The seeming expansion of Russia’s territorial ambitions comes as a sign of relative military weakness, not strength.
Leonid BershidskyBloomberg Opinion Columnist
Leonid Bershidsky, formerly Bloomberg Opinion’s Europe columnist, is a member of the Bloomberg News Automation Team. He recently published Russian translations of George Orwell’s “1984” and Franz Kafka’s “The Trial.”
At one of the world’s great art festivals in Kassel, Germany, any groundbreaking works were overshadowed by far left rhetoric of every national flavor.
As the world’s attention drifts away from a protracted, slower-moving conflict, Ukraine cannot afford to backslide and become less distinguishable from its enemy.
Putin’s desire to maintain Russia’s status as a leading grain exporter gives the U.S. and its allies leverage to try to restore Ukraine’s unhindered access to global commodity markets.
The move to “derussify” Ukraine shouldn’t cancel great Russian writers whose works and values will outlive Vladimir Putin’s evil deeds.
Most are essentially caretaker arrangements that represent, for both sides, bets on normalization, with Russian buyers bearing much of the risk.
The Kremlin’s emerging plans for occupied Ukraine could amount to a declaration of permanent, open-ended war against other parts of Europe.
Compromise seems impossible, neither side is sure to win and, no matter what happens, Ukraine will need lasting help from its Western supporters.
Overcentralization hasn’t worked to make the country peaceful and prosperous.
It’s unclear what top bureaucrats, officers and business leaders would gain from denouncing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — but they know what they would lose.
The variety of outcomes that either Russia or Ukraine could declare as a victory is matched only by the scarcity of outcomes that can last.
Despite the constraints imposed by Germany’s past, geography and politics, Chancellor Olaf Scholz has made clear that he and the country stand firmly against Russian aggression.
Ukrainian intellectuals are beginning to look beyond the country’s mere survival as an independent state to chart a new path for it in Europe.
As more and more Russians feel greater economic pain, nothing short of a full, nationwide descent into fascism can sustain the regime.
They are finding out for themselves through unofficial news sources or from other citizens — even if they are too cautious to admit it in a police state.
Flamboyant, cynical and corrupt, the ultranationalist legislator Vladimir Zhironovsky made possible the country’s sham democracy and indelibly shaped its public voice.
Russia’s president has come around to the twisted views of the man who started the conflict in Eastern Ukraine in 2014.
