By Ben Aris, Intellinews, 12/16/25

Nearly three years into the war in Ukraine, a former senior White House official has acknowledged that the conflict might have been avoided had the United States been willing to forgo Nato membership for Ukraine.

Amanda Sloat, who served as Senior Director for Europe at the US National Security Council and lead policy on the region for President Joe Biden – directly overseeing policy on Ukraine – admitted to Russian pranksters that if Kyiv had agreed to abandon its Nato aspirations in early 2022 during a round of diplomacy or shortly after the invasion at the Istanbul peace talks, it “may well have [prevented/stopped the war].” She added, “It certainly would have prevented the destruction and the loss of life.”

The interview with Sloat was conducted by two well-known Russian pranksters who go by the aliases Vovan and Lexus — real names are Vladimir Kuznetsov (Vovan) and Alexei Stolyarov (Lexus) – who have regularly tricked western officials, often posing as foreign officials, into giving candid interviews and admitting embarrassing details as part of the deteriorating relations with Russia.

The interview with Sloat was particularly damning as she admitted that the Biden administration had no particular plan to protect Ukraine nor bring it into Nato, and simply refused to negotiate with Russia on principle in failed talks that led to war. Russian state TV aired the interview which bolsters the Kremlin’s claim that Russia is fighting a proxy war against Nato.

Sloat’s remarks prompted sharp criticism from foreign policy commentators, who described Sloat’s framing as both revealing and misleading.

“She’s being dishonest,” political commentator and IntelliNews contributor Arnaud Bertrand said. “By definition, neutrality for Ukraine wouldn’t have given Russia ‘some sort of sphere of influence’ but would have made it… neutral, i.e. in-between spheres of influence.”

Bertrand contends that the refusal to consider neutrality was based less on principle than on Washington’s reluctance to relinquish strategic leverage. “She [Sloat] was uncomfortable with the idea of implicitly giving Russia some sort of veto power,” he noted. “But that’s exactly what she wanted to preserve for the US—keeping the theoretical possibility of pulling Ukraine into Nato. It wasn’t even about an actual gain, just the optionality.”

The human cost of that decision has been catastrophic. Hundreds of thousands of men have died and Ukraine has been devastated. It stands in stark contrast to the abstract policy preferences that shaped US policy on Ukraine.

“Think about the cost equation,” Bertrand says. “Not even an actual security commitment, just the potential of one, outweighed any serious effort to prevent the war.”

The issue of Nato expansion has long been a fault line in relations between Russia and the West. Russian President Vladimir Putin has complained about Nato’s inextricable expansion eastwards that started in 1999, when Poland, Hungary and Czechia joined, eventually adding eight new members, starting with his famous speech at the Munich Security Conference (MSC) in 2007. In that speech he claimed that Nato had given verbal promises to Mikhail Gorbachev of “not one inch” expansion that was subsequently broken.

Ukraine’s supporters point to an essay that Putin wrote in July 2021 to claim that Russia wants to conquer all of Ukraine and recreate the Soviet Union. However, last year former Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg admitted that the war in Ukraine began after Nato refused to respond and Russia’s security concerns were the root cause of the war in Ukraine in another embarrassing revelation. Sloat’s interview corroborates that revelation.

During the early stages of the war, Ukrainian and Russian delegations struck the Istanbul peace deal that included an agreement for Ukraine to give up its Nato ambitions. However, the deal failed after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy met with former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who refused to sign off on security deals and told the Ukrainian president to “fight on.” Over a million men have been killed or wounded since.

At the Berlin meeting on December 14, between EU leaders, US President Donald Trump’s special envoys and Zelenskiy, all the same points that the Kremlin was pushing for in January 2022 before the invasion started have come up again.

Sloat’s comments now confirm that strategic discomfort in Washington played a direct role in foreclosing what may have been a viable diplomatic off-ramp. “She’s describing her own position and projecting it onto Russia,” Bertrand said.

(Watch interview with Sloat here.)

By Kautilya The Contemplator, Substack, 12/13/25

Western political discourse often treats President Vladimir Putin’s twenty-five years in power as an aberration, a manifestation of uniquely Russian authoritarianism and a personalistic dictatorship incompatible with modern political norms. Russia is, therefore, an inevitable target for Western-engineered so-called “democratic transformation.” Yet, this narrative reveals far more about Western ideological assumptions than it does about Russia’s own political culture. It assumes that the institutional patterns of the North Atlantic world in the form of frequent electoral turnover, procedural legitimacy and entrenched party competition, represent a universal model toward which all societies naturally evolve. Russia’s own historical trajectory suggests something different.

In the long continuum of Russian statehood, from the medieval princes of Muscovy through the imperial Tsars, the long-serving General Secretaries of the Soviet Union and into the modern Russian presidency, extended leadership tenures are not deviations. Instead, they are characteristic expressions of a civilizational logic shaped by geography, historical trauma, ethnic complexity and enduring geopolitical pressures. Putin’s longevity, far from being anomalous, represents a return to structural equilibrium after the turbulence of the 1990s. Understanding why requires situating Russia’s political patterns within their deep historical and cultural contexts.

Historical Continuity of Long Rule

The Tsarist Era: Sovereignty Until Death

The pattern of long-term centralized authority predates modern Russia and permeates its political evolution. From the 15th century onward, Muscovite and Imperial Russia developed governance structures in which the sovereign ruled until death or violent overthrow. Ivan III ruled for forty-three years (1462–1505), unifying Russian lands, ending Mongol suzerainty and consolidating the state. Ivan IV reigned for thirty-seven years (1547–1584), centralizing authority and expanding Russian territory to Siberia. Peter the Great’s forty-three-year rule (1682–1725) modernized the military, restructured state institutions and expanded the empire westward. Catherine the Great’s thirty-four-year reign (1762–1796) extended Russian influence across Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and the Black Sea. Nicholas I ruled for thirty years (1825–1855), overseeing an era of ideological conservatism and imperial cohesion.

These rulers were not constrained by term limits or regularized succession mechanisms. Their tenures reflected the structural demands of governing a vast, diverse empire exposed to external threats and internal fragmentation. Stability depended on sustained personal authority, not rotation of office.

The Soviet Era: Ideology Changed, Political Logic Did Not

The Soviet period preserved this deeper continuity beneath the veneer of revolutionary ideology. Vladimir Lenin ruled until incapacitation and death. Joseph Stalin governed for twenty-nine years until his death in 1953, industrializing the country, mobilizing it for total war and engineering an authoritarian modernization that transformed Russia into a superpower.

Leonid Brezhnev ruled for nearly two decades, presiding over an era of détente and cautious conservatism. Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko died in office. Only Nikita Khrushchev was removed before death, and even his removal came through an intra-elite party coup rather than through any democratic mechanism.

Across five centuries of statehood, the pattern is unmistakable. Russian leadership is long-term, centralized and stable, disrupted only by systemic crises. Putin’s tenure fits squarely into this lineage.

Russia as a Multi-Ethnic and Civilizational State

Western misunderstandings of Russia begin with the false assumption that it is a conventional nation-state comparable to European parliamentary democracies. Russia has never been that. It is a multi-ethnic, continental-scale civilization whose political culture and strategic behavior are shaped by sheer geographic immensity and profound internal diversity.

A state stretching across eleven time zones and uniting more than 190 ethnic groups and multiple religious traditions cannot be governed through the rapid political turnover typical of Western systems. Long-term, centralized leadership is not an ideological quirk but a structural necessity. The memory of the Soviet collapse, when a weakened center allowed entire regions to break away, reinforces the conviction that discontinuity at the top risks fragmentation.

Russian thinkers have long argued that geography imprints itself on political psychology. Nikolai Berdyaev famously described “Nature” in Russia as an elemental force that is vast, overwhelming and spiritually formative. Pre-Christian pagan impulses blended with Byzantine Orthodoxy, creating a national character marked by a tension between boundless, earthly vitality and ascetic, otherworldly discipline. This duality mirrors Russia’s physical landscape that is immense and formless.

Such a landscape demands strong organizing authority. Russian historians contend that centralized rule emerged not from a cultural affinity for despotism but from the practical challenge of imposing order on the steppe. Where Western civilization grew within compact, clearly bounded territories conducive to stable institutions, Russia grew outward into open space. In such conditions, only a powerful state could hold the civilizational whole together.

Russia’s political model is therefore not rhetorical but existential. The state is expected to serve as the unifying principle of a vast and varied civilization, preventing centrifugal drift among its many peoples. This explains why long-term leadership whether Tsarist, Soviet or presidential, has been the dominant pattern across Russian history. The state’s authority is the spine of the Russian world.

This civilizational logic of thinking in centuries rather than electoral cycles, treating sovereignty as sacred and viewing instability as an existential threat, shapes both elite expectations and public attitudes. Rapid leadership rotation appears dangerous and Western-style party competition brittle. Continuity at the top is understood not as authoritarian stagnation but as strategic prudence. Putin’s long tenure reflects this deeper civilizational demand that only durable, centralized power can sustain a state of Russia’s scale and historical vulnerability.

Political Trauma and the Fear of Collapse

If Russia privileges stability and continuity, it is because its history repeatedly demonstrates the catastrophic consequences of state weakness. Three moments in particular form a continuous chain of trauma that deeply informs the Russian political imagination.

The Time of Troubles (1598–1613): Collapse of Sovereignty

The Time of Troubles (Smutnoye vremya) was not merely a dynastic crisis. It was a near-extinction event for the Russian state. After the death of Tsar Feodor I and the extinction of the Rurik dynasty, tsars were made and unmade by factions, pretenders proliferated, foreign armies occupied Moscow and famine killed perhaps one-third of the population. The infamous Seven Boyars (Semiboyarschina), a council of aristocrats who effectively handed Moscow over to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1610, became a lasting symbol of elite treachery, factionalism and the dangers of state disintegration. In Russian historical consciousness, the boyars represent what happens when elites prioritize gain over national survival.

The 1990s: The Modern Time of Troubles

The symbolic template of the Smutnoye vremya resurfaced with extraordinary force in the 1990s when the Seven Bankers (Semibankirschina) comprising Boris Berezovsky, Mikhail Fridman, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Vladimir Gusinsky, Vladimir Potanin, Alexander Smolensky and Petr Aven, became in the public imagination, a modern ‘Boyarshina’. They privatized not merely state assets but functional sovereignty itself. Gusinsky and Berezovsky controlled national television networks. Khodorkovsky controlled strategic energy assets and funded political parties. Regional governors treated their territories as personal fiefdoms and the Russian mafia effectively acted as the arbiter of property rights and security across the country. In parallel, de-industrialization, population decline, IMF dependency and NATO expansion exacerbated the sense of humiliation and hopelessness.

As such, for ordinary Russians, the “Wild 1990s” were not a time of freedom but a time when the state vanished, the police were powerless, wages went unpaid and criminals, or oligarchs indistinguishable from criminals, ruled. The parallel to the Seven Boyars is not metaphorical but structural. In both cases, the absence of a coherent state allowed powerful private interests to seize control, fragment authority and invite external manipulation.

February–October 1917: Liberal Democracy as Paralysis

The 1917 interregnum between the February and October Revolutions represents a third foundational trauma. The Provisional Government under Alexander Kerensky attempted to impose Western-style democratic reforms on a war-exhausted society. Instead of stabilizing the state, Kerensky presided over the collapse of army discipline, the rise of rival power centers, land seizures and economic disarray. In later recollections, he is reported to have answered that preventing Bolshevik victory would have required “shooting one man – Kerensky himself”. His liberal democratic vision was not wrong in theory. It was simply incompatible with the conditions of a vast, wounded, agrarian empire on the brink of disintegration. To Russians, 1917 did not show that democracy was impossible. It showed that democracy imposed prematurely without state capacity or order, leads directly to collapse.

Collective Memory of Collapse

These three historical traumas form a continuous thread in Russian collective memory. Each period taught the same civilizational lesson that when the central state weakens, Russia become vulnerable to internal predation, external interference and territorial dismemberment. Authority is not merely a political preference. It is a shield against national dissolution.

For Westerners, instability often signals the birth pangs of democracy. For Russians, instability is the prelude to famine, occupation, civil war and criminal rule. This deep-seated fear of collapse, encoded across four centuries of historical experience, helps explain why Russian political culture places such a premium on continuity, long-term leadership and centralized authority. The trauma of past disintegration creates a powerful societal mandate that the state must never again be allowed to fall apart.

Performance-Based Versus Procedural Legitimacy

Against this backdrop, Western efforts to promote regime change in Russia, whether through sanctions, information campaigns or normative pressure, fundamentally misunderstand the nature of Russian political legitimacy. In the West, legitimacy emerges from adherence to democratic procedures, term limits, party competition and electoral rotation. In Russia, legitimacy derives not from procedural formalism but from performance and specifically, the leader’s ability to provide stability, economic predictability, social order, protection from foreign threats and the restoration of national dignity after humiliating periods of weakness.

Networked Power and the “Besieged Fortress”

Western narratives often reduce Russia’s political system to the personal will of Vladimir Putin, as if it were a one-man dictatorship divorced from institutional, bureaucratic and elite dynamics. In reality, Putin occupies the position of primus inter pares, the “first among equals,” within a tightly interwoven elite ecosystem that includes the security services, the military, major state corporations, regional governors, loyal oligarchs and technocratic administrators. His authority rests not on isolated personal power but on his ability to manage, balance and embody the interests of this wider ruling coalition.

This elite configuration bears far greater resemblance to the Tsarist bureaucratic machine and the Soviet nomenklatura than to any Western-style presidential administration. It is a system designed to be self-protective and consensus-oriented, structured to prevent internal fragmentation and maintain continuity in a vast and diverse state. Because the locus of power is collective rather than personal, removing Putin would not dismantle the system. It would simply elevate another figure emerging from the same institutional matrix and shaped by the same strategic assumptions. Western regime-change fantasies persist only because they misinterpret the nature of Russian governance, imagining it as personalistic rather than structurally embedded.

To understand why such a system coalesced and why it prizes continuity, it is necessary to recognize Russia’s deeply rooted besieged fortress mentality, something Western observers often dismiss as paranoia but which arises from centuries of traumatic experience. Russia’s identity has been forged through repeated invasions that consistently threatened its political survival: the Mongol-Tatar domination, the Polish occupation of Moscow in 1610, Swedish incursions under Charles XII, Napoleon’s invasion, the Austro-German offensives in World War I, Allied interventions during the Civil War and the Nazi onslaught of 1941. Each episode reinforced the belief that a fragmented or indecisive state invites catastrophe.

Even earlier, during the Northern Crusades, the Teutonic Knights attempted to subjugate the Novgorod Republic. Viewing Orthodox Christians as indistinguishable from pagans, the Catholic Church sanctioned the campaign as part of its mission to extend Latin Christendom. The Knights also sought to control Novgorod’s lucrative trade routes. Their defeat by Alexander Nevsky in the 1242 Battle on the Ice became a foundational memory in Russian statecraft, an enduring symbol of the necessity of strong, unified leadership to repel existential threats.

This long arc of historical insecurity shaped Russia’s perception of the modern world. The Cold War reinforced expectations of Western encirclement, and post-Soviet developments such as NATO expansion, color revolutions along Russia’s periphery, and openly stated Western goals of “weakening”, “decolonizing” or “dismembering” Russia have appeared to confirm, rather than alleviate, these anxieties. In such an environment, the logic of centralized authority, elite cohesion and strategic continuity becomes deeply entrenched. The state sees itself operating under perpetual external threat and its leadership structures reflect a civilizational imperative: to ensure stability in a world perceived as chronically hostile.

Elections as Political Ritual

One of the most misunderstood aspects of Russian political life is the function of elections. Western analysts often describe Russian elections as “sham contests” or “fake versions” of Western democracy. However, such comparisons assume that all elections serve the same purpose. In Russia, elections function less as mechanisms of leadership rotation and more as rituals of affirmation. They demonstrate mass cohesion, test regional elite loyalty and symbolically renew the legitimacy of continuity.

Critics also point to the exclusion of figures such as Alexey Navalny and the dominance of Kremlin-approved “systemic opposition” candidates as evidence that Russian elections are hollow. Yet this, too, confirms rather than refutes their ritualized function. In an electoral-authoritarian system, the ballot is structured not to decide who will govern but to stage society’s consent to an already-decided leadership arrangement. Allowing a genuinely competitive challenger would undermine the very continuity the system is designed to preserve.

The Medvedev Interlude: Continuity Under Constitutional Constraint

The 2008–2012 Medvedev presidency illustrates this logic. Although Putin stepped aside due to constitutional term limits, elite networks, policy direction and strategic objectives remained unchanged. Russia fought the 2008 war with Georgia under Medvedev, the state continued consolidating power and the groundwork for later constitutional reforms was laid. The “tandemocracy” maintained continuity while respecting constitutional formalities.

The 2020 Constitutional Amendments and Mishustin’s Appointment

A more significant institutional adaptation occurred in 2020 with sweeping constitutional reforms. These amendments extended presidential terms to six years and reset Putin’s previous terms, allowing him to run again as though beginning anew. This was not merely a personal power play. It reflected elite consensus that continuity was strategically essential amid rising geopolitical confrontation.

Simultaneously, Putin appointed Mikhail Mishustin, a technocratic and non-political figure from the Federal Tax Service, as prime minister. Mishustin symbolized managerial continuity rather than political rivalry. His role underscores that the Russian system prizes technocratic competence and loyalty over pluralistic competition.

Continuity and Survival in Crisis

What Western critics call “stagnation” often manifests in Russia as resilience. Leadership continuity has repeatedly enabled Russia to endure and ultimately triumph over crises that would have shattered more fragile states. Alexander I’s long reign allowed Russia not only to survive Napoleon’s invasion but to rebuild, reform and ultimately advance into Paris in 1814. Stalin’s lengthy rule provided the organizational capacity to industrialize the Soviet Union, transplant entire industries eastward during the Great Patriotic War, mobilize tens of millions and rebuild the nation after victory.

In the post-Soviet era, Putin’s long tenure has allowed him to centralize authority after the chaos of the 1990s, tame the oligarchs, restore the fiscal foundations of the state, defeat separatism, modernize the military, rebalance the economy, diversify energy exports and reposition Russia within a multipolar global order. These undertakings could not have been accomplished within the time horizons of Western leadership cycles.

Putin’s Strategic Advantage in a World of Short-Term Leaders

Putin’s unique strategic advantage lies in his continuity. He has outlasted five American presidents – Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden – each of whom dramatically shifted US policies toward Russia, China and the Middle East.

While American strategy oscillated from reset to rivalry, from interventionism to retrenchment, Russia pursued a coherent long-term program of resisting NATO expansion, consolidating influence in the post-Soviet space, engaging China and India, strengthening domestic sovereignty and cultivating a Eurasian orientation. No Western leader has accumulated such extensive experiential knowledge of global statecraft. In the international arena, time itself is a resource and Russia has wielded it more effectively than any Western power.

Traits Required to Rule a State Like Russia

The traits required to rule Russia thus differ markedly from those valued in Western democracies. A Russian leader must possess strategic patience, the ability to think in decades and the willingness to make difficult decisions to preserve the integrity of the state. A mastery of diplomacy as an existential craft is indispensable as well as the capacity to act as a symbolic embodiment of national continuity.

These traits are not optional but structurally necessary for managing a state with Russia’s geographic, ethnic and geopolitical complexities. Leaders who lack such qualities either perish, as many did in Russia’s turbulent periods, or are removed by the elite, as in Khrushchev’s case.

After Putin: Continuity Without the Man

The question of Russia’s future after Putin often animates Western commentary, usually through two mistaken assumptions. First, that Putin alone holds the system together, and second, that removing him would catalyze liberalization. Neither assumption withstands scrutiny.

Putin is not the creator of Russia’s political logic but its product and its guardian. The system he leads is robust, diversified among powerful elite blocs and deeply rooted in historical patterns. His successor, whenever he emerges, will be shaped by this system, not liberated from it. The next leader may, in fact, be more rigid, more security-driven and less internationally experienced than Putin, especially given the intensifying geopolitical confrontation with the West. Many Russian elites believe that Putin’s relative pragmatism and diplomatic skill will be difficult to replicate. The West may one day “lose Putin” only to confront a leader more nationalistic and less flexible.

Russia will not liberalize into a Western model after Putin because the structural foundations of its political culture such as its geography, ethnic diversity, civilizational identity, historical trauma, elite configuration and security imperatives do not disappear with a change in leadership. If anything, the system will likely consolidate further. The logic of continuity will outlast the individual who currently embodies it.

The Deeper Lesson for the West

Across six centuries, Russian governance has survived Mongol domination, the Time of Troubles, Napoleonic invasion, imperial collapse, civil war, the devastation of the Second World War, Stalin’s excesses, Khrushchev’s volatility, Brezhnev’s stagnation, Soviet dissolution and the post-Soviet collapse. In each case, the state eventually reasserted continuity and stability. This pattern illustrates a profound truth: Russia’s political system is not centered on specific leaders, but on a civilizational logic that prioritizes order, sovereignty and endurance over procedural turnover.

Western misunderstandings of Russia persist because they rest on the false premise that all political systems aspire to mimic Western liberal democracy. Russia’s political model is not a deviation from an imagined global norm. It is the product of its geography, history, civilization and strategic culture. Putin’s twenty-five years in power reflect not the idiosyncrasies of one man, but the structural necessities of a civilizational state that thinks in centuries, not electoral cycles. When he eventually leaves the political stage, Russia will continue along its historical trajectory, guided by the same imperatives of stability, continuity and strategic patience that have shaped it since the age of Ivan III. In this sense, the West does not misunderstand Putin. It misunderstands Russia.

By Joe Lauria, Consortium News, 12/16/25

The British Crown Prosecution Service has dropped its terrorism investigation of independent journalist Richard Medhurst 16 months after he was stopped at Heathrow Airport and interrogated about his reporting on Gaza. 

Medhurst reported the CPS decision in an X post. 

Medhurst said Britain dropped the case by turning it over to Austrian authorities, who raided Medhurst’s home in Vienna last February, taking his devices and interrogating him about his reporting on Gaza. 

He said British authorities turned over their files to the Austrians and gave them “primacy” over the case.  They also lifted bail against him.

Medhurst said Austria can’t have primacy because he was arrested first by Britain and that the claims against him are different. “The U.K. claims that journalism is terrorism,” he said. “The Austrians say journalism makes you a member of a terrorist organization.”

Medhurst said that his government went out of its way to give Austria “whatever so-called files they have on me shows”  you how “vicious” they are.  “Literally blowing people up on a daily basis and then they have the nerve to call me a terrorist because I’m sitting in a room by myself talking to a camera.”

Austrian immigration authorities called him to a meeting in February where they threatened to revoke his residency because of his reporting on Palestine and Lebanon.  

When he thought the interview at the immigration office was over, he said a group of plainesclothes officers entered the room flashing their badges. He was detained and served with a search warrant.

Medhurst said he was accused by them of encouraging terrorism, disseminating propaganda and being involved in organized crime. 

Medhurst was arrested by Britain in August 2024 entering his own country at Heathrow Airport and detained nearly 24 hours for allegedly violating the British Terrorism Act by supporting a “proscribed organization,” namely Hamas. 

[See: Journalist Richie Medhurst Arrested at Heathrow Airport Under ‘Terrorism Act’]

Section 12 of the British Terrorism Act actually criminalizes holding certain opinions or beliefs. It reads: 

“12 Support.

(1) A person commits an offence if—

(a) he invites support for a proscribed organisation, and

(b) the support is not, or is not restricted to, the provision of money or other property. …

(1A) A person commits an offence if the person—

(a) expresses an opinion or belief that is supportive of a proscribed organisation, and

(b) in doing so is reckless as to whether a person to whom the expression is directed will be encouraged to support a proscribed organisation.” 

Under these provisions other journalists, including Craig Murray and Asa Winstanley have been interrogated and likewise threatened with prosecution for critical reporting about Israel in Gaza, which is being misconstrued by the state as support for Hamas. 

Criticism of one side in a conflict does not automatically amount to support for the other. 

Under (1A) (a) above, thousands of Britons have been arrested this year only for publicly proclaiming support for Palestine Action, an activist group opposing Israel’s genocide that has been designated a terrorist organization for damaging RAF property in a protest. 

“Now that the U.K. has dropped the case, I really hope the Austrians will realize that they’ve been taken for a ride and sent on a wild goose chase with ridiculous accusations,” Medhurst said. “The fact this case is allowed for almost a year and a half—it’s a crime in and of itself.”

Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette, the London Daily Mail and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He is the author of two books, A Political Odyssey, with Sen. Mike Gravel, foreword by Daniel Ellsberg; and How I Lost By Hillary Clinton, foreword by Julian Assange.

From Nicolai Petro, 12/19/25

You may have heard that the EU Commission has imposed personal sanctions against Col. Jacques Baud, a former Swiss intelligence analyst. Baud has also served as Policy Chief for United Nations Peace Operations, where he led the first multidimensional UN intelligence unit in the Sudan. Within NATO he followed the 2014 Ukrainian crisis and was later asked to participate in programs to assist Ukraine.He is accused of “disruptive activities against the EU and the partner states” as a “mouthpiece for pro-Russian propaganda.” How one gets put on this list, and how one might be removed is not clear. Former President of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Dr. Jur. Hans-Georg Maaßen, has provided an illuminating legal analysis (in German) of the troubling implications of this action: https://youtu.be/9PCVRBzJR90?si=qNm86arGiuki-G-4. 

Baud is currently under a travel ban, his bank accounts are frozen, and his property confiscated. No one is allowed to have business relations with him, including the publishers of his books.

Journalist Patrik Baab and several others intend to file a public appeal on his behalf. The draft text of this appeal is attached below. If you wish to add your name to the list, please contact him directly at: patrikbaab@posteo.de

Thank you very much for your time. 

Sincerely,

Nicolai Petro, Professor of Political Science, University of Rhode Island (USA)

By Volodymyr Ishchenko, Marta Havryshko, Tarik Cyril Amar, Milica Popović and Almut Rochowanski, New Global Politics, 12/10/25

The following is a response to the editors of the Review of Democracy (RevDem), the online journal of the Democracy Institute at the Central European University, who suspended an event that they agreed to host on December 11, 2025: “Men in the Vans, Women on the Streets: Gender, Resistance, and Forced Mobilization in Ukraine and Ex-Yugoslavia.” Its authors are the panelists who were scheduled to speak at the event.

This case illustrates how academic freedom and open debate are eroding in Western institutions, including those that publicly position themselves against authoritarian trends. Concerns about “balance” and “public responsibility” in discussions of the Russia–Ukraine war are applied in a highly selective way, effectively excluding scholars who are among the very few conducting empirical research and publishing on silenced and inconvenient topics. While calls for “balance” are rarely voiced when events reproduce dominant narratives about the war, they are used to delegitimize discussions that highlight phenomena—such as mass draft dodging and forced mobilization—that expose growing tensions between hegemonic discourse and social realities in Ukraine and sit uneasily with the current climate of European remilitarization. Invoking “responsibility” has, in practice, meant devaluing and silencing the lived experiences of large numbers of people suffering and resisting serious human rights abuses, whose perspectives the suspended panel was explicitly designed to bring into the conversation.

We are profoundly shocked and saddened by the statement issued by the Review of Democracy (RevDem) and the CEU Democracy Institute, which we consider an attack on our academic freedom and our academic and professional integrity. We feel compelled to respond to this deplatforming, which is nothing less than an act of political censorship.

Our panel was scheduled to address the phenomenon of “busification” (forced mobilization in Ukraine). We were to examine its relationship to gender and nationalism, as well as the resistance and civil society responses it has provoked. The panel also planned to place these issues in a comparative context, exploring forced mobilization in Ukraine alongside similar practices during the Yugoslav wars. The event was proposed and organized with the utmost care to ensure the rigor of academic debate and to reflect the urgency of the human rights abuses on the ground. We proposed the speakers and the topic to the RevDem team on November 15, responding to all questions about structure, specific themes, and format by late November. The event was subsequently announced on the evening of December 3 and shared on RevDem and Democracy Institute social media on the afternoon of December 4. As we were proceeding with preparations, on the evening of December 5 we received an email announcing the event’s suspension. We later discovered that the RevDem team and the Democracy Institute had simultaneously issued a public statement on the suspension.

The statement claimed that the decision followed “careful consideration of concerns raised by colleagues, faculty, and students across the university, particularly members of CEU’s Ukrainian community.” However, RevDem and the Democracy Institute did not ask us, the speakers and organizers of the panel, to comment on these concerns while making the decision, giving us no possibility to respond and leaving us entirely excluded from the process. Nevertheless, the statement on the suspension plainly declared that “the current format of the event does not meet the standards required for an academically balanced and contextually grounded discussion of this subject” and, moreover, that the event does not seem to be structured in ways “that uphold academic integrity, provide appropriate expertise, and acknowledge the lived experiences of those directly affected.”

In the private email we received about the cancellation, we were informed that “the issues raised included: the need for a clearer contextualization of forced mobilization within the ongoing full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine; questions about the appropriateness of comparisons with the Yugoslav conflicts; the absence of scholars who have conducted direct research on forced mobilization or on civil society responses in Ukraine, and worries that the current setup may not be able to sustain the kind of balanced, rigorous academic debate that the topic requires and CEU stands for.” Essentially, the suggestion was that our proposal was not grounded in scholarly rigor and appropriate expertise, nor sensitive to the wider impact it may have on communities directly affected by the war. The statement promised “thoughtful reassessment” of the “event’s format, scope, and potential future iteration”; however, it called into question our academic integrity and research expertise as well as the lived experiences of some of the speakers before any proper reassessment was conducted.

The panel was organized by scholars who have been conducting direct research on forced mobilization and/or on civil society responses in Ukraine, as well as in the former Yugoslavia. Weare among the few academics to have published on these topics.

Volodymyr Ishchenko has co-authored the essay “Why is Ukraine struggling to mobilize its citizens to fight?”, which is based, in particular, on recent empirical research, including interviews with Ukrainian volunteers and draft dodgers. This forms part of a large-scale cross-national research project he has been co-leading with the support of the Alameda Institute, which also included a representative survey commissioned this year in Ukraine exploring, among other questions, attitudes towards draft dodging.

Tarik Cyril Amar published the most comprehensive article to date focused on forced mobilization in Ukraine: “The Nation and Busification: Forced Mobilization in Wartime Ukraine,” published by the Institute for New Global Politics, a think tank founded by a network of  scholars at Stanford, UC-Berkeley, and elsewhere.

Marta Havryshko has published extensively on forced mobilization and gender specifically, including: “Mobilisation et résistance à la mobilization: le coût social de l’effort de guerre ukrainien” (Postface à l’édition française du “Le Massacre du Maidan – La tuerie de masse qui changea le monde” du prof. Ivan Katchanovski, à paraître en novembre 2025 aux éditions Perspectives Libres, Paris) ; “Müde vom Ukrainekrieg: Warum ukrainische Soldaten von der Front fliehen,” in Berliner Zeitung, October 26, 2025 ; “Der Krieg der Armen : Wie Klasse, Macht und Korruption den Krieg in der Ukraine prägen,” in Berliner Zeitung, June 9, 2025 ; and “Feinde im Inneren ? –‘Krieg’ gegen Rekrutierungsmaßnahmen in der Ukraine eskaliert,” in Berliner Zeitung, February 15, 2025.

Milica Popović is currently leading an extensive empirically-rooted project on desertion and forced mobilization during the Yugoslav wars at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna. Her project “The Silence of Saying No: (Un)Remembering Deserters from the Yugoslav Wars” has received funding from the FWF (Austrian Science Fund) based on international peer-review evaluation, and she has delivered several academic lectures on the topic.

Almut Rochowanski has decades-long experience supporting women’s civil society groups in Eastern Europe. She has worked on Ukraine and women, particularly women activists, since 2014, notably with the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, an international women’s peace organization founded in 1915, which has consistently worked on anti-militarism, including by defending conscientious objectors and deserters.

The above-mentioned publications are not yet in peer-reviewed journals precisely because careful empirical research of a new and silenced phenomenon requires time. It should be noted that academics routinely speak on issues on which they have not yet published peer-reviewed papers—as numerous events, panels, and podcasts at the Democracy Institute and CEU itself demonstrate.

We find the claimed “inappropriateness” of comparing the Russia-Ukraine and Yugoslav wars to be without serious grounds. We are aware of each other’s studies on forced mobilization in Ukraine and across ex-Yugoslav states: we find important convergences, and divergences, that help us see each case in comparative context. Furthermore, the Invisible University for Ukraine—one of CEU’s own projects—apparently finds such comparisons entirely appropriate, as it offers two courses: “Protests, Social Transformations and the EU: Rethinking the Balkans for Ukraine” (course co-directors: Marija Mandić, University of Belgrade, and Olesia Marković, Kyiv-Mohyla Academy); and “Facing the Legacy of the Yugoslav Wars” (course co-directors: Vladimir Petrović, NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies, Amsterdam and Miloš Hrnjaz, University of Belgrade).

We are scholars and practitioners with deep expertise on the proposed topic of discussion and a long record of books and articles on directly related aspects of Ukrainian and (post-)Yugoslav societies and histories, including wars, nationalism, gender, violence, protests, and civil society. We are fully competent to contextualize forced mobilization appropriately—that was precisely the goal of our discussion.

We are able to sustain the balanced and rigorous academic debate that any serious topic requires, and we have proven this through our academic work and its recognition—unless “contextualization” and “balancing” means that we should, in effect, justify and legitimize the large-scale and serious human rights abuse that forced conscription represents.

Further accusing us of a lack of sensibility “to the wider impact that it may have on communities directly affected by the war” is particularly insulting, given that two of the panelists are Ukrainian citizens (Marta Havryshko and Volodymyr Ishchenko); and one of the panelists lived through the Yugoslav wars (Milica Popović). Acknowledging the experience of our close relatives and friends who have become victims of forced mobilization, had to become deserters, or hid from mobilization for years was one of our primary motivations for initiating an academic discussion on this topic.

We believe that RevDem and the Democracy Institute’s handling of the situation with our panel was unprofessional and unethical. The public allegations made about our integrity, expertise, and experiences before conducting any proper review are unacceptable.

We also believe that the real reason for this cancellation is our public stance and political views—in particular, critical views on the Russia-Ukraine war and nationalism—as well as the lack of readiness by the RevDem and the Democracy Institute to address the inconvenient complexities of wars not suitable for the dominant political discourses in the current atmosphere of Europe-wide militarization. Such cancellation practices stand as a warning to the rapidly deteriorating conditions of academic freedom and freedom of scholarship, as well as freedom of speech in the European Union, even by institutions which otherwise claim to fight against such authoritarian tendencies.

Volodymyr Ishchenko is a sociologist from Ukraine currently affiliated with the Institute of East European Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, and author of Towards the Abyss: Ukraine from Maidan to War.

Marta Havryshko is Dr. Thomas Zand Visiting Assistant Professor in Holocaust Pedagogy and Antisemitism Studies, Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University.

Tarik Cyril Amar (@TarikCyrilAmar), is an historian from Germany currently at Koç University, Istanbul, and author of The Paradox of Ukrainian Lviv. A Borderland City between Stalinists, Nazis, and Nationalists.

Milica Popović is a political scientist, and currently, Senior Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute of Culture Studies at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna, where she leads her project,”The Silence of Saying No: (Un)Remembering Deserters from the Yugoslav Wars.” Her first monograph, The Last Pioneers: Deconstructing Yugonostalgia and (post-)Yugoslavism, will be published with Amsterdam University Press in 2026.

Almut Rochowanski has been an activist for women’s rights and peace in countries of the former Soviet Union and is currently a fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.