THINK TWICE, STAN

The West Plans a Freeze.  Moscow Prepares a Funeral In Washington and Brussels, the dominant metaphor remains the Korean peninsula. The war in Ukraine is treated as a future line on the map, a demarcation zone, a fortified frontier that can be stabilized, financed, and supervised for decades. The assumption is simple. The Ukrainian state survives, the front hardens, and the conflict becomes a management problem. The language coming from Moscow describes a different reality. There the war is not about freezing a line. It is about dismantling a structure. What Western capitals discuss as a long-term containment scenario, Russian officials and strategic commentators increasingly treat as a terminal phase. From that perspective, the West is negotiating with a political entity that Moscow already considers finished. Recent statements by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, combined with the broader tone of Russian strategic discourse, suggest a consistent internal logic. In this logi...

The Fourth Strategy? Just one sunk American destroyer, just one group of hostage diplomats, just one loss of hundreds of billions of dollars caused by a blockade of international trade routes would become a political catastrophe for the President of the United States. With the beginning of Donald Trump’s second presidential term, the world has encountered a unique diplomatic problem, one that has not really appeared for at least a century. The question is how to deal with him, and how to resist his pressure or, calling things by their proper names, his bullying. For many years we were told about a supposedly bullying, aggressive American diplomacy that respected no one. Yet it was harsh but still operated within certain limits. Even the aggressive George W. Bush, in his confrontation with the so-called “axis of evil,” and Joe Biden, who declared a struggle against the “axis of autocracies,” observed at least the formal courtesies of diplomatic communication. They tried, at least ...

Matches Are Not Toys Europe Discovers the Bomb Nuclear weapons are not an attribute of a refined lifestyle, nor a means of self-assertion in front of anyone. It would be very good if this understanding returned to the West before we find ourselves at the edge of a general catastrophe. The debate over whether the spread of nuclear weapons strengthens international stability or undermines it has continued almost since the emergence of this lethal technology. Each side in the discussion sounds convincing in its own way. Advocates of a wider distribution of nuclear arsenals argue that nuclear weapons function primarily as a tool of mutual deterrence. They provide reassurance to weaker states and compel stronger ones to rely on diplomacy rather than force. A number of scholars seriously believe that nuclear proliferation reduces the number of wars simply because states are unwilling to escalate conflicts to a level beyond which total or partial mutual destruction becomes possible. The C...

  Scandal and Diversion The Epstein case and Ukraine have unexpectedly intersected in public discussion. Media outlets and independent commentators continue to analyze what has become the largest release of materials related to the case of financier Jeffrey Epstein, who was accused of sex trafficking. Among the published correspondence, several emails reference Ukraine, which has drawn particular attention. In March 2014, commenting on the events of the Maidan, Epstein wrote that what had occurred could prove beneficial. “The coup in Ukraine should provide many opportunities, very many,” he wrote on March 18, 2014, in an email addressed to Ariane de Rothschild, vice president and board member of the Edmond de Rothschild Group, and Olivier Colom, an international adviser to the same group. Epstein also traveled to Davos at the invitation of Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Pinchuk, who is the son-in-law of Ukraine’s second president, Leonid Kuchma. Discussing Ukraine-related events i...

  A Realtor’s Peace The Peace Council, first reported in the autumn of 2025, is less the product of institutional drafting coordinated with international partners and more the result of the personal persistence of an American leader eager to secure a place in history. This logic explains the ceremonious signing of the organization’s charter by the leaders of nineteen states at the World Economic Forum in Davos, as well as the announcement of the initiative’s chief architect as chairman of the Council. It was important for Trump to play the role of Zeus, abducting not Europe itself, but its agenda. As Politico aptly noted, Davos is no longer associated with Greta Thunberg or the #MeToo movement and has instead been transformed into a MAGA forum. In this respect, the White House can reasonably claim that the reorientation of the agenda has largely succeeded. The substantive dimension, however, presents far greater difficulties, primarily because Trump demonstratively ignores t...

  Tectonic Realignment   The world is steadily returning to a logic of spheres of influence, in which the right to speak belongs only to those who possess real power and the willingness to use it. The United States, Russia, and China are dividing the planet in precisely this manner today, conducting a complex, multi-layered bargaining process across the entire perimeter from Taiwan to Venezuela and from Iran to the Arctic. The war in Ukraine continues. Talks about peace have dragged on for months, alternating between meetings in Davos, the United States, and the United Arab Emirates, and long stretches of tense diplomatic silence. From the outside, the process may appear to have reached a classic impasse. The territorial stumbling block, Moscow’s demand for full control over the Donetsk region, looks insoluble. Zelenskiy refuses and hardens his rhetoric. The front, though with difficulty, is holding. The rear, despite blackouts, has not collapsed. As a result, a war of attri...