Gorbachev, Mikhail S
What 70 Years of War Can Tell Us About the Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Any Russian invasion of Ukraine was long expected to play out as a kind of postmodern war, defined by 21st-century weapons like media manipulation, battlefield-clouding disinformation, cyberattacks, false flag operations and unmarked fighters. Such elements have featured in this war. But it is traditional 20th-century dynamics that have instead dominated: shifting battle lines of tanks […]
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Bristling Against the West, China Rallies Domestic Sympathy for Russia
While Russian troops have battered Ukraine, officials in China have been meeting behind closed doors to study a Communist Party-produced documentary that extols President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia as a hero. The humiliating collapse of the Soviet Union, the video says, was the result of efforts by the United States to destroy its legitimacy. […]
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With New Limits on Media, Putin Closes a Door on Russia’s ‘Openness’
One of the paradoxical things about Vladimir V. Putin’s increasingly authoritarian rule of Russia was how relatively open society always remained. For all the state’s control of media, people could read or watch what they wanted, including foreign newscasts like BBC and CNN. The internet was largely unfettered, a portal to the rest of the […]
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