced with such a shipwreck, is probably accelerating preparations for the invasion of Taiwan.

Never in history has a President of the United States capitulated to the enemy. Never has anyone supported an aggressor against an ally. Never has anyone trampled on the American Constitution, issued so many illegal decrees, dismissed judges who could have prevented him from doing so, dismissed the military general staff in one fell swoop, weakened all checks and balances, and taken control of social media.

This is not an illiberal drift, it is the beginning of the confiscation of democracy. Let us remember that it took only one month, three weeks and two days to bring down the Weimar Republic and its Constitution.

I have faith in the strength of American democracy, and the country is already protesting. But in one month, Trump has done more harm to America than in four years of his last presidency. We were at war with a dictator, now we are fighting a dictator backed by a traitor.

Eight days ago, at the very moment that Trump was rubbing Macron’s back in the White House, the United States voted at the UN with Russia and North Korea against the Europeans demanding the withdrawal of Russian troops.

Two days later, in the Oval Office, the military service shirker was giving war hero Zelensky lessons in morality and strategy before dismissing him like a groom, ordering him to submit or resign.

Tonight, he took another step into infamy by stopping the delivery of weapons that had been promised. What to do in the face of this betrayal? The answer is simple: face it.

And first of all, let’s not be mistaken. The defeat of Ukraine would be the defeat of Europe. The Baltic States, Georgia, Moldova are already on the list. Putin’s goal is to return to Yalta, where half the continent was ceded to Stalin.

The countries of the South are waiting for the outcome of the conflict to decide whether they should continue to respect Europe or whether they are now free to trample on it.

What Putin wants is the end of the order put in place by the United States and its allies 80 years ago, with its first principle being the prohibition of acquiring territory by force.

This idea is at the very source of the UN, where today Americans vote in favor of the aggressor and against the attacked, because the Trumpian vision coincides with that of Putin: a return to spheres of influence, the great powers dictating the fate of small countries.

Mine is Greenland, Panama and Canada, you are Ukraine, the Baltics and Eastern Europe, he is Taiwan and the China Sea.

At the parties of the oligarchs of the Gulf of Mar-a-Lago, this is called “diplomatic realism.”

So we are alone. But the talk that Putin cannot be resisted is false. Contrary to the Kremlin’s propaganda, Russia is in bad shape. In three years, the so-called second largest army in the world has managed to grab only crumbs from a country three times less populated.

Interest rates at 25%, the collapse of foreign exchange and gold reserves, the demographic collapse show that it is on the brink of the abyss. The American helping hand to Putin is the biggest strategic mistake ever made in a war.

The shock is violent, but it has a virtue. Europeans are coming out of denial. They understood in one day in Munich that the survival of Ukraine and the future of Europe are in their hands and that they have three imperatives.

Accelerate military aid to Ukraine to compensate for the American abandonment, so that it holds, and of course to impose its presence and that of Europe in any negotiation.

This will be expensive. It will be necessary to end the taboo of the use of frozen Russian assets. It will be necessary to circumvent Moscow’s accomplices within Europe itself by a coalition of only the willing countries, with of course the United Kingdom.

Second, demand that any agreement be accompanied by the return of kidnapped children, prisoners and absolute security guarantees. After Budapest, Georgia and Minsk, we know what agreements with Putin are worth. These guarantees require sufficient military force to prevent a new invasion.

Finally, and this is the most urgent, because it is what will take the most time, we must build the neglected European defence, to the benefit of the American umbrella since 1945 and scuttled since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

It is a Herculean task, but it is on its success or failure that the leaders of today’s democratic Europe will be judged in the history books.

Friedrich Merz has just declared that Europe needs its own military alliance. This is to recognize that France has been right for decades in arguing for strategic autonomy.

It remains to be built. It will be necessary to invest massively, to strengthen the European Defence Fund outside the Maastricht debt criteria, to harmonize weapons and munitions systems, to accelerate the entry into the Union of Ukraine, which is today the leading European army, to rethink the place and conditions of nuclear deterrence based on French and British capabilities, to relaunch the anti-missile shield and satellite programs.

The plan announced yesterday by Ursula von der Leyen is a very good starting point. And much more will be needed.

Europe will only become a military power again by becoming an industrial power again. In a word, the Draghi report will have to be implemented. For good.

But the real rearmament of Europe is its moral rearmament.

We must convince public opinion in the face of war weariness and fear, and especially in the face of Putin’s cronies, the extreme right and the extreme left.

They argued again yesterday in the National Assembly, Mr Prime Minister, before you, against European unity, against European defence.

They say they want peace. What neither they nor Trump say is that their peace is capitulation, the peace of defeat, the replacement of de Gaulle Zelensky by a Ukrainian Pétain at the beck and call of Putin.

Peace for the collaborators who have refused any aid to the Ukrainians for three years.

Is this the end of the Atlantic Alliance? The risk is great. But in the last few days, the public humiliation of Zelensky and all the crazy decisions taken in the last month have finally made the Americans react.

Polls are falling. Republican lawmakers are being greeted by hostile crowds in their constituencies. Even Fox News is becoming critical.

The Trumpists are no longer in their majesty. They control the executive, the Parliament, the Supreme Court and social networks.

But in American history, the freedom fighters have always prevailed. They are beginning to raise their heads.

The fate of Ukraine is being played out in the trenches, but it also depends on those in the United States who want to defend democracy, and here on our ability to unite Europeans, to find the means for their common defense, and to make Europe the power that it once was in history and that it hesitates to become again.

Our parents defeated fascism and communism at great cost.

The task of our generation is to defeat the totalitarianisms of the 21st century.

Long live free Ukraine, long live democratic Europe.”

-Claude Malhuret speaking to the French Senate Tuesday March 4 2025.

[beardedmrbean]

North Korea could lose 30,000 to 45,000 troops per month in Ukraine after sending more soldiers to the frontlines, according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW)'s Russian offensive campaign assessment published on January 22.

Why It Matters

Pyongyang will reportedly send additional troops to the battlefield by mid-March, and if they maintain the current pace of assaults in Kursk, they may suffer significant losses, the Washington-based think tank said in it's recent assessment.

The ISW's prediction that North Korea could lose up to 45,000 soldiers per month indicates that they are not capable of sustaining the war effort in Kursk, suggesting they are not prepared for battle. Further, the sustained losses of troops will only add to Russia's manpower problem and could possibly sour relations between Moscow and Pyongyang.

What To Know

An anonymous senior U.S. defense official told the New York Times that North Korean reinforcements are expected to arrive "within the next two months," but they did not specify the number of troops, if Pyongyang is rotating its forces, or if they are increasing the size of its total force grouping in Russia.

South Korea previously reported in late December that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) will deploy more troops and send additional equipment to Russia after North Korea suffered significant losses. Russia has previously dismissed reports of North Korean troops fighting in Kursk as "fake news."

Noting the time period in which North Korean troops reportedly trained for at least a month in eastern Russia before engaging in battle, the ISW wrote: "This timeline roughly coheres with the possibility that a fresh contingent of North Korean forces could undergo training and replace the shrinking North Korean group in Kursk Oblast by mid-April 2025, assuming the reported next batch of North Korean troops will train for the same duration as their predecessors, and deploy to Russia imminently in late January or early February 2025."

The ISW predicted that additional DPRK troops are "unlikely to decisively improve Russian operations" and will suffer about 30,000 to 45,000 casualties per month if they "sustain Russia's tempo of operations despite heavy losses."

Part of the issue stems from a lack of ability to communicate between the two forces. In addition to two alleged clashes between the allied forces due to "troop identification errors," a Ukrainian commander claimed that North Korean troops had added a translator who speaks Russian, but suggested that "these groups are still not very effective."

As such, the ISW assessed that "North Korea's high casualty rate and interoperability difficulties with Russian forces will affect the lessons that the North Korean military command will learn from fighting in Russia's war."

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said that 3,800 North Korean troops had been killed or injured in Kursk in early January, as the fighting has escalated on the frontlines.

A total of 12,000 North Korean soldiers were initially deployed to Russia and were first reported to have engaged in battle in November 2024. As they had not engaged in serious combat since 1953, the troops appeared underprepared and therefore have sustained such high casualties.

What People Are Saying

Anton Gerashchenko, the former Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter: "North Korea will soon send a new group of military personnel to the war against Ukraine, The New York Times reported, citing the Pentagon. Reinforcements are expected "within the next two months," according to one senior U.S. defense official. Overall, North Korea's armed forces number 1.2 million. It is one of the largest regular armies in the world. Last fall, North Korea sent about 11,000 soldiers to aid Moscow's forces in the Kursk region of southern Russia."

"Since their first combat engagement in early December, roughly one-third of the North Korean soldiers have been killed or wounded, Ukrainian and American officials said," Gerashchenko added. "Even before it sent troops to Russia, North Korea was a major supporter of Russia's war effort. It has sent Moscow millions of artillery shells — which now account for about half of the Russian munitions fired daily — and more than 100 short-range ballistic missiles, according to Western and Ukrainian intelligence officials."

In a previous comment, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described reports of North Korean troops on the frontlines as "contradictory," saying: "North Korea is our close neighbor, our partner, and we are developing our relations in all areas. This is our sovereign right. This should not worry anyone because this cooperation is not directed against third countries."

Peskov added: "[Moscow would] continue to develop this cooperation."

What Happens Next

It is unknown how Ukraine and the global powers will respond if North Korea deploys additional troops and equipment to Russia and if the DPRK troops aid Moscow in seizing more territory.