5 mins read
April 30th is an important date in American politics. This is the day 100 for the American President in the White House, and all attention will be on the reports of his achievements and failures. But nothing can be more critical than Peace…
8 mins read
The details of the peace deal presented today by US special envoy Steve Witkoff are consistent with the report in the Financial Times discussed in my previous article and with Larry Sparano in the posted interview. Putin will halt the Russian advance prior to driving Ukrainian soldiers out of all of the territory that has been reincorporated into Russia. It appears to be the case that the borders between Russia and Ukraine will be the current front line, so Putin is withdrawing Russia’s claim to the Russian territories still under Ukrainian occupation.
5 mins read
Pressure builds on President Zelensky to accept a forced peace
5 mins read
President Donald Trump’s hopes of securing a quick Ukraine peace deal hang in the balance after Washington’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, held his fourth Kremlin meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin Friday.
10 mins read
This is the first of a three-part series on the history of NATO and US European Command military exercises with Ukraine. This shows how the West, acting like a camel, slipped its big nose under the Ukrainian tent as part of a long-term strategy to defeat Russia
6 mins read
Russia’s invasion has made ordinarily outspoken critics of antisemitism wary of criticizing Ukrainian Nazi collaborators
4 mins read
Ullekh NP reports on fears in Moldova that the Zelensky government in Ukraine, in its search for hydro power on the lower Dniester River, is starting to claim a chunk of its neighboring ally.
8 mins read
It’s actually common sense, including putting Crimea on the table
1 min read
Richard Sakwa has for many years been one of the most distinguished and insightful observers of relations between the West and Russia, and one of the leading critics of Western policy. In this talk with Anatol Lieven, director of the Eurasia program at the Quincy Institute, Sakwa discusses his book, The Culture of the Second Cold War (Anthem 2025). The book examines the cultural-political trends and inheritances that underlie the new version of a struggle that we thought we had put behind us in 1989. Sakwa describes both the continuities from the first Cold War and the ways in which new technologies have reshaped strategies and attitudes.
1 min read
Dr. Roberts is one of the critical western historians who also dares to speak his mind when it comes the War in Ukraine…
8 mins read
He was right, that forcing countries to choose between NATO and Russia would lead to conflict
17 mins read
Newly-leaked documents reveal four military academics pitching the U.S. National Security Council a series of extreme strategies for Ukraine, Kit Klarenberg reports.
6 mins read
On Wednesday, February 14, Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH), the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement that his panel had “made available to all Members of Congress information concerning a serious national security threat.”
13 mins read
I have said in the past that the New World Order’s enduring legacy is contempt for morality and what Immanuel Kant calls practical reason in the comprehensible universe, which was created by what Aristotle calls the Unmoved Mover. We are still working with the same definition in this article here.
4 mins read
Crises, crises everywhere, as far as the eye can see. There’s a border crisis, a fentanyl crisis and a crime crisis. Massive deficit spending is leading to a fiscal crisis. President Biden’s 39% approval rating as he seeks a second term would suggest a leadership crisis.
6 mins read
A mantra endlessly repeated by US officials and military leaders, especially in their testimony before Congress, is that America’s vast network of minor state allies in NATO and around the world provide it with resources and power that Russia and China cannot match. However, this is simply not true. It is a fantasy, unsupported by the factual historical record.
5 mins read
April 30th is an important date in American politics. This is the day 100 for the American President in the White House, and all attention will be on the reports of his achievements and failures. But nothing can be more critical than Peace…
6 mins read
Russia’s invasion has made ordinarily outspoken critics of antisemitism wary of criticizing Ukrainian Nazi collaborators
1 min read
Richard Sakwa has for many years been one of the most distinguished and insightful observers of relations between the West and Russia, and one of the leading critics of Western policy. In this talk with Anatol Lieven, director of the Eurasia program at the Quincy Institute, Sakwa discusses his book, The Culture of the Second Cold War (Anthem 2025). The book examines the cultural-political trends and inheritances that underlie the new version of a struggle that we thought we had put behind us in 1989. Sakwa describes both the continuities from the first Cold War and the ways in which new technologies have reshaped strategies and attitudes.
1 min read
Dr. Roberts is one of the critical western historians who also dares to speak his mind when it comes the War in Ukraine…
8 mins read
He was right, that forcing countries to choose between NATO and Russia would lead to conflict
11 mins read
A discussion with Armenian-American scholar Pietro Shakarian on Russia, China, and the forthcoming 80th Anniversary of Victory Day.
8 mins read
The details of the peace deal presented today by US special envoy Steve Witkoff are consistent with the report in the Financial Times discussed in my previous article and with Larry Sparano in the posted interview. Putin will halt the Russian advance prior to driving Ukrainian soldiers out of all of the territory that has been reincorporated into Russia. It appears to be the case that the borders between Russia and Ukraine will be the current front line, so Putin is withdrawing Russia’s claim to the Russian territories still under Ukrainian occupation.
5 mins read
Pressure builds on President Zelensky to accept a forced peace
5 mins read
President Donald Trump’s hopes of securing a quick Ukraine peace deal hang in the balance after Washington’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, held his fourth Kremlin meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin Friday.
10 mins read
This is the first of a three-part series on the history of NATO and US European Command military exercises with Ukraine. This shows how the West, acting like a camel, slipped its big nose under the Ukrainian tent as part of a long-term strategy to defeat Russia
4 mins read
Ullekh NP reports on fears in Moldova that the Zelensky government in Ukraine, in its search for hydro power on the lower Dniester River, is starting to claim a chunk of its neighboring ally.
8 mins read
It’s actually common sense, including putting Crimea on the table
7 mins read
On March 29, The New York Times published an article that “reveal[ed] that America was woven into the war far more intimately and broadly than previously understood.” Its undeclared thesis was that the U.S. has done everything possible for Ukraine to win the war. Ukraine would not trust them and listen. Now the war is lost, and there is no choice but to negotiate. The article was the first major attempt to prepare the public for defeat in Ukraine.
4 mins read
Edward Lozansky was a Soviet nuclear physicist who during the height of the Cold War became a dissident.
12 mins read
It was only a few weeks ago that Russian President Vladimir V. Putin and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian met to ink the historic Russo-Iranian Treaty on Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. The pact itself was a milestone, so much so that commentators around the world are still widely discussing its implications. Perhaps one of the most striking elements of the treaty is the major focus on Eurasia. Although Western analysts tend to focus on Russo-Iranian cooperation in the Middle East, the treaty indicates that Eurasia is of even more immediate geopolitical significance to both Moscow and Tehran. To historians and long-time observers of Iran and Russia, this is hardly a surprise. The Eurasian region – that is, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and the Caspian Sea – forms an integral part of the common Russo-Iranian neighborhood.
1 min read
At yesterday’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) questioned Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), President-elect Trump’s nominee for Secretary of State.
6 mins read
Soviet and American physicist and political figure Edward Lozansky dies in Moscow, on April 30, 2025.
Edward Dmitrievich Lozansky was born in Kiev on February 10, 1941. He graduated from the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy with a degree in theoretical nuclear physics. He was a researcher at the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy and the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna. At the same time, he taught at the Malinovsky Armored Forces Academy.
In 1976, he moved to the United States, became a US citizen, and lived in Washington, DC. In 1990, he founded the American University in Moscow (now Moscow International University).
In recent years, he actively participated in the work of the Assembly of the Peoples of Eurasia and Africa and was the US moderator of the international public forum “The Spirit of the Elbe: A Bridge of Trust, Friendship, and Cooperation,” which was held with great success on April 15, 2025. A word of remembrance from Martin Sieff, joined by the entire editorial staff of the Pluralia project.
2 mins read
We kindly invite you to review and sign the Open Appeal to President of the United States Donald Trump and President of Russia Vladimir Putin
1 min read
The organizers of the International Forum “Spirit of the Elbe: A Bridge of Trust, Friendship, and Cooperation” invite media, public figures, and representatives of culture, science, and business to participate in a landmark event taking place on April 15, 2025. The Forum will be held in a hybrid format: in-person at the Conference Hall of the Assembly of the Peoples of Eurasia in Moscow and via Zoom conference (up to 200 participants, approximately evenly split between Russia and the USA). The event begins at 5:00 PM Moscow time (10:00 AM Washington, D.C. time).
6 mins read
The spectacle surrounding Alex Ovechkin’s recent record-breaking goal recalls an era where sport accompanied great power détente
7 mins read
The visit by the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund and special representative of the Russian president for investment and economic cooperation Kirill Dmitriev to Washington on April 2-3, the first such visit by a senior Kremlin official since 2022, appears to have been a modest achievement whose productive outcome will be crucial in the rest of US-Russia relations.
4 mins read
Steeled by years of confrontation, Moscow will not give up just anything in hope of future reciprocity
Vladimir Emelyanovich Maximov (Russian: Владимир Емельянович Максимов, born Lev Alexeyevich Samsonov, Лев Алексеевич Самсонов; 27 November 1930, — 26 March 1995) was a Soviet and Russian writer, publicist, essayist and editor, one of the leading figures of the Soviet and post-Soviet dissident movement abroad.
Born in Moscow into a working class family, Lev Samsonov spent an unhappy childhood in and out of orphanages and colonies after his father was prosecuted in 1937 during the anti-Trotskyism purge. He went to Siberia to travel there under an assumed name, Vladimir Maximov (to become later his pen name), spent time in jails and labour camps, then worked as a bricklayer and construction worker. In 1951 he settled in one of the Kuban stanitsas and started to write short stories and poems for local newspapers. His debut book Pokolenye na chasakh (Generation on the Look-out) came out in Cherkessk in 1956.
In 1956 Maximov returned to Moscow and published, among other pieces, the short novel My obzhivayem zemlyu (We Harness the Land, 1961) telling the story of Siberian hobos, courageous, but deeply troubled men, trying to find each their own way of settling down into the unfriendly Soviet reality. It was followed by Zhiv chelovek (Man is Alive). The former caught the attention of Konstantin Paustovsky who included it into his almanac Pages from Tarusa. The latter found its champion in Vsevolod Kochetov who in 1962 published it in Oktyabr, which he was then in charge of. It was met with both public and critical acclaim and was produced in 1965 by the Moscow Pushkin Drama Theatre. In 1963 Maximov became a member of the Union of Soviet Writers and in the mid-1960s joined the Oktyabr magazine's staff. All the while, though, his literary output was getting harsher, darker and more pessimistic.
Two of Maximov's early 1970s novels, Sem dnei tvorenya (Seven Days of Creation, 1971) and The Quarantin (1973) proved to be the turning point of his career. On the one hand, in retrospect they marked the high point of his creativity. On the other, steeped with the longing for Christian ideals and skeptical as to the viability of the Communist morality, both went against the grain of the norms and the criteria of Socialist realism. They were rejected by all Soviet publishers, came out in Samizdat, were officially banned and got their author into serious trouble. In June 1973 he was expelled from the Writers' Union, and spent several months in a psychiatric ward. In 1974 Maximov left the country to settle in Paris, and in October 1975 was stripped of the Soviet citizenship.
In 1974 Maximov launched the literary, political and religious magazine Kontinent to take up what many saw as the Hertzen-founded tradition of supporting the Russian literature in exile. It became the center point of Russian intellectual life in Western Europe, attracting such diverse authors as Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Alexander Galich, Viktor Nekrasov, Joseph Brodsky and Andrey Sakharov, the latter describing Maximov as "the man of unwavering honesty." Maximov remained the magazine's editor-in-chief up until 1992, when, during one of his visits to Moscow, he transferred it to Russia and granted all rights to his colleagues in Moscow. He was also the head of the executive committee of the international anti-communist organization Resistance International.
Among Maximov's best-known works written in France were the novels Kovcheg dlya nezvanykh (The Arc for the Uninvited, 1976), telling the story of the Soviet development of the Kuril Islands after the World War II, an autobiographical dilogy Proshchanye iz niotkuda (Farewell from Nowhere, 1974—1982), and Zaglyanut v bezdnu (To Look Into the Abyss, 1986), the latter having as its theme Alexander Kolchak's romantic life. All three, based upon historical documents, portrayed Bolshevism as a doctrine of ruthlessness, amorality and political voluntarism. He authored several plays on the life of Russians in emigration, among them Who's Afraid of Ray Bradbury? (Кто боится Рэя Брэдбери?, 1988), Berlin at the Night's End (Берлин на исходе ночи,1991) and There, Over the River... (Там, за рекой, 1991).
The drastic change in political situation in his homeland and the fall of the Soviet Union left Maximov unimpressed. He switched to criticizing the new Russia's regime and, while still a staunch anti-Communist, started to published his diatribes aimed at Egor Gaidar-led liberal reforms regularly in the Communist Pravda, to great disdain of some of his friends.
