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Said and published

• Sabine Hossenfelder x.com 16 Sept Vladimir Putins former PhD supervisor says that Russia sits on a huge, self-replenishing reservoir of oil. Now the Russians want to drill for it.
• Phillips P. O'Brien Korrent 15 Aug Russia's allies have been more useful to Russia than Ukraine's allies have been to Ukraine. Russia’s allies, on the other hand, have actually offered Russia support that has allowed Russia to fight the war that Russia has wanted to fight.
• Ursula von der Leyen x.com 15 Sept Once again, Europe woke up to reckless and dangerous Russian behaviour. A Russian warship fired emergency flares dangerously close to a Danish helicopter. A drone entered Lithuanian airspace before being destroyed by…
• Phillips P. O'Brien Korrent 30 Aug Russia's 2026 summer offensive failed: it took almost no ground while losing more soldiers than Russia can recruit. What we are seeing is a summer offensive of failure.
• Tyler Cowen Korrent 30 Aug Western export bans have not reduced Russian demand for brand-name SUVs and trucks, driving a criminal network that smuggles stolen vehicles to Russia via the Middle East. While Western export bans have severed Russia from much of the auto market, they have not tempered the demand for brand-name SUVs and trucks. That has given rise to a sophisticated network of criminals that steals cars,…
• Donald Trump Truth Social 19 Sept Over the years, there have been many Hoaxes, all generated by the Radical Left Dumocrats, for purposes of destroying our Country. RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA, UKRAINE, UKRAINE, UKRAINE, Global Warming, Impeachment Hoax #1,…
• Tim Bray Mastodon 7 Sept …fashy-adjacent culture-warrior gang, but what I can’t understand is the pro-Russian message: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AfD_pro-Russia_movement Why on earth does that appeal to German voters, even hard-right ones?…
• Branko Milanovic Newsletter 26 Aug On European hypocrisy and warmongering
• Phillips P. O'Brien Korrent 23 Aug Without the ability to sell fuel abroad Russia is not a great power and not even a medium economic power. Russia without the ability to raise money by exporting fuel is not only not a great power, it is not a medium economic power.
• Branko Milanovic Korrent 26 Aug A ceasefire along the current lines would end the killing and still leave a long-term settlement between Russia and Ukraine possible. Such, indeed fragile, peace not only puts an end to today’s carnage, but leaves open a possibility of eventual long-term solution between Russia and Ukraine.
• Anne Applebaum Newsletter 10 Aug The Dystopian Future of War
• Daniel Stenberg Mastodon 17 Sept The Russian drone that crashed in Lithuania the other day had curl installed. As part of a default Linux install presumably, it seems unlikely it used curl for any "drony" things.
• Phillips P. O'Brien Korrent 6 Sept The American military is being run on the Russian model rather than the Ukrainian one, and it should be rebuilt on the Ukrainian principles instead. The US military is being run by a group that apes the Russians and not the Ukrainians—when we have in front of us one of the best statements of command principles I have ever seen from the latter.
• Tyler Cowen Podcast 5 Aug Julia Ioffe on Russian Women, Missing Men, and the Roots of Autocracy
• Warren Ellis Blog 9 Sept 9sep27
• Phillips P. O'Brien Korrent 23 Aug Ukraine's deep-strike campaign should be aimed at Russia's fuel system above every other target, because that is what takes money away from the war machine. It is not because it affects Russian morale, or causes inconvenience, it is because ultimately it is the best way to take away the one thing all war machines need—money.
• Simon Johnson x.com 23 Jul S.1241 - Sanctioning Russia Act: https://t.co/N0ci2PLTBl a very good idea whose time has come
• Morgan Housel x.com 8 Jul A Russian saying on nostalgia: "The past is more unpredictable than the future."
• Adam Tooze Newsletter 7 Sept Top Links 1217 Russian gold through Hong Kong. The birth of repo out of the spirit of the Liberty Bonds. Anger in politics & the failed metrication of the USA.
• Balaji Srinivasan Korrent 12 Jul Digital finance has become a weapon of war, as shown by the financial deplatforming of groups like Canadian truckers and Russians. After the financial deplatforming of Western proles and foreign elites, of Canadian truckers and 145M Russians, it’s clear that digital finance is a weapon of war.
• Anne Applebaum Newsletter 13 Jun In Retrospect: Poland, Russia, Europe
• Ketan Joshi Korrent 16 Sept The climate impact from NVIDIA's AI products in 2025 is comparable to that of a major state-owned coal company. we produced our own conservative estimate, finding that the climate impact from 2025's use of NVIDIA'S AI products is on par with the state-owned Russian Coal company.
• Branko Milanovic Korrent 26 Aug Small European states can demand a war with Russia only because they assume somebody else will fight it. It is also hypocritical because it is based on the assumption that somebody else (in this case, the United States) will fight for them.
• Anne Applebaum Newsletter 8 Jun Ukraine is Not Losing
• Branko Milanovic Korrent 26 Aug The Nordic and Baltic push for confrontation with Russia is irresponsible, hypocritical and immoral, and it risks a catastrophe. The Nordic-Baltic warmongering under the current conditions is therefore (i) irresponsible, (ii) hypocritical, (iii) immoral, and (iv) flirts with a disaster of immense proportions.
• Simon Johnson x.com 23 Jul Bipartisan Sanctioning Russia Act: would impose meaningful mandatory sanctions + targeted tariffs. An excellent idea whose time has come. Hopefully, Congress will pass and the President will sign soon
• Anne Applebaum Newsletter 30 May The Moldovan Surprise
• Sarah C. M. Paine Korrent 9 Jun China and Russia have maritime ambitions without understanding what a maritime paradigm actually requires, and neither one has the prerequisites. So, China and Russia certainly have maritime ambitions, but I'm not clear they actually understand what goes into a full maritime paradigm.
• Daniel W. Drezner Korrent 2 Sept A superpower's deferential posture toward rival great powers can alienate its allies while yielding no strategic payoff in return. the Trump administration's deferential posture towards Russia and China has alienated allies. But on the other hand, it has gained the United States nothing in the way of strategic stability.
• Meb Faber x.com 9 Sept …markets by market cap in 1899: the US and UK compounded beautifully. Japan, Russia, Germany, Austria-Hungary, France? Effectively wiped out. "There is this inherent survivorship bias in the way people think about…
• Eugen Rochko Mastodon 11 Sept …looked through the top hits on Google and Yandex in both English and Russian. Is this just a dead…
• Lex Fridman x.com 12 Aug …to know him over the past few months. We did this conversation entirely in Russian. It's translated and dubbed into English. Both language audio tracks and subtitles are available on YouTube. Here on X, I'm posting…
• Timothy Snyder Korrent 13 Jun In resisting Russia the Ukrainians are defending the most basic thing in decent political life: that people get to be who they choose to be. By resisting Russia, Ukrainians are defending what is perhaps most basic about decent political life: the idea that people should be who they choose to be, not whom they are forced to become.
• Ursula von der Leyen x.com 11 Sept …can purchase the Patriot equipment it needs to protect its skies from Russia's attacks. Together with our Member States and NATO, we will continue to deliver for Ukraine. So that Ukraine prevails. So that it wins…
• Alexey Guzey x.com 1 Aug What about when you: - Grew up in Russia - Went to a university nobody in the States heard about - Never had a job - Wrote a blog in your second language nobody read for years - Just kept writing, tweeting, and cold…
• Sarah C. M. Paine Korrent 9 Jun Russia has never had a commerce-driven economy, and Xi Jinping has been privileging China's crony sector over its private sector. And Russia's never had a commerce-driven economy. China much more so under Deng Xiaoping, but recently Xi Jinping has been privileging the crony sector over the private sector and neither one has stable government…
• Sarah C. M. Paine Korrent 9 Jun There is no counsel in the continental world on when to stop taking territory, which is why Chinese and Russian empires keep overextending and imploding. And it turns out that there's been a tendency over the course of China's and Russia's long histories to overextend and this helps account for the implosions of various empires and dynasties.
• Sarah C. M. Paine Korrent 9 Jun Russia and China are ringed by the most dysfunctional places on the planet because their own security paradigm manufactures failing states. One, you're surrounding yourself by failing states. You can look at Russia and China and they're surrounded by some of the most dysfunctional places on the planet and you go, "Gee whiz, are they unlucky or they…
• Ursula von der Leyen x.com 17 Sept In yesterday’s SOTEU speech, I made clear that the EU must continue applying pressure on Russia, taking every possible step to weaken its war machine. The adoption of the Graham Bill by the US House of Representatives…
• Ursula von der Leyen Korrent 10 Sept 2025 Ukraine's war effort should be financed by a Reparations Loan raised against immobilised Russian assets, repayable only once Russia pays reparations. This is Russia's war. And it is Russia that should pay. This is why we need to work urgently on a new solution to finance Ukraine's war effort on the basis of the immobilised Russian assets. With the cash balances…
• Simon Johnson x.com 20 Mar https://t.co/9sLQvgKr3Z the Iran-Russia combination suggests that a quagmire looms #OOTT
• Serhii Plokhy Korrent 4 Mar 2024 The war Russia is fighting in Ukraine is, in intellectual terms, the plan Solzhenitsyn formulated: a Russian nation state of Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians, and failing that, Donbas, Crimea and southern Ukraine. So in historical terms and intellectual terms, what is happening today in the war between Russia and Ukraine is the vision on one level or another level that was formulated by the noble laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn,…
• Serhii Plokhy Korrent 4 Mar 2024 Russian identity formed around the state and cannot imagine itself outside one, while the Ukrainian project came into existence in revolt against the state. Russia and Russian identity was formed around the state, and has difficulty imagining itself outside of the state, and that state happened to be imperial for most of Russian history. Ukrainian project came into…
• Serhii Plokhy Korrent 4 Mar 2024 The Russian language is not persecuted in Ukraine, and believing that it is has one important precondition: never having set foot in the country. So, imagine under those conditions and context that someone is persecuting ethnic Russians or Russian speakers. One, to believe in something like that, one important precondition is never to step your foot in Ukraine.
• Michael Liebreich Site 27 May BloombergNEF: The Great Clean Energy Acceleration 2.0
• Keir Starmer x.com 16 Jul I’ve visited Ukraine four times as Prime Minister, and I’ve seen first-hand the devastation caused by Russia’s invasion. The UK’s support for Ukraine will never waver. That’s why we’re funding fighter jets for Ukraine,…
• Annie Jacobsen Korrent 22 Mar 2024 American ICBMs do not have the range to reach North Korea without flying over Russia, which is the flaw that turns a limited counterattack into Armageddon. …launch a counterattack against, say, North Korea, our ICBMs must fly over Russia. They must fly over…
• Dan Wang Korrent 4 Mar 2023 Partnering with Russia was a strategic mistake for Beijing, because it is the United States and Europe that hold the markets and the technology. Beijing decided to partner with Russia, an imperial aggressor, when it is the US and Europe that have markets and technology.
• Serhii Plokhy Korrent 4 Mar 2024 Russian nationalism turned out to be as destructive to the multinational Soviet state as Ukrainian, Georgian or Estonian nationalism was. So the most important story for me, this is the story of the continuing collapse of the Russian Empire and the rise of not just local nationalism, but also rise of Russian nationalism that turned out to be as a…
• Tomasz Tunguz Loved 17 Dec 2024 The Seventh Floor — David McCloskey one in a series about the CIA’s efforts to subvert Russian spies
• Norman Ohler Korrent 19 Sept 2025 The main opponent of the German soldier was not the British, French or Russian soldier but fatigue, and the army's physiologist set out to defeat it chemically. And that was not the British soldier, not the French soldier, not the Russian soldier. That was fatigue. He had been looking for a way to keep a soldier awake longer.
• Emmanuel Macron Korrent 25 Apr 2024 The era in which Europe bought its energy from Russia, had its goods made in China and left its security to the United States is over. And so yes, the era when Europe bought its energy and fertilizers from Russia, had its goods manufactured in China, and delegated its security to the United States of America, is over.
• John Mearsheimer Korrent 17 Nov 2023 Russia's refusal to accept NATO on its border is exactly what the United States demands for its own neighbourhood. Well, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. And if we don't like great powers coming into our neighborhood, it's hardly surprising that the Russians did not want NATO on their doorstep.
• Serhii Plokhy Korrent 4 Mar 2024 When Putin calls the Soviet collapse the greatest catastrophe of the century he is not mourning lives lost but great power status and the unity of the people he counts as Russian. So for him, the biggest tragedy is not the loss of life, the biggest tragedy is the loss of the great power status or the unity of those whom he considered to be Russian nations.
• Serhii Plokhy Korrent 4 Mar 2024 NATO was the justification for the invasion of Ukraine and not its cause: if it were the real concern, half the Russian army would have moved to the new Finnish border. …to expect that if not every single soldier, but at least half of the Russian army fighting in Ukraine would be moved to protect the new border with NATO in…
• Annie Jacobsen Korrent 22 Mar 2024 American missile defence is a fiction: 44 interceptors that work about half the time cannot answer the 1,670 warheads Russia has deployed. First of all, we have 44 interceptor missiles total, period, full stop. Let me repeat, 44. Earlier we were talking about Russia’s 1,670 deployed nuclear weapons. How are those 44 interceptor missiles going to work? And…
• Peter Frankopan Loved 18 Sept 2017 The Cherry Orchard — Anton Chekhov So, as a kind of period piece that captures Russia in the late 19th, early 20th century, it's the most poignant text I've ever read.
• Serhii Plokhy Korrent 4 Mar 2024 The fall of the Soviet Union was not a one-off event but the continuation of the disintegration of the Russian Empire that began in 1917 and was merely arrested by the Bolsheviks. And the Soviet collapse is continuation of the disintegration of the Russian Empire that started back in 1917, that was arrested for some period of time by the Bolsheviks, by the Communist ideology, which was…
• Serhii Plokhy Korrent 4 Mar 2024 Rus is not Russia: it was a self-name for many different groups on that territory, and Moscow did not yet exist when Kyiv became a capital. So very important to keep in mind that Rus is not Russia because that was a self-name for all multiple groups on that territory. And Moscow doesn’t exist at the time when Kyiv emerges as the capital. The first reference…
• Annie Jacobsen Korrent 22 Mar 2024 A nuclear war between the United States and Russia would kill five billion people. I’m coming back at you with a very dark answer and a very big number. And that number is 5 billion people.
• Lawrence Freedman Korrent 10 Oct 2025 The West is not doing Ukraine a favour by helping it resist Russia; Ukraine is doing the West a favour. The West is not doing Ukraine a favour by helping it resist aggression; it is Ukraine doing the West a favour.
• Serhii Plokhy Korrent 4 Mar 2024 Ukraine's vote for independence is what ended the Soviet Union, and Ukraine is exactly as decisive today for anyone wanting to restore Russian control over the post-Soviet space. …if today anybody wants to restore, not the Soviet Union, but some form of Russian control over the post-Soviet space, Ukraine is as important today as it was back in December of…
• Kwame Anthony Appiah Loved 21 Nov 2012 The Duel and Other Stories — Anton Chekhov It's just so marvellous, the description of these professional-class Russians, far, far away from Moscow in the provinces, and their preoccupation with status and all that, and these two guys in a completely pointless…
• Serhii Plokhy Korrent 4 Mar 2024 Writing five Ukrainian regions into the Russian constitution tied the hands of Putin and of any successor: there is no return to the borders of 2022 without political change in Moscow. So that means that no return to the borders of 2022 without political change in Moscow are possible.
• Dan Wang Liked 1 Jan The Eastern Front — Nick Lloyd Nick Lloyd’s The Eastern Front covers the clashes between Imperial Germany and the Russian Empire as well as the Austro-Hungarians against the Italians and the Serbs. Whereas the western front was essentially static…
• Scott Sumner Loved 3 Jul 2024 About Dry Grasses …directed by Ceylan, and that’s high praise. At times it feels like a long Russian novel. Engrossing from beginning to end, despite its 3¼ hour length. This one also could have been entitled “Evil Does Not…
• Annie Jacobsen Korrent 22 Mar 2024 Russia has abandoned its long-standing official position that it would wait to absorb a nuclear attack before launching. But that was their official position, and that changed just two years ago when Putin gave a speech and he said that their position had changed, that they will no longer wait to absorb an attack.
• Balaji Srinivasan x.com 27 May (1) Most countries do not actually have a military. Instead, most countries outsource their security to the US (most common), to Russia (like Belarus), or to China (like North Korea, partially). Iran is unusual in that…
• Jack Weatherford Korrent 31 Jul 2025 Genghis Khan's army was the greatest military force in history, and no power will ever repeat what it did. No other power in the history of the world has conquered Russia and China and Persia and Central Asia and Turkey and Korea. No power in the world has done that. Not Alexander, not the Romans. Nobody will ever do it…
• Serhii Plokhy Korrent 4 Mar 2024 Russians and Ukrainians behave differently even when they speak the same language: police violence ended the protests at Bolotnaya and began them on the Maidan. You have Bolotnaya in Moscow and police violence, and that’s the end of it. You have the Maidan in Ukraine and you have police violence, and that’s the beginning, that’s not the end.
• James Holland Korrent 24 May 2025 It was not the street fighting in Stalingrad that destroyed the German Sixth Army, it was the encirclement that followed. And Russians will hate me for saying this, and I probably will get a whole load of bots on the back of it, but the truth is, it is not the street fighting that destroys Sixth Army, it is the encirclement, the subsequent…
• Serhii Plokhy Korrent 4 Mar 2024 The Russian Empire acquired a sixth of the Earth by integrating conquered elites rather than their peoples, and nationalism is what made that model fall apart. The elites would be integrated, and the empire was based on the state loyalty and the state integration. But once you bring in the factor of nation and nationalism and language, then, once in a sudden, the whole model…
• Jack Weatherford Korrent 31 Jul 2025 A nation of a million people cannot rule hundreds of millions by warfare; the Mongol Empire lasted because it offered its subjects things they actually wanted. …over hundreds of millions of people, hundreds of millions of people, China, Russia, the Middle East, you do not do that through warfare. You conquer them initially through warfare, but you do not rule them through…