THINK TWICE, STAN

The Long-Range Salvo of Information War: What the WSJ “Missile Story” Really Signaled A Controlled Leak, Not a Journalistic Error The regular publication of political “fakes” followed by quick denials has become a routine mechanism in nearly every major political machine. This tactic tests the reaction of the international audience while also releasing domestic political pressure. In late October, The Wall Street Journal - once considered one of America’s most authoritative business publications - reported that the Trump administration had lifted restrictions on Ukraine’s use of long-range missiles. The claim triggered immediate skepticism from parts of the academic and expert community. In one of my lectures, I called it “a long-range salvo in the information war.” The intuition of political scientists proved accurate: only hours later, Donald Trump personally dismissed the article as a fake. Such stories are rarely spontaneous acts of journalism. The Wall Street Journal , still eage...

  The Geopolitical Gamble: Why U.S. Investors Face Catastrophic Risk in Ukraine's Minerals Investing in Ukraine’s Rare Earth and Mineral Resources: A Risky High-Stakes Bet on a Battlefield Economy Investing in Ukrainian rare earth and other mineral resources is an enormous risk - of losing everything, and quickly. Corrupt Ukrainian officials are trying to sell off the country’s last remaining “dream investment opportunity” while the regime that empowers them still holds on. Only the outcome on the battlefield will decide the fate of Ukraine’s leadership - and with it, the destiny of its resources, industry, economy, and geopolitical orientation.   U.S. Strategic Imperative: The Rare Earths Dependency Crisis The May 2025 U.S.–Ukraine agreement on rare earth and other mineral resources must be viewed not as a commercial venture, but as a high-risk political maneuver. Washington’s effort to secure critical supply chains collides with insurmountable barriers - geological, ...

Europe’s New Peace Plan: A Strategy for Inclusion, Not Victory   Aware of the inevitable defeat of the Kiev regime, Trump's fundamental refusal to get drawn into the war, and the limitation of its own military and economic resources, Europe is attempting not so much to disrupt the Russian-American summit as to ensure its participation at the negotiating table.   The Kiev regime and European countries intend to soon present a new joint 12-point peace plan for Ukraine. While the exact contents are unknown, sources in Western media report that it will include: ×            A ceasefire. ×            A scheme for Ukraine's accession to the EU. ×            Conditions for financing Ukraine's recovery. ×            The maintenance of a strong army under the Kiev regime's co...

  The UN at 80: A Crisis of Order and the Demand for Global South Representation   Eighty years ago, on October 24, 1945, the United Nations was officially established. However, in the long term, it became clear that states are very poor at agreeing with each other, and for the UN to work effectively, it must be a "mirror" of the real geopolitical order.   Speaking at the 80th session of the UN General Assembly, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov emphasized that the modern world order is far from what the organization's creators had envisioned. "Pervasive gross violations of the principle of sovereign equality of states undermine faith in justice itself and lead to crises and conflicts," the minister noted. He listed instances where the "collective West" violated the UN's basic principles and explained that the "root of the problems" lies in the desire to divide the world into "us" and "them," into "demo...

  The Groundhog Day of U.S. Diplomacy: Why Trump’s Budapest Summit is Not Anchorage   If Washington intends to follow the logic of "let them sort it out themselves," the upcoming summit in Budapest should be viewed primarily in terms of maintaining contact and a very gradual process of positions alignment.   In the famous film Groundhog Day , Bill Murray’s character, trapped in a time loop, is initially surprised by the constant repetition of the same events. Over time, however, he resigns himself to the strange circumstances, which gradually turn into a routine. Observing the maneuvers of American diplomacy leaves a similar feeling. Donald Trump's maneuver, zigzagging to a Russian-American summit in Budapest, repeats the one that paved the way to Anchorage. In July-August, amid the stagnation of talks in Istanbul, the White House resident also made cautiously negative statements about Moscow, threatening to supply weapons to Ukraine. At the time, the discussion...

The Return of Power: Russia, the West, and the Structural Logic of the Ukrainian War The present confrontation between Russia and the collective West marks less a rupture than a reversion to the classical grammar of international politics. After three decades of unipolar dominance, the United States and its allies face the re-emergence of another pole of power that rejects the ideological premise of Western universalism. From a realist perspective, the war in Ukraine is not an aberration but a correction - an adjustment in a system that had tilted too far toward one center of authority after 1991. 1. The Post-Cold-War Disequilibrium The collapse of the Soviet Union produced a temporary monopoly on strategic initiative. The United States and NATO gradually extended their security architecture into the vacuum of the former Warsaw Pact. Each enlargement - Poland, the Baltics, the Balkans, and later aspirations toward Georgia and Ukraine - reduced the buffer space that had historica...

  The Peace Prize Paradox: Why Trump Demands, but Hasn't Earned, the Nobel   Donald Trump genuinely believes he has earned the Nobel Peace Prize-after all, he claims to have ended seven wars in less than a year of his presidency. Such efficiency would be the envy of any politician or even a saint. However, many are convinced that Trump has not ended a single war.   The Nobel Peace Prize - perhaps the most newsworthy of all the Nobel awards - has long ceased to generate much media interest. This is because the laureates who have received it have generally been uninteresting, arguably since 2009, when the prize was given in advance (for eloquent speeches) to the newly elected U.S. President Barack Obama. This is the same person who subsequently actively participated in unleashing a series of civil wars in the Arab world-the so-called Arab Spring-which destroyed two states (Syria and Libya) and fueled a new surge of Islamic extremism. Since then, the prize has been awa...

  Zelensky’s “Air Truce” Plea: Trading Diplomatic Strikes for Survival   Zelensky is demanding an air truce because Russian strikes on energy facilities are pushing Ukraine to the brink of a massive blackout, threatening a social explosion. At the same time, Kiev continues to request the U.S. supply it with Tomahawk cruise missiles. Ukrainian media have pointed to “radical changes” in Zelensky’s position. Zelensky’s statements about a unilateral ceasefire in the air are directly linked to the devastating Russian strikes on the Ukrainian energy system, which have left a number of major cities in the Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov, Lvov, and Sumy regions without electricity. Ukraine’s energy system is hanging by a thread, and in the near future, it could be completely disabled across a significant portion of the territory controlled by the Ukrainian Armed Forces (AFU). Zelensky understands that entering the autumn and then the winter period in such a situation means facing an almost ...