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The use and abuse of Russia’s ‘Great Patriotic War’
The fact that the Russian state has instrumentalized Victory Day for its own political purposes, including justifying the war in Ukraine, begs an important question—why does this seem to be working? If the parallels the Kremlin draws between the Great Patriotic War and current events prove convincing to people, there must be a reason.
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Can Trump’s Ukraine peace plan succeed?
By now renewing aid to Ukraine, it has thrown away its leverage for the smallest of concessions rather than trying to extract something more meaningful. The Americans may now find that they have locked themselves into supporting a proposal that it is thoroughly one-sided and incapable of producing the result they want, namely an end to the war.
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Inching closer to an uneasy peace in Ukraine
The Trump peace plan goes some way towards squaring the circle by providing some guarantees to both sides, albeit far fewer than both would like. As such it is a reasonable compromise and a good starting point for further talks. There will be some hard diplomatic work ahead, but at least the long process of negotiation is finally about to start.
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The foreign interference report’s great anticlimax
The conclusion that one can draw from this is that by helping discredit Canadian institutions, the false accusations and exaggerated claims that have been made about foreign interference appear to have done far more damage than the actual interference itself, whose impact was “limited,” “marginal” and “largely ineffective,” according to the Hogue report.
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Canada’s vassal status on full display with return of Trump
Following the Danish example and hoping that playing along will win us favours is unlikely to produce significant dividends. If Trump’s bluster and threats force Canadian leaders to realize this and to reconsider the nature of their relationship with our southern partner, in a perverse way he might even end up doing us some good.
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What is the West’s end-goal in Ukraine?
Russia has now fired an experimental hypersonic medium-range ballistic missile at a Ukrainian industrial facility in the city of Dnipro. This raises questions about the West’s policy of incremental escalation in Ukraine, specifically what goals it is meant to achieve, whether those goals are actually achievable, and whether the cost of pursuing those goals may be so high as to render them unwise.
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Canada’s ‘New Red Scare’ is profoundly undemocratic
Our society is not without faults. Our domestic and foreign policies are also often flawed. To correct failings, we need people who point them out, however unpopular that may be. We should be enabling a wide framework of public discourse, not seeking to silence people. To date, we haven’t quite reached the level of hysteria of 1950s McCarthyism, but we are perhaps coming close.
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Ukraine’s ‘victory plan’ faces sobering realities
While Zelensky continues to talk of restoring all of Ukraine’s lost territory he has begun to wake up to the reality that this is impossible by military means. Unable to shift dynamics in his favour, he is hoping instead to shift the political dynamics by refocusing the Ukrainian war effort away from defending its own territory and towards striking the territory of the Russian Federation.
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Ukraine rolls the dice on Kursk incursion
The Ukrainian attack on Kursk is a considerable gamble, driven perhaps by a sense that Ukraine’s weak military position left few other options other than a slow, grinding retreat. If it does induce the Russian government to negotiate, then it will have succeeded. But it could also end up extending the war rather than bringing it to a quicker end.
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In Ukraine war’s shadow, cracks emerging in European consensus
It may appear that European unity on Ukraine is crumbling. This would be a false conclusion. Hungary and Slovakia are very much outliers. Elsewhere in Europe, political leaders remain utterly committed to the Ukrainian cause, and perhaps rather oblivious to the military realities, continuing to talk of supporting Ukraine for “as long as it takes.”