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Russian anti-war politician ends run for parliament, citing legal setbacks
Boris Nadezhdin, a Russian anti-war politician who had hoped to stand in parliamentary elections later this year, has announced he is ending his role in opposition politics for now, blaming what he said were politically-motivated legal setbacks.
Russian anti-war politician ends run for parliament, citing legal setbacks
July 20 (Reuters) - Boris Nadezhdin, a Russian anti-war politician who had hoped to stand in parliamentary elections later this year, has announced he is ending his role in opposition politics for now, blaming what he said were politically-motivated ...
Potential announcement date revealed for new Barcelona signing
Barcelona had wrapped up the deal to sign Karim Adeyemi earlier in the month, with the Catalan swooping out of nowhere to acquire the services of the explosive winger.Borussia Dortmund have already co...
Boris Nadezhdin faces pressure ahead of Russian election
Russian opposition politician Boris Nadezhdin has been fined for displaying a photo of late Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny. Nadezhdin said authorities are trying to hinder his anti-war campaign.
Your Period Tracker Is (Probably) Spying on You
Plus: Russian cyberspies turn to infrastructure hacking, DHS repeatedly fails to realize it’d been hacked, a breach exposes an AI music generator’s scraping ways, and more.
Rep. Michael McCaul pushes for Russia sanctions bill to honor Lindsey Graham
The bill would not only impose sanctions on Russia, but secondary sanctions on countries that continue to buy Russian energy.
Ukraine's Zelenskyy faces political crisis amid Russian attacks
Russian attacks overnight on Ukraine killed at least four civilians and wounded 20, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.
Russian blogger who criticised Putin and the war has been detained, TASS reports
Russian blogger Ilya Remeslo, who criticised President Vladimir Putin and the war in Ukraine, has been detained on suspicion of spreading false information about the armed forces, state news agency TASS reported on Friday.
Russian troops live an average of 30 minutes on battlefield: CIA chief
John Ratcliffe said the deadly conditions have been spurred mainly by Ukraine's AI-powered drones. He urged the US to learn quickly from Kyiv.
He Was a Russian Political Survivor, Until the Masked Men Appeared
Boris B. Nadezhdin, an outspoken opponent of the war in Ukraine, says he knows why he was detained: “Among our leadership, there is panic and chaos.”
As Russia’s assault continues, Ukraine’s politics shift and an old alliance begins to fray
Beneath the drone strikes and talk of ceasefires lies a battle over history that is testing Kyiv’s chances for an end to the conflict
How the war in Ukraine impacts the law and politics of security guarantees
The paradoxical revival of security guarantees Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has revived the concept of security guarantees. Their content and scope have been central to scholarly and political debates about Kyiv’s resistance to the Russian aggression (see here and here). Yet, this revival highlights a paradox: if existing arrangements had been effective, […]
For Whom the Strait Tolls | WSJ Politics Newsletter for July 14
Plus, Lindsey Graham’s sister to fill his Senate seat, and how China’s Xi Jinping now manages Russia’s Vladimir Putin
Ukraine used balloons, trailers to sneak FPV drones into Russia: FSB
The details echo that of Operation Spiderweb, when dozens of smuggled Ukrainian drones struck high-value warplanes in four Russian airfields.
Fans of the Arctic
Sediment eroded from ice-capped mountains splays out across a broad river valley on Russia’s Severny Island.
Trump backs Russia sanctions package spearheaded by Graham
President Donald Trump will support the passage of a bipartisan Russia sanctions package that was spearheaded by the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, a White House official told CNN on Monday.
Russian anti-war opposition politician Boris Nadezhdin detained by police
Boris Nadezhdin attempted to run against Vladimir Putin at the 2024 presidential election, but was prevented from doing so.
Ukraine’s prime minister steps down as country ‘is changing its political strategy’
Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko stepped down on Sunday, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reshapes his cabinet amid Russia’s ongoing invasion of the eastern European country. In a…
Special Report: Looking back on the political legacy of Sen. Lindsey Graham
Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who had held his Senate seat since 2003 and was seen as a war hawk and significant voice on defense and foreign policy, has died at the age of 71 from a “sudden illness.” NBC News’ Julie Tsirkin and Meet the Press Moderator Kristen Welker report on Graham’s rise in Congress, his relationship with President Donald Trump, and his views on the wars in Iran and between Russia and Ukraine.
Sports hopelessly muddled with politics
IOC lifts its ban on Russian athletes as the country's war on Ukraine rages on.
Tommy Robinson’s Musk-funded Russia trip spurs call to defend UK democracy
Ed Davey voices concern about the Musk family foundation taking the far-right activist on a visit to Moscow
Bipartisan senators announce agreement with Trump administration on Russia sanctions
Bipartisan senators announced an agreement with the Trump administration on Friday to move ahead with an updated Russia sanctions package, but it remains unclear if President Donald Trump will directly back the bill’s passage.
From marijuana to Maine, 3 lessons from a wild week in politics
We got a chance this week to see some things about politics that are usually hidden from public view.
Russia in sports court to overturn track and field ban
Russia's track and field federation says it has gone to the Court of Arbitration for Sport to overturn a World Athletics ruling suspending its athletes from international events due to the war in Ukraine.
Russia heads to sports court to overturn its ban from international track and field
Russia's track and field federation says it has gone to the Court of Arbitration for Sport to overturn a World Athletics ruling suspending its athletes from international events due to the war in Ukraine. World Athletics excluded all athletes from Russia and its ally Belarus from its international events in March 2022, days after Russian forces invaded Ukraine. Since then, the International Olympic Committee has eased its restrictions on Russia ahead of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics — something the Kremlin hailed as an “important step” — and recommended other sports bodies do the same.
Why Putin’s nuclear threats aren’t working anymore
Ukraine is striking deep into Russia and pressuring Crimea. Does Putin have any “red lines” anymore?
Russian Rail Giant Wants Business to Bear More War Economy Pain
Russia’s largest employer is trying to address mounting financial pressures with new measures that some businesses worry will come at their expense, underscoring the growing strains on the economy as President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine drags on.
Trump envoy warns China's power move at sea is threat 'we cannot afford to ignore'
US Ambassador to UK Warren Stephens warned that China is weaponizing port infrastructure and supply chains as tools of political coercion against nations.
Kremlin hails 'important step' as IOC eases Russia restrictions
The Kremlin has welcomed as an "important step" the International Olympic Committee's decision to remove many of its restrictions on Russia, a big step closer to letting it field a full team when Los Angeles hosts the 2028 Games.
Justice Department reaches another settlement with Trump adviser Michael Flynn
Former Trump adviser Michael Flynn has reached another settlement with the Justice Department — this time for over $38,000 in retirement funds the Army had withheld from the former general after officials found he earned money from speaking at an event tied to the Russian government in 2015.
See Trump’s shifting blame game on the Russia-Ukraine war
President Donald Trump’s inability to find peace in Ukraine — a war he once claimed would be over the day he took office — has caused him enormous frustration. But the focus of his ire has zig-zagged throughout his second term in office.
IOC provisionally lifts ban on Russian Olympic Committee, athletes to return to international competitions
The International Olympic Committee provisionally lifted its ban on the Russian Olympic Committee on Tuesday, paving the way for a return to international competitions including the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics.
IOC moves to end Russian neutrality for 2028 Los Angeles Olympics
The IOC advised Olympic sports bodies to end a three-year program vetting Russians for neutral status ahead of qualifying events for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
Ukrainian drones flew all the way to Siberia to hit key oil refinery
The strike on Omsk, about 1,700 miles away, is Ukraine's longest-range attack on Russia since the war began.
Appendix B: Classifying European political parties
Classifying parties as populist Although experts generally agree that populist political leaders or parties display high levels of anti-elitism, definitions of populism vary. We use three measures to classify parties as populist: anti-elite ratings from the 2024 Chapel Hill Expert Survey (CHES), the 2023 Populism and Political Parties Expert Survey (POPPA) and the 2023 PopuList. […]
Trump to Meet With Zelensky as Russia-Ukraine Battlefield Remains ‘Frozen’ | WSJ Politics Newsletter for July 6
Also, Trump faces obstacles to put the new Air Force One in his museum, and an inside look at Europe’s rupture with the U.S.
Ukraine recovery: International Coalition for Science, Research and Innovation signs Gdansk Declaration
On 26 June, the first-ever High-level Steering Committee of the International Coalition for Science, Research and Innovation in Ukraine signed the Gdansk Declaration during the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Poland. The Declaration outlines a shared ambition to support Ukraine in increasing its research and development investment to 3% of the GDP following the end of Russia’s full-scale war of aggression. This is in line with the European Research Area target. It also outlines various activities that Coalition members can implement to achieve this objective. The Declaration further provides a strategic framework for the Coalition’s work to support Ukraine’s modern and
Opinion: Science Under Attack, But Undefeated
The latest Russian attack damaged the historic Palladin Institute of Biochemistry, but Ukrainian science will remain strong
NATO's eastern flank prepares to fend off Russia
Reporters traveled to three exposed stretches of Europe's eastern frontier and found varied strategies and uneven progress to deter Russia.
Ukrainian drones target more Russian oil infrastructure as fuel crisis adds political pressure on Putin, who shrugs off attacks as ‘not critical’
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described the attack as part of Ukraine’s “long-range sanctions” against Russia.
Ireland, as 'honest broker', reckons with the price of dirty business
Ireland is facing the music over its continued sales of alumina to Russia. The scandal put a damper on the start of the country's EU presidency and raised uncomfortable questions that Dublin has yet to answer.
‘Moral and political blindness’: EU lawmaker savages FIFA over Russia - Live Updates
Lithuanian MEP Petras Auštrevičius explained why FIFA’s decision to allow Russia to play in the upcoming U-15 World Cup is bad news.
Russia's services downturn deepens as new business falls at fastest pace since December 2022, PMI shows
Russia's services sector contracted further in June as weaker client demand drove steeper falls in output and new orders, a business survey showed on Friday.
German Prosecutors Charge Ukrainian Suspect Over Nord Stream Explosions
The Nord Stream explosions remain among the most politically sensitive investigations in Europe, given their impact on EU energy security.
Russian 6th to 11th graders get 17 hours of basic military training
Russia is doubling the amount of military training time in high schools, with new lessons on drones and field exercises.
Bruins draft Russian forward with 104th overall pick
The Bruins have selected multiple Russians in a draft for the first time in almost 25 years following their fourth-round selection Saturday.
Burkina Faso cuts diplomatic ties with former colonial ruler France
The military government, in power since 2022 coup, accused France of having 'neo-colonial ambitions'.
Nico Schlotterbeck’s World Cup is over through injury
Germany defender Nico Schlotterbeck has been ruled out of the rest of the World Cup through injury, Sky Germany confirms. The Borussia Dortmund defender sustained an ankle injury during the first hal...
Ukraine squeezes Russian stronghold with new drones, forcing fuel cuts
Kyiv's new mid-range drones are pounding the roads, fuel depots, and bridges connecting Crimea to Russia and the southern front lines.
Jana Kramer almost quit “DWTS” because of 'Russian' teaching techniques: 'Do not speak to me that way'
The "One Tree Hill" star bonded with Hannah Brown, who won "DWTS" season 28, over the intense training experience that viewers don't get to see.
Ukraine spy and attack drones now bringing supplies to soldiers
Ukraine's front lines with Russia has become so dangerous that it wants to use as many unmanned systems as it can, including drones to carry gear.
Why some Russians are breaking with Putin as Ukraine war drags on
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s iron grip on power is being challenged by the war in Ukraine and his government’s authoritarian crackdowns. He finds himself in unfamiliar political territory, questioned by some of the country’s elite and embarrassed by Ukraine’s strikes into Russian cities. Compass Points moderator Nick Schifrin discusses the state of Russian politics with Arkady Ostrovsky.
A center with ‘fantastic' hockey sense could give Flyers option to trade down
Egor Shilov is a Russian center who’s highly skilled with the puck on his stick. Could the Flyers grab him in the first round of the 2026 NHL draft?
Ukraine turning robots into mobile weapons to hunt Russian targets
Ukraine's Frontline Robotics makes a remote weapons station that used to be stationary but can now be put on a robot to make a "small tank."
Russian big Ilia Frolov has committed to Arkansas basketball
Russian big man Ilia Frolov, who wrapped up his official visit to Arkansas early Thursday morning, has committed to the Razorbacks.
Wildlife inside Chernobyl exclusion zone acted differently during Russia's invasion, camera traps reveal
Camera footage in Ukraine's Chernobyl exclusion zone revealed that mammals became less active — especially at night — during the Russian occupation, highlighting the war's immediate impact on wildlife.
Ukraine 'e-Points' system steers units toward more strategic targets
Ukraine's soldiers are being incentivized to hit Russian targets that are harder to get, instead of just what's in front of them.
Wadephul: Germany has an 'enduring responsibility' to Poland
In an interview with DW, German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul discussed Germany's cooperation with Poland and the importance of supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia.
Earliest outbreak of the plague killed hunter-gatherer kids 5,500 years ago
Scientists have solved a mystery that puzzled them for decades: Why were so many dead children buried by hunter-gatherers in Russia 5,500 years ago? It turns out they were killed by the earliest known outbreak of the plague, revealing new insights about the disease.
Putin hosts leaders of Southeast Asian nations, seeking to boost their business ties
MOSCOW (AP) — President Vladimir Putin hosted leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations on Wednesday as Russia seeks to bolster business and other ties with the nations of the regional …
Plantwatch: Russian dandelion offers solution to global rubber shortage
Scientists are returning to a wartime solution that may be more sustainable than the traditional rubber tree
Supreme Court dumps Trump aide Carter Page’s wiretapping suit against James Comey
The Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up an appeal from former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page who sued former FBI officials over flawed government surveillance he faced during the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Ukraine starting new phrase of Russia war with tech, tactics, progress
Ukraine has new tech and momentum that's letting it make the kind of progress it hasn't seen in years.
Trump Claims Strait Will be ‘Permanently Toll Free’ Under Agreement With Iran
In a call to The New York Times, President Trump praised Russia and China’s leaders and described Israel’s prime minister as “a very difficult guy.”
UK forces board sanctioned Russian oil tanker in English Channel for the first time, says Keir Starmer
Prime minister says British armed forces intercepted a Russian shadow fleet vessel in the early hours of Sunday morning
In Retrospect: Poland, Russia, Europe
In April I spent a few days with Zryw, a Polish non-profit organization that recruits young people to enter politics and public life. Their aim is to build a new generation of civic leaders in Poland. I’ve followed their evolution from the beginning; my son is one of the founders. (“Zryw” means “impulse” or “burst of speed” in Polish). Julie Chmielewska, one of Zryw’s leaders, interviewed me at the event. Here is the conversation, lightly edited for grammar and context: Julia Chmielewska: Assuming that culture shapes institutions, could we conclude that some cultures are more prone to authoritarianism? Anne Applebaum: I don’t think so. Every culture, every nation, and every country has the potential for change. When we look at history, we can see that nations do change. Poland has changed, for example, from the 1980s to today. There’s a completely different mentality here than the one I encountered when I first visited, in 1988. The current generation sees the world through a different frame. So no, I don’t believe that certain nations are doomed to authoritarianism, or to anything. Of course, there are political and cultural traditions, but they can always be challenged. JC: So do you think there’s something intrinsic in human nature that pushes people to democracy, freedom? AA: I think there is something in human nature, a deep instinct, that pushes people towards freedom, yes. People who live in authoritarian countries – and I’ve heard this from them over and over again – sooner or later find themselves angered by a feeling of helplessness. They can see the unfairness of crooked courts, irrational political decisions. They naturally dislike the fact that somebody has all the power while they have none. In those circumstances, people who have no political background at all sometimes are politicized just by that frustration. I’m thinking of Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, for example, who was a Belarusian housewife, until the circumstances of her husband’s arrest forced her to become a politician. I met a woman who is a Uyghur from China, and who had come to live in Turkey. After several of her family members were arrested, she too was propelled into a political role. These kinds of experiences make people interested in democracy or political reform, even if they thought they didn’t care. I also think that the opposite is true: some people instinctively prefer homogeneity, order, hierarchy. They don’t like the confrontation of opinions or the noise of debate, and they lean towards a single leader or a unified regime. I think that most of modern history is shaped by the clash between those two different sides of human nature. JC: Which force do you find more powerful today? AA: I think they both have a lot of power and there’s no way of predicting who wins. Even in countries that seem very shut off or stuck in an authoritarian system can change. We’ve seen that happen. And vice versa, I think democracies can also begin to fail and slide into authoritarianism. So it’s very important not to be complacent in either direction. JC: I want to go into your history and your experiences. You’ve lived in Russia during a time of incredible change in the late 80s, and then you came back to do research in post-Soviet Russia. AA: I was a student in Russia just before the collapse of the Soviet Union. I then traveled and worked there extensively in the 1990s, and I met people who really were full of hope. They hoped that Russia could become a democracy, or at least a place that guaranteed freedom of speech, freedom of the press. These weren’t ideas that came from Washington. Although now the narrative in the Kremlin is different, I met many people who were working towards exactly that kind of transformation. A friend of mine ran a series of seminars – once a year, and then later several times a year, in cities all over Russia – designed to get people to discuss politics in new ways. She invited young politicians and journalists, as well as foreigners. I went to many of them, in Moscow as well as Volgograd and Novosibirsk. Over two decades, hundreds of people came to these seminars, and all of them wanted Russia to be different. I remain convinced that many Russians still want Russia to be different. It’s just that the old system, in the form of Putin, a representative of that system, returned. The KGB reimposed their power. And this wasn’t because of something to do with culture, this was to do with money and politics, and who was in charge. JC: You’ve partially answered my question... I wanted to ask whether that excitement of the 1990s was an exception from the Russian historical norm which has been rather authoritarian? AA: Of course, if you look at the history of Russia since the 18th century, there have always been liberal groups, reformers and revolutionaries. There were the Decembrists, in the early 19th century, and the rural populists later on, who tried to organize the peasantry. A significant group of liberal Russians appeared at the turn of the 20th century, people like the father of the writer Vladimir Nabokov, who was a Russian politician before the revolution. These groups were small in number, but sometimes had a broader significance. The Russian dissident movement in the 1950s and 1960s actually invented the modern human rights movement. It was their idea to hold the leaders of the Soviet Union accountable for the language they used, to remind them of the treaties they had signed and the promised they had made. They created the Helsinki group, for example, that held Soviet leadership to the language of the Helsinki Treaty, which formally ended the Second World War and which contained guarantees of human rights, at least on paper. That idea spread to Eastern Europe, and similar tactics were used here in Poland. (Benjamin Nathans recently wrote a great book about the Soviet dissidents, To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause) JC: But seemingly, even if they do ever get power, they could never hold on to it. AA: We don’t know, because they have never really had power. But in any case, we also don’t know what will happen in the future. There is no reason to assume that Russia will forever be condemned to totalitarianism. Even during the first fifteen years of Putin’s regime there was some form of democratic politics. Only when the full-scale war began did he bring everything to an end: he shut down all remaining independent organizations and killed his most important opponent, Alexi Navalny. But does that mean he is popular, that he enjoys legitimacy? Even now, we don’t really know what Russians think about him, or about the war. There is no way of doing real polling in Russia because nobody will answer an independent pollster over the phone. JC: Do you think that the flock of young people, especially young men, who fled Russia after the start of the war represent a continuation of liberal movements that refuse to partake in the authoritarian state, or do you think they are moving for the sake of self-preservation – “I don’t want to go to the army, so I leave”? AA: I’m sure it’s both. I actually know many people who left Russia for political reasons either in the very last years before the war, or else just after the war began. JC: And do you see a change in the young generation versus the old one that have fled? AA: It’s hard for me to say because the people who I know were mostly already politicized. I do know some younger people who left, but most of them were already either active in the opposition, or working as journalists. Many of them very self-consciously think of themselves as maintaining Russian culture abroad, just as in the 20th century the Soviet dissidents or the anti-communist White Russians once thought of themselves as people who maintained the true Russian culture, outside of Bolshevik Russia. JC: Let’s move on to Poland. One of your first experiences with Poland was reporting on Margaret Thatcher’s first state visit, in the autumn of 1988. You followed her around the farmers’ market. AA: She was making a symbolic gesture. She wanted to welcome free markets, but the only one she could really visit was the farmers’ market at Hala Mirowska. JC: And I want to talk about this area because today you can look out of any window in that district, Mirów, and see rows and rows of skyscrapers. How does it feel to see a country built from the ground in such a short time, both politically and economically? AA: You know, when you’re living in a period of dramatic change, it’s always hard to know whether the change is positive or negative. The transformation in Poland created winners and losers, as well as new classes of people, new political movements of different kinds. At the time, it sometimes just felt like turbulence. Now, we can look back at the 1990s and early 2000s in Poland and see in retrospect that the country was headed in towards prosperity and European integration. In around 2009 or 2010, I remember speaking to a woman who worked cleaning government offices, and who asked me if her daughter should study in Amsterdam or in London. This seemed to me to be a real transformation, and it happened very fast: within a few years, Poles stopped feeling like second-class Europeans, and a generation of younger Poles appeared who had no qualms about crossing borders. JC: We again live in turbulent times. Do you think we’re heading towards positive outcomes? AA: I can’t make predictions, because everything that happens tomorrow depends on what people do today. Also, history doesn’t have a trajectory. It doesn’t move in a particular direction. You only think it does afterwards. As I said, you can look afterwards at Poland in the 1990s and you could say this was a period of great progress. But not everybody at the time saw that. Sometimes people are very wrong about a given country’s trajectory. I remember people writing about Ukraine in the 1990s, about how dangerous it was that Ukraine was independent, that this was going to be an anti-semitic state, that Ukrainian nationalism was going to come back... and although you can say many bad things about Ukraine, the country made many bad choices, actually it became a pretty tolerant state which now has a Jewish president and until recently a Muslim defense minister. JC: In the 1990s Poland’s and Ukraine’s GDP were roughly similar. Ukraine was even a bit richer. So the starting point was similar for both of these countries, but they’ve turned out very, very differently. Even if we stop in 2014. Why do you think Ukraine “chose East”? Was it external influence? AA: No, I think Ukraine was in a different position. First of all, central and eastern Ukraine had been part of the Soviet Union since the 1920s, and had therefore experienced a longer period of occupation, repression, Sovietization and even Russification. Ukraine did not have, as Poland did, an alternative elite: a large cadre of economists and politicians, who already had some experience in opposition politics and in independent thinking. In Poland, the transformative finance minister, Leszek Balcerowicz, had already thought about how an economy might be decentralized before he took office. We can argue about how successful he was, but at least he was prepared to try something new. In Ukraine, people weren’t prepared. For one, there hadn’t been much space even for an illegal opposition in the previous couple of decades. Ukraine was also in many ways still emerging from colonial occupation. For the previous couple of centuries, many of the most capable Ukrainians had moved to Russia, and the first generation of leaders in independent Ukraine tended to be former Soviet apparatchiks. They didn’t immediately seek to become closer to western Europe. Instead, they looked for some kind of economic and political “third way” and an accomodation with Russia. Ukraine became stuck in this position, half-in, half-out and became pretty profoundly corrupt. JC: The Polish alternative elite had a vision of where they wanted the country to go. I think the general perception now is that this vision ends with the next election, right? Is this a natural process of gaining power? AA: Their vision, and it was shared by the time by politicians who now call themselves both left and right, was that Poland should join the EU and NATO, as fast as possible. My husband (Radek Sikorski) was in the very first government that said it wanted to join NATO. At the time this was taken very badly in Washington: the demand for NATO membership absolutely came from Poland, not from the US. But even then, in the early 1990s, many Poles already understood that the Russian sphere of influence would grow once again, that it was important to become part of the transatlantic alliance and an integrated Europe as fast as possible: NATO, the EU, the Council of Europe, all of the trading and security alliances. That consensus lasted through several different governments and over many years, even governments containing former communists. For twenty years, right, left and center disagreed about many things, but they all agreed on the direction that the country should go. In retrospect, that consensus created the basis for prosperity in Poland. JC: And regarding the Polish-Ukrainian relations. We know that antagonisms, e.g. the myth of Wołyń [a massacre of Poles that took place in what is now Western Ukraine, in 1943] are increasingly used in Polish political discourse today. In Ukraine, nationalist historians make heroes out of UPA, the Ukrainian revolutionary army, which is held responsible for this tragedy. Where do you see a start for burying the hatchet? Is the reconciliation of our nations possible? AA: So here’s a strange thing: For more than a decade after they both gained independence, Poland and Ukraine participated in a number of projects that were designed to solve exactly these kinds of Polish-Ukrainian differences. Books were published that were jointly written by Polish and Ukrainian historians, monuments were built. These projects were successful: If you’d asked me this question in 2010, I would have said that there are no real historical issues between Poland and Ukraine, that the two countries had mostly reconciled. For a number of reasons, this began to shift. In Poland, children and grandchildren of victims of the Wołyń massacre felt their tragedy hadn’t been fully recognized. In Ukraine, nationalist groups wanted the UPA partisans who had fought against the Soviet Union recognized for their heroism, despite the fact that some in this broad and not well-defined group were also linked to Wołyń. In both eastern Poland and western Ukraine, the memory of the ethnic cleansing that took place there in the late 1940s - Poles were moved West, Ukrainians East - to accomodate new borders has left feelings of displacement and bitterness. The wave of Ukrainian immigration, which started before the war, may have provoked some of this. But don’t underestimate the role played by Russia, which has always wanted to create discord between Poland and Ukraine, and pumps out propaganda to that effect in both countries. Vandalism on both sides of the border, damage done to cemeteries and monuments, is sometimes carried out by provacateurs working for Russia, just to create bad feelings. The Polish-Ukrainian conflict also hides a different reality: although there are real grievances and bad memories, the truth is that the biggest tragedies both nations experienced in the twentieth century were inflicted by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. That should unite these two countries, not divide them. JC: This week (19.04.2026 – Ed.) in Hungary we saw that using historical narratives to create grievance has no longer worked. Are you optimistic about the direction after Orban’s loss? AA: The Hungarian election was really important because it shows that people can actually resist powerful, dominant propaganda. The ruling party Fidesz controlled all of the TV, 90% of the newspapers, the constitutional court, the bureaucracy... and yet people had the nerve to vote against it and resist it. It’s also an important election because Hungary created a huge network of well-funded think tanks and foundations that were funding other far right groups and projects. So that loss is going to have a knock-on effect in other places too, maybe even in Poland. JC: What you’ve said about resisting propaganda reminds me of one of the interviews you did about talking to Russians in the post-Soviet era who claimed that people knew that the system was lying. Why do people choose to believe in these regimes anyway? AA: Because it’s useful. Stephen Kotkin, an American historian, once described how people would learn how to “speak Bolshevik”: It was just a language that you needed to use in order to get by in society. If you didn’t talk the way the regime wanted you to talk, then you might have problems, or lose your job, or your kids would not get into university. It was a way of getting along. Communist Poland was similar, at least in the early years. When I was writing a book about the Sovietization of Eastern Europe after World War II, I met a lot of people who wanted to talk a lot about the war, when many of them had done really heroic things. But almost nobody wanted to talk about the decade afterwards, between 1945 and 1956. This was when you had the short period of terror, violence and Polish Stalinism. To stay safe, people felt the need to just go along with what others were saying, or stay out of politics, or use communist jargon without necessarily believing it. I don’t judge them for it, and I wouldn’t describe all of those people as collaborators. It’s easy to feel moral certainty in retrospect, because we know that communism ended. But if you were living in 1949, it might not have been clear to you that communism was going to end. In very repressive societies, maybe about 10% of people who are really evil – collaborators, torturers. Maybe 10% of people are really brave and who find ways to resist. And then around 80% of people have kids, they have parents, they have to have jobs and they’ve had to get through it somehow. Strange though it may sound, I’ve found that the work I did on that book is now very useful in explaining some of what’s going on in the United States today. There are plenty of members of the Republican Party in Congress who know perfectly well that Donald Trump says many things that aren’t true. But they avoid criticizing him because it’s inconvenient, because they would get in trouble, because someone would attack them on the internet. So actually you don’t even need mass terror to get people to conform. JC: Is Gen Z reinventing agency? AA: We’ll see. In any generation you can find groups of people who want agency. If you live in a society that’s unfair, for example where a tiny number of people have captured most of the wealth, then at a certain point people rebel. This is always easier for younger people, who have you have less to lose. The question now is how the internet will affect the relationships between citizens and the state, and how it will change organizations. The “Twitter revolutions” people spoke about as early as 2008-9, mass protests organized online, have often proved to be very superficial. Although you can easily join something just by clicking, the work of creating a real movement requires physical participation. Successful mass movements of the past, for example the Civil Rights movement in the United States, were built by people who had spent many years together. They had participated in non-violent workshops together. They practiced and prepared. Just using the you can get everybody to show up at a certain moment, but then when the protest is broken up, nothing happens. It’s also true that the repressive regimes have more recently learned how to use the internet to undermine leaders and movements. Most of all, they now understand how to make people cynical. The form of propaganda that most modern authoritarians use - and I think the Russians really pioneered this - deploys sneering cynicism. Instead of praising the rulers, the regime propagandists mock the opposition movement leadership for being supposedly corrupt or sexually degenerate, with the goal of undermining any kind of idealism. JC: MAGA grew on the internet? AA: MAGA is a real grassroots movement. They had symbols, red hats, they showed up at rallies. But you’re right that the cynicism, the sarcasm and the distrust that the movement embodies came originally from the internet, and this is different. Fifty years ago, most European political parties had a social base in real organizations, in trade unions for Social Democrats, in church groups for Christian Democrats. As people stopped going to church and as the trade unions became smaller, the social base of these parties disappeared. Now people who wouldn’t have known one another in the past meet on the internet and create new movements, many of which don’t last. JC: Is history ending? Going in stale circles? AA: History never ends. In truth, human beings want contradictory things at the same time: order and freedom, stability and change. These things are never resolved, and when a society swings too far in one direction, people always push it the other way. But each time that happens, the result is different. Certainly it is true that we are now in a period when old philosophers and ideas from the 1930s are undergoing a revival. Carl Schmitt, who was a philosopher who was very influential on the Nazis, is back as an influence on both the far left and the far right, once again inspiring people to think that all politics has to be existential, that all politics is about defining and defeating enemies. In the US, some are also bringing back dominionism, the idea that we need a Christian and not a secular state. It’s also true that we are living through a more fundamental shift. The old left-right divide, which was mostly about the size of the state, is much less important now. Instead, we are arguing about more fundamental things: what are our rights, what protects our freedom. Or how much power do we want to give small elites, versus how much power to give ordinary people. In America a small group of very wealthy people now control information, because they control the social media platforms and AI, which means they determine what people will read and learn. Finding a way to preserve preserve zones of autonomy and independent thinking, this is going to be the main task for the next generation. JC: What is the one book that a person interested in Central Europe should read? AA: You could read my book “Iron Curtain: the Crushing of Eastern Europe” which tells the story of how the Soviet Union imposed its culture on the region. Or read Tim Snyder’s history of the region, “The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus 1569-1999.” And everyone should read “The Captive Mind” by Czesław Miłosz, which describes exactly the phenomenon we were talking about: why do people collaborate? I joined Scott Galloway and the brilliant Fiona Hill in a discussion about the wars in Ukraine and Iran, the future of global power, and what these conflicts reveal about America's role in the world. Scott told us that this was the 400th edition of his podcast, which is quite a number: My friend Francesco Chiamulera runs a brilliant series of literary events, Una Colline di Libri, A Hill of Books, in the Prosecco Hills, a region of vineyards and elegant hill towns in the Veneto, north of Venice. We did an event in Vittorio Veneto and also drove and biked around the countryside. Buy Autocracy Inc Buy Iron Curtain Open Letters, from Anne Applebaum is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe
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Bond breakout? Big effects of bad data. Immigration and thermostatic politics & dad-chat is coming for dad-books.
Thank you for opening your Chartbook email. Anna Airy, A Shell Forge at a National Projectile Factory, Hackney Marshes, London, 1918 Bond breakout - John Authers Across the developed markets, bond markets are staging a slow-motion car wreck. Looking at the drastic moves in the US, Japan, the UK and France, Barclays’ Ajay Rajadhyaksha commented: “Last week, long bonds broke. Not in one country. In all of them. Simultaneously. Four countries. Four different political systems. Four different central banks. But the same trade — “get me out of duration!”” Each country has its own contributing political problems, but the uniformity of the shift out of long-term bonds with high duration makes clear that something broader is afoot. For Rajadhyaksha, it is “simple and uncomfortable.” The developed world “has too much debt, too little fiscal discipline, and no political appetite for fixing either.” If there’s a trigger, it has been the Iran war and the resulting shock to oil supply. Source: Bloomberg G7 countries are now borrowing at rates that were enjoyed by EM in the early 2020s For contributing subscribers only. Subscribe Trade between China and Russia has grown in recent years For contributing subscribers only. Subscribe Big effects of bad data A decade ago nearly nine in ten Americans, when approached, agreed to fill out the Current Population Survey, which is administered to about 60,000 households each month and asks about, among other things, employment. Fewer than seven in ten do so now (see chart 1). For the Consumer Expenditure Survey, which tries to capture 3,700 households monthly, the response rate is down from 68% to 40%. … When the information becomes less reliable, investment decisions get more difficult to make. Some may be delayed, creating a potential drag on the economy. A new working paper by Nicholas Bloom of Stanford University, Erica Groshen, former head of the Bureau of Labour Statistics (BLS) now at Cornell University, and Duncan Hobbs and Michael Strain of the American Enterprise Institute, a think-tank, hazards an estimate. Preserving trust in “the integrity and quality of official statistics”, the authors claim, generates economic benefits of about $25 for every $1 spent on the BLS, the agency with an annual budget of $700m that is responsible for many of these data. To arrive at their conclusion the quartet analysed an ignoble episode in the BLS’s recent history. On August 1st 2025 Donald Trump sacked Erika McEntarfer, appointed as the agency’s commissioner by his predecessor, Joe Biden. The president alleged, without evidence, that the BLS’s steep downward revision to recent jobs numbers had been “RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad”. In fact, it was the wanton dismissal that looked bad in the eyes of many observers. In the following seven days there was a 50% leap, relative to the week before, in the average value of the index of Economic Policy Uncertainty (EPU), which tracks the number of articles mentioning such uncertainty that are published daily in American newspapers. This was a discernible jump even when compared to the chaos caused by Mr Trump’s trade war in April 2025 and his real one in Iran in the past two months (see chart 2). Based on Mr Bloom’s earlier study with other colleagues of the EPU’s impact on business investment, industrial production and employment, the authors estimate that the jump reduced American GDP by over $100bn (0.3%) and non-farm payrolls by 168,000 (0.1%). Source: The Economist Immigration and thermostatic politics (Sarah O’Connor in the FT) A strange thing happened a year and a half ago. No sooner had Americans elected Donald Trump as president on an explicitly anti-immigration platform than US public opinion began to swing much more favourably towards immigration. … to political scientists who study “thermostatic” politics, this development is no surprise at all. Public opinion often moves against the prevailing party, especially if they are perceived to have gone “too far” in one direction. The phenomenon was first explored in the 1990s with reference to fiscal policy, but in recent years it has been particularly evident in the realm of immigration policy. While these swings in opinion polls can make it seem as if people don’t know their own minds, they can be a useful democratic check on governments by sending bright flashing warning lights when policies stray too far from the public’s comfort zone. The problem comes when politicians misinterpret those signals. When people tell pollsters they want less immigration, or think it is bad for the country overall (or the converse), they are often expressing an opinion about how things appear to be going in that moment relative to their preferences, rather than a deep shift in their underlying views. According to Alexander Kustov, a political scientist, most Americans’ views are quite stable and moderate: they support immigration that is controlled and in the national interest, and oppose flows that are disorderly or under-enforced. In the US, he argues the Trump administration over-interpreted dissatisfaction with high immigration under Joe Biden, and implemented policies that went too far for many voters. “People don’t necessarily change their idea about their ideal immigration policy, but they can react to what the government is currently doing,” he told me. “A lot of people are not happy with what the Trump administration are doing — right now we’re not talking about border enforcement, we’re talking about people not just getting harassed, but killed.” But similarly, he added, pro-immigration advocates would be making a mistake to interpret the recent, more favourable swing towards immigration as a deep-seated ideological shift in attitudes. The recent history of UK immigration policy offers another cautionary tale. After the 2016 Brexit referendum, public concern about immigration fell. This was partly because net migration statistics declined, but also because people felt a sense of catharsis and control, says Sunder Katwala, director of British Future, a think-tank. By 2019, the public ranked immigration as only the ninth biggest issue of concern, according to Ipsos polling. But when the Conservative government liberalised visa routes for students and care workers between 2019 and 2022, that helped net migration to surge. And so, too, did public concern. Today’s Labour government has implemented another sharply restrictive turn in immigration policy. As Kustov and researcher Caitlyn Yates argue, thermostatic public opinion should be a useful check on politicians. Instead it seems to have helped to magnify the pendulum swing in the UK. The government over-interprets and overreacts to a change in public opinion, which reacts in turn, prompting a sudden swing the other way. Source: Financial Times HEY READERS, THANK YOU for opening the Chartbook email. I hope it brightens your day. I enjoy putting out the newsletter, but tbh, what keeps this flow going is the generosity of those readers who clicked the subscription button. If you are persuaded to click, please consider the annual subscription of $50. It is both better value for you and a much better deal for me, as it involves only one credit card charge. Why feed the payments companies if we don’t have to. Subscribe Anna Airy, Shop for Machining 15-Inch Shells: Singer Manufacturing Company, Clydebank, Glasgow, 1918 Racing for a vaccine … we have been here before! The deadly Ebola outbreak in two African countries driven by a virus species with no vaccine has triggered an urgent search for a potential jab, in a test of troubled global efforts to avert threats posed by emerging diseases. A World Health Organization advisory group is due to would meet on Tuesday to recommend candidate jabs to prioritise for clinical trials, the global health body said. It will assess data including an analysis by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (Cepi), which was set up after failures in the international response to a previous Ebola crisis. The latest Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda has infected hundreds of people and killed more than 80, health authorities say. Cepi’s reaction will be a crucial indicator of its progress towards its wider goal of producing vaccines for pandemic threats in just 100 days, despite steep cuts to international health funding. “If there was ever a time that we could show the world why Cepi is needed and show the world why the 100-day mission is needed, it’s now,” Nicole Lurie, the organisation’s executive director for preparedness and response, told the FT. “We’re happy to accept that responsibility, but obviously we need help from partners — particularly financial help in the long run.” DR Congo and Uganda would make the final decision on whether to press ahead with any vaccine candidates endorsed for clinical trials by the WHO experts, the global health body said. “Other ethical and community acceptability issues will be considered,” said the WHO, which declared the latest outbreak a public health emergency of international concern on Sunday. “This will be important to make sure that the trial, if it happens, will be adequately communicated to the population.” Lurie said Cepi had provided information from a survey of research teams and companies working on drugs that might be effective against the Bundibugyo virus behind the outbreak. The organisation hoped soon to announce partners in the quest for a jab, she added, although she declined to give a timescale for when one might be developed. Cepi’s Nicole Laurie said global health bodies were ‘getting some live-fire drills’ with hantavirus and the latest Ebola outbreak. The hunt for a vaccine should be helped by scientific advances including the use of artificial intelligence to find drugs active against viruses, Lurie said. Existing jabs against the Zaire Ebola virus responsible for many previous outbreaks might provide a basis for tackling the Bundibugyo species, she added. “We’ll see how far and how fast we can get,” Lurie said, adding that Cepi had done preliminary work recently on a possible jab for the rat-borne hantavirus responsible for a recent fatal outbreak on a cruise ship. “Both with hantavirus and now with Ebola, [we] are getting some live-fire drills.” Source: Michael Peel in the Financial Times Dad-chat is coming for dad-books. (By Pamela Paul and Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg in the WSJ) They were the go-to gifts for Father’s Day: a book about some little-known chapter of World War II, the sweeping narrative of a shipwreck, perhaps the latest presidential biography. These days, dad books are a dying breed. Nonfiction book sales have been in decline for the past four years, and are now the most challenged segment of the print book market. Publishers say certain types of books still fare well—including celebrity memoirs and religious titles. But in recent years, print sales in such categories as biography, current affairs and business and economics—what publishers refer to as “serious nonfiction” and which tend to resonate especially with men—have fallen considerably. Sales of nonfiction print titles were down nearly 8% through May 9 this year, and sales of books about politics and current affairs were down 19%, according to book tracker Circana BookScan. Publishing has long been subject to cyclical changes, with trends in format and genre taking over bookshelves in grand sweeps. (Remember the adult coloring-book craze? Or the stratospheric rise of romantasy?) But many in publishing believe the decline in serious nonfiction is more existential. “The trend couldn’t be clearer,” said Jonathan Karp, the former chief executive of Simon & Schuster and publisher of the new Simon Six imprint. “This is a sea change and people should wake up and realize we’re living in a new world.” One culprit for the shift: a new media diet for fans of more serious nonfiction. … Sixty-two percent of men and 54% of women consumed a podcast in the prior month, according to a recent survey by Edison Research at SSRS, up from 46% and 39%, respectively, in 2023. “When we have internal meetings to talk about this problem, it always comes around to podcasts,” said Jonathan Burnham, president and publisher of the Harper Group at HarperCollins Publishers. “The man who wants to read American history is now tuning into one of the many good podcasts about history that lends the quiet attention to a serious subject he’s looking for. It makes the idea of sitting down with a 700-page Ron Chernow book less appealing. You’ve scratched that itch.” Source: Wall Street Journal Remarkable report by Novara from the nationalist rally in London in mid May. Anna Airy, Leopard Moth and Plums, 1915 If you’ve scrolled this far, you know you want to click: Subscribe