My new piece at Lobe Log covers the week that was in Ukraine and Crimea: Summary of Recent Events This week saw sporadic military activity on the Crimean peninsula, in particular a reported attack by pro-Russian gunmen on a Ukrainian air force base in Sevastopol that ended when the gunmen retreated. Diplomatic efforts seem to … Continue reading My latest at Lobe Log: Ukraine update for the week ending March 9

Now that the whole world is paying attention to Crimea for the first time in about 160 years, it's becoming apparent that a disturbing number of people still think that the proper name for the Turkic inhabitants of Crimea is "Tartars." CNN-International, which you would think should know better, was calling them Tartars all day … Continue reading The Crimean Tatars are not the stuff your dentist scrapes off of your teeth

I'm on "snow day" duty today, but check out this great piece by Julia Ioffe on the subject of Vlad's press conference yesterday and what it showed about his grip on reality: Gone was the old Putin, the one who loves these kinds of press events. He'd come a long way from the painfully awkward … Continue reading Putin’s state of mind

If you're wondering why all the sudden self-disclosure, it's because I just had my first piece of writing published someplace other than on this blog, so it seemed like a good time to have all my worlds collide. I've written a primer on the situation in Ukraine for Lobe Log, the US foreign affairs blog … Continue reading A Primer on Ukraine, my first piece @LobeLog

I see that Kevin Drum is where other keen minds were a few days ago, even before Russia invaded Crimea: From House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers: Putin is playing chess and I think we are playing marbles, and I don’t think it’s even close. They’ve been running circles around us. This kind of knee-jerk … Continue reading Vladimir V. Putin, SOOOOPER Genius

Unlike some people who shall remain nameless, Anne Applebaum manages to write about the soft power options that Putin still has in Ukraine without making it sound like everything to this point has gone exactly according to Putin's impossibly ingenious master plan: Of course economic tools can help wreck that government, too. Two Russian banks … Continue reading How to write about Vladimir Putin

The American political right increasingly resembles a barely-stitched together collection of single- or narrow-issue interest groups, all united by hatred of Barack Obama, History's Greatest Monster At Least Until the Next Democratic President, or, more accurately, hatred of scary liberal monsters hiding under the bed, waiting for the chance to make off with their wallets, … Continue reading No, Vladimir Putin is not a cartoon super-villain, and he’s not the Defender of the Faith either

In my recent post about Crimea, and the potential for it to breakaway from Ukraine/become the target of another Russian invasion protective intervention, I made an omission: Yes, I neglected to let you know that the Crimean War was, in fact, fought mostly in Crimea, which is the kind of insight you only get from … Continue reading Correction: Crimea is where the Crimean War was fought