Fwiw, I wasn’t paying that much attention to the Russia/Ukraine situation until January 2022 when the talk of an invasion started to break through. We went on a transatlantic cruise the week after the invasion and I had bought two books on the Russia/Ukraine problem in Miami before boarding the ship to read during the crossing. One was T…
Fwiw, I wasn’t paying that much attention to the Russia/Ukraine situation until January 2022 when the talk of an invasion started to break through. We went on a transatlantic cruise the week after the invasion and I had bought two books on the Russia/Ukraine problem in Miami before boarding the ship to read during the crossing. One was Timothy Snyder’s “The Road to Unfreedom”, and the other was “Conflict in Ukraine” by Rajan Menon and Eugene Rumer. Both were written after the 2014 invasion of Crimea and before the 2022 invasion, but they give an excellent overview of the roots of the conflict and why the war happened, both a history lesson and a political lesson. Over the course of that sea crossing I read both books and watched the early days of the war play out daily on BBC News on my stateroom tv. When I got home I discovered the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), at understandingwar.org and read their daily reports for the last two years. Because of this godawful election, I haven’t been reading ISW that often the last 6 months, but I have kept up with Snyder, and added Anne Applebaum and Fiona Hill to my list. Also Serhii Plokhy at Harvard.
The whole argument that the US and NATO provoked Russia into invading Ukraine is such absolute nonsense that it sets my hair on fire. Sullivan’s implication that the bureaucracy in DC is incapable of seeing what’s really happening and who they’re really dealing with is equally infuriating. The US pursuing isolationism at this point is exactly what Putin wants, ie, get us off the stage and pulling out of Europe so he can move in. Finland and Sweden are now inside NATO, thank god, but they just last week issued new crisis management guidelines for their citizens that urge every household to supply themselves so they can survive for a one week minimum without any outside help in the event of a massive countrywide shutdown. Both countries anticipate being attacked by Russia in the next two to three years. If Gabbard and Trump are not in fact Russian agents, they are definitely Russian dupes, being played on a grand scale. Musk is one too. He may have a lot of IQ points, but he has very little common sense.
I read this book by Bill Browder back in 2016 - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22609522-red-notice - It's by no means an academic tome, but it does a great job of explaining what happened after the collapse of the Soviet Union and how Putin and friends run the country. An excellent read.
Fwiw, I wasn’t paying that much attention to the Russia/Ukraine situation until January 2022 when the talk of an invasion started to break through. We went on a transatlantic cruise the week after the invasion and I had bought two books on the Russia/Ukraine problem in Miami before boarding the ship to read during the crossing. One was Timothy Snyder’s “The Road to Unfreedom”, and the other was “Conflict in Ukraine” by Rajan Menon and Eugene Rumer. Both were written after the 2014 invasion of Crimea and before the 2022 invasion, but they give an excellent overview of the roots of the conflict and why the war happened, both a history lesson and a political lesson. Over the course of that sea crossing I read both books and watched the early days of the war play out daily on BBC News on my stateroom tv. When I got home I discovered the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), at understandingwar.org and read their daily reports for the last two years. Because of this godawful election, I haven’t been reading ISW that often the last 6 months, but I have kept up with Snyder, and added Anne Applebaum and Fiona Hill to my list. Also Serhii Plokhy at Harvard.
The whole argument that the US and NATO provoked Russia into invading Ukraine is such absolute nonsense that it sets my hair on fire. Sullivan’s implication that the bureaucracy in DC is incapable of seeing what’s really happening and who they’re really dealing with is equally infuriating. The US pursuing isolationism at this point is exactly what Putin wants, ie, get us off the stage and pulling out of Europe so he can move in. Finland and Sweden are now inside NATO, thank god, but they just last week issued new crisis management guidelines for their citizens that urge every household to supply themselves so they can survive for a one week minimum without any outside help in the event of a massive countrywide shutdown. Both countries anticipate being attacked by Russia in the next two to three years. If Gabbard and Trump are not in fact Russian agents, they are definitely Russian dupes, being played on a grand scale. Musk is one too. He may have a lot of IQ points, but he has very little common sense.
I read this book by Bill Browder back in 2016 - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22609522-red-notice - It's by no means an academic tome, but it does a great job of explaining what happened after the collapse of the Soviet Union and how Putin and friends run the country. An excellent read.
Yes, I've seen him interviewed on Amanpour & Co. He knows what the reality is also.