Tag: Soviet Union
How I Lost the Russia That Never Was
The lack of respect for the dead surprised even a soldier with the Wagner Group, Russia’s mercenary legion of former convicts that fought some of the bloodiest battles in the invasion of Ukraine. He looked at an ugly heap of wooden crosses and flower wreaths that had been pushed aside and cursed the authorities.
“What are you doing? They died for Russia, and you are razing their graves to the ground. You are rolling over them,” he said in
When Hollywood Put World War III on Television
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The ABC made-for-television movie The Day After premiered on November 20, 1983. It changed the way many Americans thought about nuclear war—but the fear now seems forgotten.
First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
A Preview of Hell
We live in
The Underground Historians of China
Late one night in 1958, a man named Liu Bingshu whispered to his wife, the mother of their four young children, “There is no escape. I could be taken away … If I can come back, we will see each other again.” Liu would soon be the victim of a massive policy change by the Communist leader of China, Mao Zedong. Just a year earlier, Mao had famously demanded that “a hundred flowers bloom,” actively inviting criticism and
Inside the fall of Nagorno-Karabakh – POLITICO
KORNIDZOR, Armenia — Many of the men waiting at the Armenian border have been there for days.
When news broke on Tuesday that Azerbaijan had launched a major attack into the ethnic-Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, dozens of them pulled on warm jackets and wooly hats and drove towards the checkpoint. Now they can only watch the road, once the sole highway cutting through the mountains to the breakaway region where their families live, hoping their relatives are able to get
With a return of Trump looming, Ukrainians ramp up homegrown arms industry – POLITICO
KYIV — Ukraine’s long-range Beaver drones seem to be making successful kamikaze strikes in the heart of Moscow, but Serhiy Prytula is coy about how much he knows.
“We are not sure whether we are involved in this,” he says with a charming but inscrutable smile, when asked about these mysterious new weapons.
Prytula rose to fame — just like President Volodymyr Zelenskyy — as an actor, TV star and comedian, but is now best known for his contribution to
A border in my backyard – POLITICO
Clément Girardot is a freelance writer focusing on international reporting, especially from the South Caucasus and Turkey. His work has appeared in various publications, including the Guardian, Al Jazeera, Le Monde and Wired.
“In our free time, we would go for a swim in the Ksani river or take a walk in the mountains,” kindergarten teacher Mariam Javakhishvili said, recalling her childhood in the Georgian village of Odzisi.
Despite its peaceful rural setting, nestled in a bucolic valley 30 kilometers
Oppenheimer’s Cry of Despair in The Atlantic
In February of 1949, J. Robert Oppenheimer, the former director of Los Alamos Laboratory under the Manhattan Project, took to the pages of this magazine to write about a terrible defeat. Nearly four years had passed since the Manhattan Project had detonated the first atomic bomb in New Mexico. The explosion had flashed purple light onto the surrounding mountains and raised a 40,000-foot pillar of flame, smoke, and debris from the desert floor. But for Oppenheimer, the afterglow had quickly
Scoop! Why Ben from Ben & Jerry’s blames America for war in Ukraine – POLITICO
Ben Cohen wasn’t talking about ice cream. He was talking about American militarism.
At 72, the co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream is bald and bespectacled. He looks fit, cherubic even, but when he got going on what it was like to grow up during the Cold War, his tone became less playful and more assertive — almost defiant.
“I had his image of these two countries facing each other, and each one had this huge pile of shiny,
The Power of a Failed Revolt
When we write history, it tends to be tidy and led by great men. In real time, it’s messy but still astonishing. Last weekend, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who leads a private army called the Wagner Group, attempted what many have called a coup against Russian President Vladimir Putin. Technically, it failed. He landed in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, pledged to march to Moscow, and then turned around. Nothing about this series of events suggests expert planning or high competence. Prigozhin
Inside Ukraine’s first day as an EU member – POLITICO
This is the moment Ukrainians have been fighting — and dying — for. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is walking up a red carpet in Brussels’ Europa building toward his first meeting of the European Council, the forum where the European Union’s leaders hammer out the bloc’s most perplexing problems.
He has been here before, of course, wearing his olive green sweatshirt in solidarity with the Ukrainian soldiers fighting in the trenches — his eyes exhausted from leading his country through