Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Putin’s deliberate provocation is important. What’s more important is the U.S. response.

For Vladimir Putin, Interpol is just another tool.

Old falsehoods never die, they just (hopefully) fade away.

It's not just about helping Assad; it's about disrupting American interests.

What does the kooky libertarian see in the authoritarian Putin regime?

It's Trump's economy against the rest of the world—and as of now, America is winning.

As goes Trump, so goes the conservative movement.

Did Trump’s coddling of Putin damage his approval rating?

Trump's anger about the Mueller investigation will make any meeting counterproductive.

Hosted by Charlie Sykes.

The pace has been dizzying. With all the walk backs, reversals, dropped contractions, and various obfuscations: Russia week has been Peak Trump. Herewith some quick takeaways.

Did the president’s “team” actually discuss handing over U.S. citizens to Kremlin interrogators?

A muted reaction to Helsinki from the GOP Congress.

Is there anything with a shorter shelf life than the official talking points of the Trump White House? For Donald Trump, it’s the script to go off script, and any statement he makes today will be altered, contradicted, or undone tomorrow.

Schumer-led effort calls on Trump to refuse Putin's request to interview Americans.

Hosted by Charlie Sykes.

The president’s approach to international policy is venturing outside the very mainstream of American politics.

Trump's "I misspoke" clarification is even worse than his original answer.

What Trump actually did is bad enough.

The Senate majority leader did not mention the president by name, and in response to a question later said, “I'm not here to critique anyone else. I'm here to speak for myself.”

A new new low.

Anchor Chris Wallace even attempted to hand the Russian head of state a hard copy of the recent indictment of 12 Russian intelligence officers in the Mueller probe.

Donald Trump’s atrocious performance in Helsinki shows that nothing positive he might do is worth the downside.

The first president without the ability to code-switch.

The Arizona senator leads a chorus of GOP condemnations of the president’s press conference with Vladimir Putin.

The Donald Trump presidency somehow reaches a new low.

Hosted by Charlie Sykes.

Putin has already won.

Hosted by Charlie Sykes.

Robert Zubrin reviews Timothy Snyder's 'The Road to Unfreedom'

The tension between peaceable nations and the Russian Federation intensifies with each passing week. It is the path Vladimir Putin has chosen. The latest development is more serious than it may sound: Russian billionaire and Putin crony Roman Abramovich has had his visa renewal application…

How Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko was forced to fake his death.

Although this magazine has frequently lamented President Trump's tendency to praise Vladimir Putin and his regime in public, we've also applauded the administration for its punitive actions against the Kremlin's dictator. And we've urged the administration to go further by, for instance, listing…

The Trump administration on Friday announced a new set of sanctions against 38 individuals and entities in Russia in response to a "consistent pattern of malign activities" by the Russian government.

Keeping up with the news out of Russia has been like trying to drink from a firehose for at least the last month, though that would be seriously inadvisable considering what might have been added to the water.

In his final public remarks as White House national security adviser, H.R. McMaster offered a stinging rebuke of Russian violations of sovereignty and attempts to sow discord in free societies, activities for which he said the U.S. and its allies must impose higher costs.

The international effort to punish Vladimir Putin for the March 4 attempt to assassinate Sergei Skripal and his daughter is an enormously encouraging sign that free nations are at last turning against the Kremlin and its dictator. Britain has expelled 23 Russian diplomats from their posts in the…

The Trump administration’s decision to expel dozens of Russian intelligence officers from the United States earned bipartisan approval this week, with some of the president’s toughest congressional critics praising the move while calling for further action.

The poisoning of Russian defector Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia with one of the deadly Novichok series of nerve agents has plunged relations between Britain and Russia to their lowest level since Soviet times, sparking tit-for-tat diplomatic moves and a war of words. The crisis has raised…

President Donald Trump said Thursday that he will be swapping out national security adviser H.R. McMaster for former U.N. ambassador John Bolton, known Russia hawk, come mid-April.

Nebraska Republican Ben Sasse on Wednesday slammed the White House’s refusal to condemn the fraudulence of Russia’s election, describing the dodge as a break “with basic American moral tradition.”

After President Donald Trump congratulated Russian leader Vladimir Putin on his re-election during a phone call Tuesday, some Republican senators questioned the wisdom of commending an autocrat whose election they see as fraudulent. Others brushed it off as a diplomatic nicety.

The result of the Russian election was no surprise, and neither is the list of foreign leaders who lined up to congratulate Vladimir Putin on his victory.

Who poisoned Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia?

Senators on both sides of the aisle shot back at Russian President Vladimir Putin Thursday after he boasted in an annual state-of-the-union address that Russia possesses nuclear weapons capable of bypassing missile defense systems.

For the past three years, Russian opposition activists say, authorities have attempted to erase any trace of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov in the spot where he was murdered—on a bridge just outside the Kremlin. But on Tuesday morning, Russian officials will wake up to an inescapable reality: The…

Special counsel Robert Mueller indicted 13 Russians on Friday for their efforts to interfere with the U.S. political process. In the days since, President Donald Trump has taken to Twitter, pushing back hard on suggestions that his campaign colluded with the Kremlin, denying that he said Russia…

Lawmakers and experts are hoping for the best after the Treasury Department released what was seen as an underwhelming, congressionally-required public report on Russian oligarchs and senior political figures late Monday night.

The Trump administration is expected to provide lawmakers with a report Monday that calls out Russian president Vladimir Putin’s inner circle, a document that has had Russian elites worried for months.

The recent assault by Turkey’s military on Kurds in northwestern Syria has presented a conundrum for the administration: Turkey is our (strained) NATO ally while the Kurds have been one of America’s most important friends in the region, with Kurdish forces fighting valiantly alongside Americans in…

Today, after years of Vladimir Putin’s increasingly authoritarian rule, it is difficult to imagine that two decades ago one of Russia’s major television channels could regularly lampoon the country’s leaders in a puppet show (titled Puppets, or Kukly in Russian). In late November, that show’s head…

When it comes to Syria, Israel has a message and the government hopes a wider audience is listening. It was delivered in the form of two strikes inside Syria over the last week. By itself, an Israeli strike inside Syria is nothing extraordinary. The Israelis have long broadcasted their red lines in…

“Iran has never had a better friend than Obama,” Donald Trump tweeted in December 2013, as U.S. negotiators were finalizing a deal with Iran over the country’s nuclear program. So began Trump’s long campaign of ridiculing Barack Obama for the latter’s hopelessly gullible view of the Iranian regime.…

President Donald Trump, said White House aide Kellyanne Conway on Sunday, “is not as focused on this as he is his major 13-day trip abroad.” The “this” is the question of Roy Moore and his political future after the Washington Post’s bombshell report last week that included, among other…

So far, the White House is urging people to be “cautious” about the allegations against Republican Senate nominee Roy Moore of Alabama documented in a Thursday article in the Washington Post. Citing 30 sources, the Post reports four teenage girls who now say the thirtysomething Moore asked them on…

On October 30, special prosecutor Robert Mueller indicted President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and deputy chairman Rick Gates on 12 charges, including money laundering, false statements, and conspiracy against the United States, related to their work with Ukrainian…

Henry Kissinger aptly characterized two centuries of Russian foreign policy in his 2001 book Does America Need a Foreign Policy? “Throughout its history, with all its ups and downs,” he wrote, “Russia has conducted a persistent, patient, and skillful diplomacy: with Prussia and Austria against the…

The news that a former campaign manager of a sitting president has been indicted would seem like a pretty big deal.

The House Intelligence and Oversight Committees are investigating Russia’s involvement in a controversial Obama-era uranium deal, the panel’s chairman announced Tuesday.

The Soviet Union took an intensely discriminatory attitude to its history. What the regime wanted remembered, it magnified beyond all recognition; what it wanted forgotten, it erased. The Battle of Stalingrad, for instance, was endlessly propagandized by the Soviets; whereas the First World War, a…

Just occasionally, the United Nations gets things exactly right. A fine example of that is the recent release of a report from its special investigative mission on human-rights abuses in Crimea. The U.N. verdict? There have been “multiple and grave” violations—up to and including illegal detentions…

The man in charge of internal security of the nation's intelligence services says there is so much leaking of classified information right now that "we’re not dealing with it." Bill Evanina, the director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center made the admission in a recent…

The Trump administration is considering sending lethal defensive aid to Ukraine, defense secretary Jim Mattis said during a visit there Thursday.

President Donald Trump opened his statement of policy on Afghanistan and South Asia by offering a rare allowance that he had changed his mind about an issue—namely, about withdrawing American troops from Afghanistan. “My original instinct was to pull out, and historically I like to follow my…

Top lawmakers on the Senate's foreign relations committee are brushing off a retaliatory measure taken by Russia in response to a sanctions package that passed Congress overwhelmingly last week, describing the heated move as predictable.

A congressional sanctions package that targets Russia is triggering icy resentment from the Kremlin, with top officials there warning of further retaliation and worsening relations between Moscow and Washington.

The Senate overwhelmingly passed a sweeping bipartisan sanctions bill targeting Russia, Iran, and North Korea Thursday, 98-2.

As the Senate investigates allegations that elements of the Trump campaign may have been colluding with Russia, an interesting angle has emerged. Fusion GPS is the shadowy research firm that was commissioned by interests aligned with the Democratic party to produce (possibly with the help of the…

This is the third part of an interview with Vladimir Kara-Murza. Read part one here and part two here.

This is the second part of an interview with Vladimir Kara-Murza. Read part one here.

Vladimir Kara-Murza was late to our interview because he was at the hospital, receiving treatment for being poisoned. Again. He’s not a spy, he’s not KGB—he’s just a journalist and political activist, and not really all that threatening. But twice in the past two years, Kara-Murza has experienced…

The Russian government would rather ask for forgiveness than permission. Its foreign policy for years has depended on establishing “facts on the ground.” Once the Kremlin’s forces or its allies take what they want, the Foreign Ministry is happy to commit to accords that cement their aggression in…

The recent revelation of Donald Trump Jr.’s 2016 meeting with a Kremlin-linked Russian lawyer is causing headaches for the Trump administration. But in their enthusiasm to decry Trump Jr. and the campaign, congressional Democrats are jumping to some shaky conclusions.

The president-elect’s narrow victory at the end of a volatile campaign quickly led to efforts at planning a meeting of the American and Russian leaders. Relations between the two countries had deteriorated badly, not to say spectacularly, in the last year of the previous administration, amidst…

There was nothing normal about the July 7 meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin during the G20 summit in Hamburg. The mere scheduling of this friendly chat handed Putin a PR victory, which the Kremlin-controlled media exploited gleefully. Not only was the Russian dictator not isolated or…

There was nothing normal about the July 7 meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin during the G20 summit in Hamburg. The mere scheduling of this friendly chat handed Putin a PR victory, which the Kremlin-controlled media exploited gleefully. Not only was the Russian dictator not isolated or…

The president-elect’s narrow victory at the end of a volatile campaign quickly led to efforts at planning a meeting of the American and Russian leaders. Relations between the two countries had deteriorated badly, not to say spectacularly, in the last year of the previous administration, amidst…

Former U.N. ambassador John Bolton issued a stern warning to the president Monday about negotiating with Russian president Vladimir Putin, after Putin and Trump held their first official in-person meeting Friday. Bolton, who was under consideration to be Trump’s secretary of state, also criticized…

I've been reading the post-mortems on last week's G20 summit in Hamburg, and depending on the source, it was either the dawn of a new Era of Good Feelings in global affairs, or another catastrophe in the history of the 6-month-old Trump presidency. The truth, I suspect, lies somewhere in-between.…

A top Russia hawk in Congress slammed President Donald Trump on Sunday for letting Russian election interference slide after a lengthy meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin Friday.

If Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s readout of Donald Trump’s meeting with Vladimir Putin is a preview of the Trump administration’s approach to Russia, it’s going to be a rough three and a half years. In a diplomatic depantsing that will have repercussions far beyond Russia, Tillerson’s comments…

This week on the Kristol Clear podcast, editor at large Bill Kristol explains why Donald Trump's Warsaw speech was a high point for his presidency.

Huge demonstrations once again swept through Russia on June 12, as thousands took to the streets in over 160 cities to protest the corruption and authoritarianism of Vladimir Putin's regime. This followed street protests by Russia's emerging opposition in February and March that were the biggest in…

Huge demonstrations once again swept through Russia on June 12, as thousands took to the streets in over 160 cities to protest the corruption and authoritarianism of Vladimir Putin's regime. This followed street protests by Russia's emerging opposition in February and March that were the biggest in…

Don't look now, but Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine isn't going how he expected.

Relations between the United States and Russia have hit a low point and should be improved, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said during a trip to Moscow Wednesday. Tillerson spoke after meeting with Vladimir Putin, a meeting that occurred only after much uncertainty as to whether the Russian…

A senior U.S. official says the United States has concluded that Russia knew in advance of Syria's chemical weapons attack last week.

First of the Month, a leftist website, has a provocative column up titled, "Trumpism on the Left: Stephen F. Cohen and The Nation Magazine." Author Eugene Goodheart serves up a really interesting reminder that The Nation, which is nominally opposed to Trump and everything he stands for, has been…

Since President Trump's election, American allies and other foreign policy observers have been curious to know how the new White House intends to resolve an apparent contradiction. How is it possible that Trump seems keen to make some sort of deal with Vladimir Putin while expressing belligerent…

Since President Trump’s election, American allies and other foreign policy observers have been curious to know how the new White House intends to resolve an apparent contradiction. How is it possible that Trump seems keen to make some sort of deal with Vladimir Putin while expressing belligerent…

Arizona senator John McCain strongly condemned any attempt to draw a moral equivalence between the United States and Vladimir Putin's Russia Tuesday, after President Donald Trump appeared to suggest such an equivalence over the weekend.

Arkansas senator Tom Cotton, a leading congressional hawk on U.S.-Russia relations, broke with President Donald Trump in his characterization of Vladimir Putin on Monday, but contextualized the commander in chief's defense of the Kremlin last weekend as just one comment amid a broader approach to…

Republican senators are threatening to codify sanctions against the Kremlin amid speculation that President Donald Trump will ease the sanctions and refusal from the Trump team to commit to maintaining or increasing them.

Even as the media, and all of Washington, buzzed with scandalous uncorroborated claims about President-elect Donald Trump's ties to the Kremlin, a lesser-noticed moment neatly illustrated another side of Trump's—or Trump-era conservatism's—Russia problem. After Marco Rubio grilled Rex Tillerson at…

Even as the media, and all of Washington, buzzed with scandalous uncorroborated claims about President-elect Donald Trump’s ties to the Kremlin, a lesser-noticed moment neatly illustrated another side of Trump's—or Trump-era conservatism's—Russia problem. After Marco Rubio grilled Rex Tillerson at…

In a decision separate from the U.S. inquiries into Russian political interference during the 2016 presidential contest, Washington announced on Monday, January 9, that five prominent individuals inside Russia would be sanctioned. The U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) added…

A set of memos alleging disturbing ties between President-elect Donald Trump and Russian officials has set off yet another media firestorm concerning Russia's putative role in the 2016 presidential election. Many people have had copies of the memos for some time, but the documents were published…

On Sunday, January 8, an editorial in The Guardian pointed out correctly, “whatever else there is to say about Russia's alleged involvement in the 2016 US election, do not make the mistake of saying that such a thing is unprecedented—because it is not." Indeed, anyone who thinks there is no…

Arkansas senator Tom Cotton blasted Barack Obama for his accommodation of Russian aggression over the past eight years and argued that Russia has committed "crimes and transgressions against the United States and our interests" while the administration "looked the other way." Speaking to Tucker…

Russian president Vladimir Putin is already waging a war against the West and American hegemony—if only leaders in the United States would look at the evidence. That's what Molly K. McKew argues in a new feature at Politico magazine.

Russian vilification of President Obama is reaching renewed heights after the president on Thursday ordered a sweeping package of sanctions and the expulsion of 35 Russian officials from the United States, amid mounting allegations of Kremlin-led efforts to interfere in the 2016 election.

After initially promising to respond to Barack Obama's recent actions against Russia for meddling in American politics, Vladimir Putin is now saying he won't respond in kind to the Obama administration's decision to expel Russian diplomats and shut down Russian facilities in America:

The Obama administration announced an amendment to an executive order Thursday that introduces targeted sanctions on Russian assets here in the United States. The sanctions come in response to reported cyber attacks on the Democratic National Committee and other groups by Russian-backed hackers.

Writing at Maclean's, Terry Glavin argues the pit of blood and despair Bashar al-Assad has created with his own people in his own country of Syria—and the civilized world's acquiesence to the terror—is ushering in a new age of tyranny around the world.

The U.S. State Department updated its travel warning for Ukraine this week, backing off a recommendation that U.S. citizens currently in Crimea and the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk leave the area. The warning posted Wednesday advises U.S. citizens "to avoid all travel to" those regions of…

Is the CIA, or some part of it, angry with Donald Trump? Even before the president-elect perhaps unwisely insulted the agency by citing its failures to assess correctly the status of Saddam Hussein's WMD program, someone high up at the CIA seemed to have it in for the incoming commander-in-chief.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the Intelligence Community wasn't "particularly subtle" in its October assessment of which Russian actors could have authorized the country's hacking of U.S. election activity this year, hinting that Vladimir Putin must have somehow been involved.

In the New York Times's new extensive report on the massive Russian-backed operation to hack American political and government severs—including a successful hack of the Democratic National Committee's server—the paper reveals that President Barack Obama had been "briefed regularly" on Russia's…

Donald Trump said on Twitter Monday he would announce on Tuesday his selection for secretary of state. The New York Times reports that Trump has picked ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson. Here's the Times:

Reports Friday that U.S. intelligence agencies believe Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential campaign to tilt the election in favor of Donald Trump have sown precisely the kind of confusion that American adversaries must have hoped for with their actions. In an effort to reach some sort of…

Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky is set to go on trial in England Monday after being charged with possession of child pornography.

With the election over, connoisseurs of Russian influence operations will want to redirect their attention to lower Manhattan, where the world chess championship is getting under way at the South Street Seaport.

When Syrian opposition activists pushed John Kerry to take a tougher line with Russian president Vladimir Putin last year, the secretary of state asked them, "What do you want me to do, go to war with Russia?"

When Syrian opposition activists pushed John Kerry to take a tougher line with Russian president Vladimir Putin last year, the secretary of state asked them, "What do you want me to do, go to war with Russia?"

Farmville, Va.

Hillary Clinton added a wrinkle to her consistent criticism of Donald Trump's "strongman" approach to governing Friday, using the near-dictionary definition of a despot to describe the GOP nominee for president.

Donald Trump likes dictators and likes to be liked by them. After meeting Egypt's president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi last week, Trump called Sisi "a fantastic guy," gushing, "he took control of Egypt. And he really took control of it." Trump approves of the unprecedented repression that followed Sisi's…

The death of Islam Karimov, the 78-year old party boss and dictatorial president of Soviet and post-Soviet Uzbekistan, a key strategic power in Central Asia, was announced September 2 in official Uzbek media. The cause of his demise was reported to be a stroke, and rumors of it had circulated for…

Late in August, during the run-up to Ukraine’s 25th Independence Day, Vladimir Putin held a meeting of the Russian Security Council in Sevastopol, Crimea. Before and since, the Russian defense ministry has overseen military exercises in the region, as well as naval maneuvers by the Black Sea Fleet.…

Paul Manafort, the Republican campaign veteran who is chairman for Donald Trump's White House bid, was reportedly engaged in a secret effort to influence Americans on behalf of the reigning pro-Russian political party in Ukraine. The Associated Press has the story:

With bureaucrats like this, Vladimir Putin doesn't need friends.

In the New York Times's recent report on Trump aide Paul Manafort's possibly illegal payoffs from pro-Russian interests in Ukraine, there's this curious detail:

After Donald Trump said Sunday that Russian president Vladimir Putin wasn't "going to go into Ukraine", most media outlets seized on the fact that Putin illegally annexed Crimea, formerly a part of Ukraine, in 2014.

A program overseen by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as part of the "reset" with Russia wound up enhancing Russia's military technology and funneling millions of dollar to the Clinton Foundation, according to a new report by investigative journalist Peter Schweizer and the Government…

Someone has played a rotten trick on the late Scoop Jackson. The legendary senator from the great state of Washington was a committed cold warrior who saw the Soviet Union for the evil empire it was, and until his death in 1983 used all his powers of persuasion to drag the McGovernized Democratic…

Philadelphia

Philadelphia

It is a fact well known to every student of the Constitution that the Framers' fourth national institution—the presidential selection system—never functioned as intended. Yet the 2016 presidential election keeps bringing the Framers' concerns to the forefront, as we lose control of every item on…

Donald J. Trump is the presidential nominee of the Republican party. But that does not absolve every Republican office holder, donor, and activist from the responsibility of satisfying himself that it is right to support that nominee for president. There are, in my judgment, many reasons to doubt…

Secretary of State John Kerry met with Russian President Vladimir Putin Thursday in Moscow, a meeting that stretched to one in the morning, according to Kerry. Although the session centered on Syria and restoring the "cessation of hostilities", spokesperson John Kirby noted that Kerry also raised…

Legend has it that during the Black Plague, superstitious Europeans started killing cats. The idea was that witches had caused the plague and cats were disguised devils, serving as the witches' "familiar spirits," ergo killing them would hurt the witches and hopefully spare people from the disease.

"Putin umer?" Is Putin dead?

It's dangerous to be an opposition leader in Russia. That's the sense many observers had after Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov posted a short video on his Instagram page that showed political opposition figures Mikhail Kasyanov and Vladimir Kara-Murza in the crosshairs of a sniper's rifle. (The video…

Russia's aggressive moves in the Middle East have raised speculation about a new Cold War. A more accurate description would reference the geopolitical, historical, and cultural factors underpinning Russia's imperial ambitions in the south—ambitions that preceded the Cold War and took root in the…

Russian truck drivers angry about a new road tax moved their protest into Moscow on Friday. Traffic around the city was snarled by both truckers and police, who had set up temporary roadblocks to interrogate drivers they suspected might be on their way to join the revolt.

Just before the Republican presidential candidates went on stage Tuesday night for the fourth debate, Vladimir Putin announced that Russia will deploy "strike systems capable of penetrating any missile defenses." He was specifically talking about the U.S. defensive systems planned for Europe that…

Kiev

Vladimir Putin is tough. That's the message conveyed by the pictures showing him shirtless on horseback, cuddling leopard cubs, and throwing his judo opponents to the floor that flood media sites in both Russia and the west.

By any objective measure, Russia has made a strategic decision to challenge America for dominance in the Middle East. Despite depressed global oil prices and economic sanctions intended to curb his Ukraine adventurism, Vladimir Putin is pursuing an undisguised effort to expand Moscow’s military…

The United States, President Obama said at the U.N. General Assembly last week, “worked with many nations in this assembly to prevent a third world war—by forging alliances with old adversaries.” Presumably, the president was not referring to his deeply flawed Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action,…

The United States, President Obama said at the U.N. General Assembly last week, “worked with many nations in this assembly to prevent a third world war—by forging alliances with old adversaries.” Presumably, the president was not referring to his deeply flawed Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action,…

In fall 1991, a member of the Slovenian parliament visited me at my office at the American Enterprise Institute to discuss her country’s campaign to join NATO. I recall the intensity of the conversation and how odd her zeal seemed to me at that moment. The Cold War was over. Slovenia’s fate as a…

You have to give Barack Obama credit for consistency.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with senior writer Stephen F. Hayes on the Obama administration's Syria policy, and what Russia is doing there.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest compared Vladimir Putin's bombing in Syria to George W. Bush's "military solution in Iraq in the last decade." Earnest made the comparison at the daily White House press briefing.

Unlike American presidential doctrines, Russian doctrines tend to go unnoticed by the western media or are often dismissed as propaganda. This is curious, as the Russians, and before this the Soviets, are not known for hyperbole in geopolitics as they are in the ideological arena. For example, the…

Two distinguished politicians, one with a constituency of over one billion souls, the other a constituency of over one billion subjects, visited us this week. The pope’s souls, of course, are voluntary adherents to his cause, with the price of disobedience deferred until the disobedient enter…

The buzz around Sir Elton John's purported phone call with Russian president Vladimir Putin has many of the trappings of a high school rumor mill.

The White House seems to think that Vladimir Putin’s Syria policy is a blunder of the first order. Recently, the Russians have deployed combat planes, tanks, ships, engineers, technicians, as well as special forces units to help sustain Bashar al-Assad’s regime. But that’s a bad idea, President…

In a speech today about the Iran deal at the Brookings Institution, Hillary Clinton mentioned Russia and Vladimir Putin. She defended her Russia Reset, and then said something strange:

The latest salvo in a bizarre exchange of international sanctions has been fired. Russia has already taken its boycott of Western foodstuffs to theatrical extremes, bulldozing piles of cheese and destroying apples whose sole fault was their Polish origin. Now the government of Vladimir Putin seems…

Rarely do international sanctions look so, well, cheesy.

Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard and a Republican candidate for president, will address the Ronald Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California, on Monday evening on her foreign policy outlook. In her speech, Fiorina will discuss how as president she would broker a "new deal" with…

Religious conservatives are fighting back against allegations of homophobia.

Has NATO become a paper tiger, trying (and failing) to stand up to a resurgent Russian bear? A speech by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at the Center for Strategic and International Studies on Wednesday addressed this issue, discussing both the challenges facing the 66-year-old alliance,…

In the New York Review of Books, Ahmed Rashid writes of a recent episode in which:

When Hillary Clinton first ran for president eight years ago, it was not hard to anticipate problems inherent in the Clintons’ wielding political power while also accepting foreign contributions to the Clinton Foundation. “If Hillary became president,” one prominent Democrat observed, “I think…

The Obama administration has been campaigning on behalf of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran since it was announced last week—even as the exact details of the proposed deal are still unclear. What we do know is that the JCPOA will turn Iran into a nuclear threshold state. Even Obama…

Central European countries are currently commemorating the 70th anniversary of their liberation from Nazism at the end of World War Two. Budapest was captured by the Red Army in February 1945; Slovakia’s capital, Bratislava, was taken on April 4; Prague was liberated only after hostilities…

In Chechnya, Georgia, and Ukraine, Russia works through bribery, fear, and force to destroy its opponents. In the West, it works through Interpol and the U.S. Treasury. If Moscow decides to target you, being in the United States won’t protect you from Russian harassment. In fact, it makes you a…

Former Texas governor Rick Perry is taking on Russian president Vladimir Putin. The possible presidential candidate says that the "peace and security of the world" depends on how America deals with Russia.

In a recent interview with BuzzFeed, President Obama mistakenly gave Vladimir Putin a promotion in the Russian president's previous career in the KGB, saying that Putin "ran the KGB."

In an interview with CNN's Candy Crowley, President Obama took a shot at pundits--and Putin. He made the comments in response to a question about whether he's getting rolled in his deal with Cuba.

German chancellor Angela Merkel has cautioned that the adventurism of Russian president Vladimir Putin would not remain limited to Ukraine, or even to other countries bordering on Russia. Since Russia seized Crimea in February-March 2014, Putin’s provocative campaign has included imposition of…

In certain jurisdictions, there are some things you just don’t want to say.  For instance, as Reid Standish of FP reports:

Perm-36, also known as ITK-6, is the only intact facility remaining in Russia from the Soviet-era gulag system of political prisons and labor camps. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Perm-36 was turned into a Gulag Museum, “to promote democratic values and civic consciousness in contemporary…

The boss appeared on MSNBC's Morning Joe Thursday and discussed the geopolitical fallout from the attack on the Malaysian airliner shot down by Russian-backed separatists over Ukrainian territory.

Vladimir Putin does not seem inclined to talk nice and patch things up with the West. To the contrary, he is drawing lines. They may, or may not, be “red." He seems confident enough not to need the modifier.

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on the happenings this week in Ukraine, Israel, and the United States.

In Bénouville, France, Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin have gone out of their way to ignore each other.

The new issue of Time presents a stark cover photo of Vladimir Putin, captioned with a succession of titles: once "Premier," then "President," but now "Czar." In analyzing "Putinism," Time's Michael Crowley and Simon Shuster do not hesitate to trace the roots back a century and beyond:

The situation in Ukraine worsens and Putin makes ever more menacing noises. 

In a call-in show on Russian television, Vladimir Putin:

That is how former secretary of defense, Robert Gates writing in the Wall Street Journal, describes what drives Vladimir Putin’s actions in the Ukraine, the Baltics, and any other region where he considers Russians interests and international reputation at stake. He is motivated by a massive…

Writing in the Washington Post  Strobe Talbott recalls a tense time during the days of the Kosovo crisis (and how many crises ago was that?) when he had a brief but telling encounter with Vladimir Putin, then a mere security chief but plainly a man on the make and someone to watch … carefully.  At…

February was a bad month for Vladimir Putin. Despite Russia’s impressive Olympic victories, the Sochi Games turned out to be a $51 billion showcase of graft and corruption that even the Kremlin’s deftest apologists could not explain away without sounding embarrassingly Soviet. Then, as the…

The WEEKLY STANDARD podcast, with executive editor Fred Barnes on President Obama's Ukraine statement and why it's his job to stop Vladimir Putin.

We are all familiar with the concept of gunboat diplomacy. But Harley diplomacy, as practiced by Vladimir Putin in the present crisis, is something new. As reported by Terry Golway at Reuters:

Here's President Obama on Friday: "The United States will stand with the international community in affirming that there will be costs for any military intervention in Ukraine."Characteristically, Obama establishes a few degrees of separation between himself and actually acting. He doesn't say,…

Russian president Vladimir Putin is everywhere. The former KGB officer has used virtually everything at hand to catapult himself as well as his country, the shell of a once mighty empire, on to the world stage. Whether it’s Putin’s determination to host the Winter Olympics in a semi-tropical…

The Sochi Olympics are busy setting some sort of record for glitches and one of them has attracted the attentions of the indefatigable Senator Charles Schumer who is perturbed by the Russian’s unwillingness to allow the importation of yogurt.  

Richard Engel reported last night on NBC that all visitors to the Sochi Olympics are getting hacked as soon as their electronic devices connect to any Russian network:

The Russian people were polled, recently, on the question of which of their political figures is most popular. An alien notion in Russian politics, perhaps, but just the same, the question was asked and the people, knowing what is good for them, answered. In a surprise result:

Russia strongman Vladimir Putin had some kind words for NSA leaker Edward Snowden. "[H]e's noble," Putin said at a press conference in Moscow today. Snowden has been given temporary asylum in Russia and is on the run from the U.S. government.

Time has put Vladimir Putin on the covers of various editions of its September 16, 2013 magazine, distributed across the world. It's appearing almost everywhere -- in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and the South Pacific.

Bill Kristol, with Brit Hume, Jane Harman, and Charles Lane, earlier today on the Internet-only Panel Plus:

The New York Post imagines the first draft of Vladimir Putin's New York Times op-ed:

John Boehner, the Republican House speaker, told reporters Thursday he was "insulted" by the op-ed article in the New York Times by Russian president Vladimir Putin on the Syrian conflict. The Washington Free Beacon has the video:

Edward Snowden's lawyer is a Putin crony, the AFP reports.

President Obama talked with Russian chief Vladimir Putin on the phone today about Edward Snowden, according to the White House. But no further details about the conversation concerning Snowden have been released.

Reuters reports:

Thursday, at the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, U.S. Chargé d’Affaires Gary Robbins delivered another response to the "many concerns" expressed by Russia about the ongoing hunger strike by many of the terrorist detainees at the Guantánamo Bay facility:

As Alexei Anishchuk of Reuters reports:

In his joint press conference with David Cameron this morning, Barack Obama asserted that the reason Moscow doesn’t see eye-to-eye with the White House on Syria is because of the Cold War. “I don't think it’s any secret that there remains lingering suspicions between Russia and other members of the…

In a phone call today, President Barack Obama told Vladimir Putin that he "looks forward to visiting" Russia in September, according to the White House. Here's the readout of their call:

This week Russian president Vladimir Putin brought Boyz II Men to Moscow to "hopefully [give] Russian men some inspiration ahead of St. Valentine's Day," according to the Moscow Times. That is, Putin brought the music group to town to encourage love-making, and, he hopes, baby-making to offset…

Russian president Vladimir Putin claims President Barack Obama is planning to visit Russia, the outlet RIA Novosti reports.

The Campaign for American Values PAC is out with a new ad that asks, "Obama Secured the Dictator Vote, Does He Have Yours?"

On Tuesday, Russia announced it was sending 11 warships to the Mediterranean—some of which would dock in Syria, where Moscow keeps a base in Tartus. If some onlookers believed that the “unusually large size of the force” was meant to send a message to Washington, the fact is, the Obama…

Russian president Vladimir Putin made his second visit to Israel last week. His brief trip included high-level talks with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in which they agreed at least in the abstract that Bashar al-Assad should stop slaughtering civilians in Syria and that the world…