Vladimir Putin is interviewed by Russian TV presenter and propagandist Dmitry Kiselyov in the Kremlin in March 2024. Photo from Wikimedia Commons. As elections go, the presidential contest that took place in Russia last week must rank as among the most unexciting of recent history. Not only was the result
Continue readingTag: Europe, War Zones
Canadian Dimension: An endgame in Ukraine may be fast approaching
The military situation today is very different from that of a year ago when commentators were predicting that final victory was within Ukraine’s grasp. Photo courtesy the 148th Separate Artillery Brigade/Armed Forces of Ukraine/X. It is probably fair to say that nobody has done a very good job of predicting
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Buried trial verdict confirms false-flag Maidan massacre in Ukraine
Thousands of protesters fill Independence Square in Kyiv, Ukraine during the Maidan Revolution, February 19, 2014. Photo by Sergi Mykhalchuk/Flickr. A nearly one-million-word verdict from Ukraine’s Maidan massacre trial has recently confirmed that many Maidan activists were shot not by members of Ukraine’s Berkut special police force or other law
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Next year in Ukraine, expect the unexpected
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addresses a crowd at an end-of-year press conference in Kyiv, December 19, 2023. Photo courtesy President of Ukraine/Flickr. “No other activity is so continuously or universally bound up with chance,” wrote the great Prussian strategist Carl von Clausewitz in his book On War. To Clausewitz, war
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: A year later and things are very different in Moscow
Russian military recruitment poster in the streets of Saratov. Photo by Gulmira Amangaliyeva/openDemocracy. I used to have some respect for elements of the Western media. While that respect has eroded gradually over time, it has been its coverage of the war in Ukraine that has finally destroyed what hope I
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Myths and reality about the Ukraine war
A Ukrainian flag in the streets of Mitte, Berlin’s central borough. Photo by Felipe Tofani/Wikimedia Commons. A few words about myself by way of introduction. Until recently, I taught politics at the Université du Québec à Montréal, specializing in the USSR and its former member states. A socialist, I was
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: NATO: Against the poor of the world
Serbian men hold a poster with pictures of victims of the 1999 NATO air campaign against Serbia and Montenegro in the town of Nis. Photo by AFP. NATO and its defenders claim it is strictly an alliance of “collective Western defence” and not a belligerent organization. But a review of
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: There are very few good films about war. 20 Days in Mariupol is an exception
“Witness.” Illustration by Mr. Fish. Films about war, shorn of the bone crushing fear, the putrid stench of the corpses, the deafening noise of explosions, the constant exhaustion and the nervous anxiety that comes with trying to understand what is happening in the terrifying chaos, are pale and inadequate reflections
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Jens Stoltenberg’s global vision encourages conflict, militarization, and historical amnesia
Norwegian politician and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. Photo courtesy NATO/Flickr. On July 10, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg published an article in Foreign Affairs titled “A Stronger NATO for a More Dangerous World.” The piece ran one day before the NATO summit in Vilnius, and it reads as a
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: The coup that never happened
A crowd in Rostov-on-Don watching a Wagner tank with flowers sticking out of its muzzle, June 24, 2023. Photo by Fargoh/Wikimedia Commons. The most surprising thing about the mutiny by Yevgeny Prigozhin and his mercenaries from the Wagner Group is that the coup attempt was actively discussed in advance. Prigozhin
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Destroying eastern Ukraine to save it
Ukrainian soldiers in T80 tanks that were captured from Russians during a battle in Trostyanets in the eastern Donbas region of Bakhmut, Ukraine. Photo courtesy the Australian Defence Force/Flickr. Following an essay I published earlier this month and the letter the Eisenhower Media Network ran in the New York Times
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Who wants to be Mussolini?
Vladimir Putin tours Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Concord food catering factory. Photo from Wikimedia Commons. The repeated failures of the Russian army, combined with scandalous events such as the appearance of Ukrainian drones over elite suburbs of Moscow, caused something akin to patriotic hysteria among the supporters of the war. Everyone understands
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Belgorod raid: Why are Russian neo-Nazis fighting Putin?
Pro-Ukrainian Russian fighters at a press conference after completing their Belgorod Oblast raid. Photo courtesy the Ukrainian Independent Information Agency (UNIAN)/Wikimedia Commons. The war between Russia and Ukraine escalated further this week when two armed groups crossed from Ukraine into the Russian province of Belgorod and briefly occupied a village
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Hypocrisy and war
Russian President Vladimir Putin at a meeting of the Prosecutor General’s Office Board, 2019. Photo courtesy the Kremlin/Flickr. “The first casualty of war,” as the famous dictum coined by American Senator Hiram Johnson in 1917 has it, “is truth.” What fuels militarism is the belief that your side is completely
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: If Lula can call for peace in Ukraine, why not Canada’s left?
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in November 2021. Photo by Mídia NINJA/Flickr. Is Lula a pro-Russian “tankie”? Should the Canadian left echo or marginalize his outlook on Ukraine? Last week, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva called on the US and other Western countries to stop supplying
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Obsolete Cold War attitudes are holding Europe back
In 2022, NATO powers allocated huge sums to Ukraine—about $50 billion from the US, €52 billion from the EU and its member states, and £2.3 billion from Britain. Photo courtesy NATO. Recently, the United States has been followed by a number of European countries in supporting a cold war policy
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: How Western sanctions drove Belarus closer to Moscow
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. Photo by Serge Serebro/Wikimedia Commons. Philosophers like to distinguish between “deontological” ethics on the one hand and “utilitarian” or “consequentialist” ethics on the other. The first—associated most famously with Immanuel Kant—involves absolute rules and places a great importance on intentions. The second—associated with the likes of
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: The tragedy of the war in Ukraine: a reply to Kagarlitsky
Ukrainian artillery near Bakhmut. Photo by Wojciech Grzedzinski. The following article is a response to “The tragedy of war” by Boris Kagarlitsky, published in Canadian Dimension on March 21, 2023. On March 1, 2023 Canadian Dimension published a remarkably shallow analysis of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, although one that
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: The tragedy of war
Smoke from burning debris fills a cemetery in Mykolaiv, southern Ukraine. Photo by Bulent Kilic. The war between Russia and Ukraine has been raging for more than a year. The international left has been debating this war from the start without success in formulating any more or less coherent position
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Bakhmut and the limits of historical parallels
Photo by the 93rd Mechanized Brigade of the Ukrainian Army showing a destroyed Bakhmut during the winter of February 2023. Photo courtesy the Armed Forces of Ukraine/Facebook/Wikimedia Commons. The media loves historical parallels. They can supercharge an argument through their suggestion that history might repeat itself. They are also emotionally
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