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Garry Kasparov is the founder and chairman of the Renew Democracy Initiative, which publishes The Next Move.

Last Thursday, I received the Friend of Ukraine Award at the Tryzub Awards Gala in Toronto. Here are my remarks from that evening:

Good evening.

To begin with, I’d like to thank our hosts, the Tryzub Gala Foundation, for their invitation, and for this prestigious award.

Dyakuyu.

Of course, the real heroes are the men and women of Ukraine, who are fighting every day and every night, not only for their nation, but for the entire Free World.

The war in Ukraine is like chess: it’s black and white. Anyone who can’t tell you who is good and who is evil there is willfully blind.

But unlike in chess, there can be no tie in this war. It is a contest of good versus evil, and you do not accommodate evil—even halfway.

This war demands moral clarity, not politically correct slogans cooked up by a committee. So let me say, loudly and clearly enough that they can hear me from across Lake Ontario:

Ukraine. Must. Win.

And there’s another part to it—something that even the most pro-Ukrainian politicians in Ottawa, Washington, and Brussels aren’t comfortable saying.

Russia. Must. Lose.

The Russian. Empire. Must. Fall.

Under the banner of the organization I founded in 2016, the Free Russia Forum, it is written: Victory for Ukraine, freedom for Russia. And it must happen in that order. Anyone who wants to seriously oppose Vladimir Putin must adopt that as their north star, and also declare, without stuttering: Crimea is Ukraine.

But this war is not just Putin’s war. It is Russia’s war. Nothing less than the Ukrainian flag flying over Sevastopol will extinguish the imperial virus that, for centuries, has plagued Russia and brought ruin to its neighbors.

So I will repeat: The Russian Empire must fall.

But saying all of this is the easy part. The more difficult challenge is one of strategy. Looking at the Russian invasion of Ukraine, you must survey the entire board, not just individual pieces.

The state of play is indeed complicated, especially from where we sit here in Toronto.

For decades, Canada’s strategy was based upon its status as—let us be blunt—a junior partner of the United States of America. You prospered under the protection of a benevolent giant to the south.

Well, as your prime minister noted in Davos just a few months ago, things are certainly different now.

The giant is not so benevolent anymore. The giant is orange in the face, prone to mood swings, and curiously aligned with the Russian way of thinking… and you’re starting to get flashbacks to 1812.

The answer to all of this is not to trade your role as a subordinate of one great power for another, swapping your arrangement with the US for, god forbid, China—one of Russia’s leading accomplices in its genocidal devastation of Ukraine.

ICYMI: Tune in to the latest episode of the Older/Wiser Podcast

The responsibility you shoulder now is to lead—as an equal partner with your allies across the Atlantic, who are navigating a similar challenge too.

For inspiration, you must look to your kin in Ukraine.

There is actually an interesting parallel in the relationship between Russia and Ukraine, on the one hand, and the US and Canada, on the other.

For centuries, Ukraine was chained to the Russian and Soviet empires. Because of this history of Kremlin colonialism, Ukraine shared many cultural, linguistic, political, and economic ties with Russia.

While Canada’s ties with the US weren’t forced upon you, you too share a common heritage with a larger neighbor, a natural choice guided by shared history and geography.

For centuries, Ukraine lived under Russia’s shadow, as you lived under America’s.

Yet, since 1991, Ukraine has proved that history and geography are not destiny. And since that fateful day in February 2022, Ukraine has been the spiritual leader of the Free World.

While Boris Yeltsin was shelling the Russian parliament and launching a genocidal war in Chechnya, Ukrainians held free elections and a peaceful transfer of power.

While Vladimir Putin was murdering political opponents, Ukrainians were doing the hard work of building democracy.

While Russia slid into the embrace of China and other authoritarian states, the Ukrainian people braved bullets and batons on the maidan and demanded their nation turn West.

And when Russia invaded Ukraine solely with the aim of destroying, Ukraine continued to build. Ukraine built a modern military powerhouse, raised the strongest army in Europe and became an innovator in drone warfare.

My organization, the Renew Democracy Initiative, has been delivering life-saving aid to Ukraine since day one of the full-scale invasion—$15 million worth in the last four years. Just this spring, RDI led our second delegation to Ukraine—going to the frontlines in Kharkiv.

My colleagues also saw firsthand how Ukraine is punching above its weight. They met with the commander of Ukraine’s most effective drone unit. If the president of the United States were actually a successful businessman, he might take note of the fact that Ukraine is inflicting eleven-figure damages on Russian targets using UAVs that cost just a few thousand dollars each.

The lesson Ukrainians have for all of you in this room is that global leadership is not reserved for empires. Your past… your geography… these are not excuses to abdicate your responsibility as a founding member of the democratic alliance.

If the people of Ukraine, just 35 years after the fall of the USSR, with missiles, and drones, and rockets raining down upon them, abandoned by the US administration, if the people of Ukraine can lead—then Europe must lead, and your gameplan must be for Canada to lead too.

It would have been nice if Canada and the world’s other democracies had time to grow into this leadership role, gradually, without having that role violently thrust upon them by buffoons like Donald Trump and JD Vance. But… how does the serenity prayer go? “Give me the grace to accept what I can’t change, and the courage to change what I can.”

Well, here we are. Time to muster that courage.

Slava Ukraini.

P.S. While I was in Toronto, I had the opportunity to meet Canadian-American journalist and past Tryzub awardee Diane Francis. She recently gave a great interview about where things stand between Moscow and Kyiv. I encourage you to give it a watch:

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Garry Kasparov is the founder and chairman of the Renew Democracy Initiative, which publishes The Next Move.

Uriel Epshtein is the CEO of the Renew Democracy Initiative.

Things aren’t looking great for Vladimir Putin. The war in Ukraine isn’t going well. He’s afraid of coups and drone strikes. It’s not even safe for his personal chefs and photographers to ride the Moscow Metro.

The Russian dictator is apparently confining himself for extended periods in various bunkers.

This is all according to a leaked European intelligence dossier whose contents were reported by CNN and other outlets earlier today.

It’s not exactly the news that anyone, least of all Putin, expected to read when Russia launched its “three-day special military operation”!

(You might be asking: Were the Russians seriously expecting Ukraine to just absorb a genocidal war? And the answer is apparently, yes—that’s what happens when a dictator surrounds himself with sycophants who only tell him what he wants to hear.)

Is Putin actually sheltering in the führerbunker? Eh. Who can say?

Instead of debating rumors and leaks, let’s focus on what we know for certain:

First, the Ukrainian military has the capacity to threaten the Russian aggressors on Russian soil.

In one operation, Ukrainian drones shut down all four of Moscow’s international airports.

A few days ago, another drone struck a swanky Moscow neighborhood home to Kremlin elites.

And in recent months, unmanned aerial vehicles have been inflicting punishing strikes on oil facilities in Russia. These Ukrainian operations are the only thing preventing the Kremlin from taking full advantage of the spike in oil prices amid Donald Trump’s war in Iran. These refineries are also facilities owned by Russian businessmen who are not happy that Putin put their assets in the line of fire.

ICYMI: Tune in to the latest RDI podcast

Uriel has witnessed Ukraine’s impressive UAV capabilities firsthand. Just six weeks back, our organization, the Renew Democracy Initiative, led a delegation to Ukraine, where the group met with the deputy commander of the Ukrainian Air Force, an entrepreneur who built the country’s most effective drone unit while working out of a garage.

Some of the UAVs in Kyiv’s arsenal cost as little as $1,000 to produce, while dishing out billions in damage to Russian infrastructure—and yielding the most priceless victory of all, shattering Russians’ sense of imperial invincibility.

Victory Day—the regime’s most flamboyant display of martial prowess—is just 96 hours away. Back in the USSR, a seemingly endless cascade of Red Army soldiers, armor, and artillery would stream past the Kremlin walls every May 9. Since coming to power nearly three decades ago, Putin has made the parade a centerpiece of a propaganda campaign that leans hard on Soviet nostalgia.

Last year, Russia had to rein in the festivities due to Ukraine’s success in penetrating the Russian capital’s defenses. This year, the tanks and the missiles will be conspicuously absent—no need to roll high-profile military targets out into the open. Indeed, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he won’t rule out hitting Red Square.

A responsible leader would probably cancel the event altogether. Putin won’t—doing so would mean conceding military defeat. He knows that when Russia loses a war, the regime comes down too: remember 1905, 1917, and 1989.

So Putin is stuck: He can’t win the war. He can’t end the war. In the meantime, the grumbling among Russia’s once-loyal military bloggers will only grow louder. Things that would once earn a long prison sentence are now said on Russian social media with increasing candor.

Here’s another thing we can say with confidence: The excuses for not supporting Ukraine don’t hold up.

In last year’s infamous Oval Office showdown, Donald Trump told Zelenskyy that the Ukrainians “don’t have the cards.” That’s clearly been disproven through Ukraine’s ability to reach deep into the heart of the Russian Federation (and the fact that it is the Trump administration that now turns to Kyiv for help with fighting Iran).

It looks like Ukraine still has some cards to play after all.

As Ukraine presses the advantage, the excuses will change. We’ll hear more of the tired slander that Ukraine doesn’t want peace. To the contrary, peace remains very much possible. But peace will only come when Ukraine wins, Russia loses, and Putin falls.

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A note from Garry Kasparov: Celebrate one year of The Next Move and save 30% when you upgrade to join our premium subscriber community and get invitations to exclusive Zoom conversations, early access to podcasts, and other benefits! Upgrade now and don’t miss our next premium subscriber-exclusive call where I’ll be joined by former White House attorney Ty Cobb and RDI CEO Uriel Epshtein—coming up on Thursday, April 30 at 5pm ET/2pm PT. Click here to register.

Issac Luna (Olvera) is a former US Marine Corps officer who fought for the Ukrainian military after the full-scale Russian invasion. He is the author of the book Reckoning Dreams and Fire, a memoir about his experience in Ukraine and other battles. Mr. Luna remains based in Ukraine. Follow him on X.

It was around this time in the spring of 2022 when the Russian army retreated in defeat from the outskirts of Kyiv.

Media outlets around the world rejoiced: “Irpin, Bucha, liberated.” I was there, as a volunteer in the Ukrainian army, but around me, no one celebrated. We suspected Putin’s troops might regroup and counterattack.

At the start of that year, I had been a business consultant in Houston, Texas. When Russia invaded Ukraine, I was outraged and wanted to help. Having been an officer in the US Marines, I thought my skills could be useful on the ground. So, on day four of the invasion, I quit my job and came to fight in Ukraine. I thought I might contribute as a planner or advisor, given my background. Instead, I joined as an ordinary rifleman—and sometimes as a rocket man—with no rank, no pay, and lots of unknowns.

On my first mission, we occupied an empty residential tower across from the State Tax University, an elegant century-old building, in Irpin, a suburb of Kyiv. The street between us and the university was the battle line. Ukrainian forces controlled the south sides; the north was under Russian occupation—part of Irpin, and another suburb called Bucha. From our tower, we looked for Russian positions and called in artillery strikes.

On March 28, the Russians retreated from Irpin but remained in Bucha. We pushed forward to the edge of Irpin, into positions that Russians had just abandoned. Apartments had been looted—drawers emptied, closets overturned.

In the nearby forest, we found dead civilians, killed by artillery—six of them, some still wearing pajamas. We buried them. By then, Russians were also retreating from Bucha. On their way out, they indiscriminately fired more artillery. One barrage battered our position. We evacuated when the roof caught fire and collapsed. After a few days, I accepted that the Russians were not coming back, but the sense of victory was short-lived.

At the start of the occupation, the 76th Guards Air Assault Division, an elite Russian unit, established a headquarters at 144 Yablunska (Apple) Street, a kilometer behind the university.

After the Russian withdrawal, journalists and investigators entered the area. What had been a quiet, affluent suburb was now a crime scene. CCTV footage from a home on Apple Street showed Russian soldiers leading civilians at gunpoint toward the headquarters compound. It was the last time most of them were seen alive. Investigators found bodies scattered in the street. Others were found in basements with their hands bound, bearing signs of torture prior to execution. Many women reported being raped in homes that Russians had converted into barracks. These were not cases of collateral damage or victims of chaos; they were proof of a systematic terror campaign.

Volunteers, state investigators, victims, and witnesses identified many of the soldiers responsible for these crimes. They were members of units working under the command of the 76th Air Assault Division or adjacent to it. The most prominent units involved were the 234th and 237th Air Assault Regiments, the 64th Motor Rifle Brigade, and the 155th Marine Brigade. It has been four years since the massacres. Where are the perpetrators?

After their defeat outside Kyiv, those Russian units relocated to other parts of Ukraine, where they deployed the same vicious tactics. Yet while they escaped Bucha, they did not evade justice altogether—not all of them.

Igor Zharov and Aleksey Afonin, both lieutenant colonels in the 234th Regiment, were killed sometime in 2022, according to obituaries. Their commander, Colonel Artyom Gorodilov, is in prison, though not for the right reasons. In 2024, he was arrested in Russia—not for war crimes, but for corruption.

One particularly memorable update came through in July of last year. Mikhail Gudkov was a Russian officer at the center of events on Apple Street.

As a colonel, Gudkov commanded Russia’s 155th Marine Brigade in the Kyiv suburbs. He had advanced far and fast in his military career since then. By 2025, he was a major general and deputy commander of the entire Russian Navy. In July 2025, Ukrainian forces struck a headquarters inside the Kursk region of Russia. Gudkov, along with other senior officers, was killed.

For those of us who were there in Bucha and Irpin, there is no moral ambiguity in this outcome. His death, and those of his soldiers, was not a tragedy, but a consequence. We saw what was left behind. We walked through homes that had been stripped bare. We found civilians in the forest. We learned what happened on Apple Street. And then we watched the same units show up somewhere else and do it again. Whether a man like Gudkov personally ordered a specific execution or not does not change the fact that he was part of a criminal enterprise that perpetrated it. So, when news comes that one of those commanders is dead, my reaction is not complicated—it’s satisfaction, even glee.

Yet the death of Russian war criminals is also not closure. Nothing can provide that. Nothing can undo what happened. But it is at least imperfect justice.

ICYMI: Tune in to the latest episode of the Older/Wiser Podcast

In February 2023, Ukrainian troops captured a group of 17 soldiers in Luhansk province in Donbas. Among them was Nikolai Kartashev. He was not a high-ranking officer, but an ordinary soldier tied to the 234th during the occupation of Bucha. He confessed to killing civilians under orders as well as witnessing torture and the rape of a woman in a cellar. He identified co-perpetrators and commanders, yet he expressed no remorse and said he wanted to return to war. He is still in prison.

It is safe to say that many, maybe most, of the foot soldiers who perpetrated these crimes are dead. Many literally disappeared. They ended up blown apart, their remains shredded, unidentified and untraceable in the field or a morgue. Both the 155th Marine Brigade and the 237th Air Assault Regiment were destroyed in the subsequent months of the war.

In 2023, the 155th Brigade fought in the battle of Vuhledar, an absolute meat grinder. Columns of the 155th drove into minefields and kill zones. Dozens of vehicles were hit, and when the survivors bunched up, they were finished by Ukrainian artillery. More than 130 armored vehicles were destroyed in a single week, including 36 tanks. During the worst of it, between 150–300 marines reportedly died daily. The entire brigade was wiped out. Then it reconstituted and was destroyed again. And then again. This cycle of annihilation was repeated as many as eight times.

The 237th Assault Regiment left Bucha severely degraded, then relocated and experienced the same cycle as the 155th: it relocated, took staggering losses, reformed, and was destroyed again. By mid to late 2022, six months after Bucha, open-source analysts reported that the 237th effectively no longer existed. An entire criminal organization, wiped out.

The individual acts of Russian soldiers—executions, torture, rape—add to the list of charges, but they are not required to establish guilt. The war itself is a crime, beginning with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Everything that followed—Bucha, Irpin, Mariupol, Kherson—flows from that decision. Everyone who crossed that border as part of the invasion is guilty, as are those who commanded it—especially Putin. They are all criminals. In the countries where most people are reading this, accountability would come through courts. In this war, Ukrainians have no hope of such an outcome, and they do not wait for it. Russia will never persecute its war criminals, for Russian leaders are such criminals. Thus, for the criminals of Bucha, justice comes not by gavel, but by gun.

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Editor’s Note: The Renew Democracy Initiative—publisher of The Next Move—is in Ukraine! We’ll be sharing daily dispatches from our delegation. Premium subscribers will receive each Ukraine Dispatch 24 hours before anyone else. Be the first to get on-the-ground news from the frontlines of freedom by upgrading to join our premium subscriber community today! All proceeds go to support the work of the Renew Democracy Initiative, including humanitarian assistance to communities in Ukraine.

I got into an argument with a congressman last week (this is normal for me these days).

The representative in question is Don Bacon, a Republican serving Nebraska’s second district in the House. He’ll be retiring after the midterms.

Bacon is a rarity in the modern GOP—a sincere supporter of Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression. He’s also one of the few who seems to actually want to carry on the example set by President Ronald Reagan.

Yet sincerity is no substitute for action, and this is where he and I came to blows.

It’s clear that Trump is working hand in glove with Vladimir Putin against Ukraine. A Russian delegation is in Washington, hosted by several of Bacon’s fellow Republicans (and, it seems, one Democrat).

The administration recently lifted sanctions on Russian oil.

The White House is teasing an invite to the Kremlin’s Belarusian puppet, Alexander Lukashenko—also newly freed from sanctions.

Pete Hegseth’s Defense Department is about to divert $750 million in funds paid out by NATO allies for life-saving military aid away from Ukraine. This is just shameless theft.

The president continues to insult Ukraine and its leaders—conditioning aid upon the surrender of territory to the Russian aggressor. He does all of this while Kyiv sends drone experts to rescue US troops in the Middle East. Think about it: to show just how much goodwill they have for the American people and save American lives, the Ukrainians are sacrificing resources that could be put toward their existential fight with Russia.

And Donald Trump spits on them.

I believe the Nebraska congressman is being genuine in his statements of support for Kyiv. Bacon has criticized President Trump before, which sets him apart from sycophants like Senator Lindsay Graham.

That is why I insisted to Bacon (who’d just posted an inspiring Churchill quote) on more action, less tweeting. Bacon muted me in response.

(To those inclined to call me a hypocrite for admonishing someone for tweeting with a tweet of my own—I am not a congressman, but I’m doing what I can—have a look at what my organization, the Renew Democracy Initiative, is doing to provide material support for Ukraine.)

ICYMI: Tune in to the latest episode of the Older/Wiser Podcast

Representative Bacon doesn’t realize the power that he holds. Republicans hold a razor-thin majority in the House. If Bacon plays hardball for Ukraine, he’d could put Mike Johnson’s speakership on the line with just two more defections (perhaps Michael McCaul of Texas, another pro-Ukraine diamond in the Russia-supporting rough, and Kevin Kiley, a Republican-recently-turned-independent).

That leaves the Nebraska congressman in a strong negotiating position to demand the administration change course on Ukraine. With no election to worry about, Bacon is free from many of the typical political constraints.

I recognize that opening the door to a Hakeem Jeffries speakership is a difficult pill to swallow for a principled conservative like Bacon. I have my issues with today’s Democrats, and while I’m not an American, many of my political heroes come from the Republican old guard.

Yet Ukraine’s cause demands more from those of us in the US. If young Ukrainian men and women can sacrifice their lives to defend the Free World, can’t an outgoing congressman sacrifice his partisan loyalty to defend Ukraine?

Congressman Bacon, I know you are a good guy. The problem is that simply being a good guy is not enough. You have the power and influence to act on your words.

If you can do that, I’ll forgive you for keeping me muted on Twitter. I do post a lot.

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Editor’s Note: The Renew Democracy Initiative—publisher of The Next Move—is headed to Ukraine! Starting on Monday, we’ll be sharing daily dispatches from our delegation to Ukraine. The first installment will be immediately available to all readers—after that, each Ukraine dispatch will be exclusive to premium subscribers for the first 24 hours. Be the first to get on-the-ground news from the frontlines of freedom by upgrading to join our premium subscriber community today! All proceeds go to support the work of the Renew Democracy Initiative, including humanitarian assistance to communities in Ukraine.

Evan Gottesman is the director of communications and special projects at the Renew Democracy Initiative and managing editor of The Next Move.

There’s virtue in a short book that makes a compelling point.

One such book I recently happened upon is If Russia Wins: A Scenario, by Carlo Masala. At just 120 pages, I was able to read it on a short flight down from New York to DC’s National Airport.

This is not an exhaustive history of the war in Ukraine. It is, per the subtitle, a scenario, and an alarming one at that, sketching out the contours of another Russian invasion in Europe after the West abandons Ukraine.

Published in Germany last year, the English translation hit shelves in January, just days after another unusually friendly phone call between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.

The point of divergence in If Russia Wins is a hypothetical peace agreement leaving Moscow in control of the roughly 20% of Ukrainian territory it holds today. Volodymyr Zelenskyy is pushed into the arrangement by an unnamed American president who says, “I don’t do bad deals.”

The Geneva Treaty, as Masala dubs it, is his first warning to the reader: Even if Moscow does not physically conquer all of Ukraine, legitimizing any of its gains would be a Russian victory

With the democratic West done with the war, a rump Ukraine plunges into chaos while the Russians rebuild their military capabilities and political capital. Russia, of course, is not done with deadly imperial nostalgia, just as it wasn’t done after its wars in Moldova, Georgia, and Syria, nor following the 2014 invasion of Ukraine.

The next target is Narva, Estonia. Officially a city, but more of a town, it is home to just 54,000 people, almost all of whom are Russian speakers. A third are actually citizens of the Russian Federation. The expansive Ivangorod Fortress in Russia looms across the Narva River like a slightly-too-on-the-nose metaphor for Estonia’s past.

ICYMI: Tune in to the latest episode of the Older/Wiser podcast:

Masala has Russian soldiers crossing over to the west bank of the Narva and seizing the Estonian town.

Could it happen?

Estonia has been a NATO member since 2004. The Baltic states, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, are the only former Soviet republics to be admitted into the alliance (the Baltics’ annexation to the USSR under the 1939 Nazi-Soviet pact was never recognized in Washington).

As a NATO member, Estonia is theoretically entitled to protection from its friends under the North Atlantic Treaty’s vaunted Article 5, which famously decrees that the allies “agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all.”

(Notably, Article 5 doesn’t explicitly require NATO members to go to war to defend a besieged ally—only for each government to undertake “such action as it deems necessary.”)

The North Atlantic Treaty was drawn up with the Soviet Union in mind, and it has never really been tested. Article 5 was only invoked once, at the behest of the United States, in an asymmetrical war against the terrorists responsible for the September 11 attacks.

Despite this, a 2024 Quincy Institute brief confidently asserts that:

A variety of factors, including NATO air and naval dominance, the difficulty of conquering urban areas, NATO political commitments to its eastern border states, and Russian weaknesses revealed in the Ukraine conflict, mean that Russian aggression against even NATO’s weakest states would carry enormous risks and be unlikely to succeed.

Carlo Masala is not the first person to argue that Estonia—and Narva, specifically—could be in the Kremlin’s crosshairs. What makes Masala’s analysis stand out from the usual Beltway fare is that he goes after sacred cows like NATO.

Would Americans really join their European allies in a fight with nuclear-armed Russia over tiny Estonia?

Of course! many DC pundits and Western officials would answer. We have “political commitments”! “Air and naval dominance”!

Probably not, Carlo Masala counters, soberingly, and—at least as of now—more accurately. Western resolve would certainly be shaky if Russia “only” invaded Narva—a town the size of New Brunswick, New Jersey—just as the West stumbled when Russia “only” annexed Crimea.

The author is an instructor at the Bundeswehr University Munich, an institution primarily catering to future officers in the German military. At their closest points, Germany and Ukraine are about 370 miles apart, not much longer than the distance I covered reading Masala’s book flying from New York to our nation’s capital. If anyone can bring home the urgency of the war in Ukraine, it is a European for whom the war is local.

Yet what’s absent from If Russia Wins is a clearly stated argument as to why Americans and their Western European allies should care about Narva. The question of the Estonian border town’s relevance hangs over every page of Masala’s scenario like the old French pro-appeasement slogan, “Why die for Danzig?”—a reference to another Baltic flashpoint.

The answer—which largely goes unstated in If Russia Wins—is that compromise only makes expansionist dictators hungry for more.

Yet every act of accommodation presents a tantalizing reprieve. More than one American president has attempted a “reset” with Russia, and every one has gotten played. The result is not just changing lines on a map, but lives destroyed under authoritarian rule (last year, we published Ukrainian journalist Olya Bilan’s personal account of survival during the Russian occupation of Bucha—a different kind of warning from Masala’s geopolitical assessment).

The open-ended nature of Carlo Masala’s scenario is not necessarily a weakness in his argument, but a challenge to the reader: Georgia mattered because of Ukraine. Ukraine mattered because of Narva. And we certainly know why Danzig mattered. Do you want to find out, on your own soil, why Narva matters too?

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A note from Garry Kasparov: In a world of oligarch-owned outlets, it’s more important than ever to support mission-driven media. You can take a stand by joining our premium subscriber community. Your support helps drive the work of the Renew Democracy Initiative, including delivering life-saving humanitarian aid for Ukraine (I don’t receive one kopek from your contributions!). Read on to the end of this article for an update on RDI’s activities on the frontlines in Ukraine.

All eyes are on Iran, but my Soviet upbringing has my heart first and foremost in Ukraine. While the casual observer might see the wars in Ukraine and Iran as being totally separate, they are actually more deeply connected than one might think.

I’ve shared the analysis that follows with friends on Capitol Hill, and hope you’ll benefit from it as well.

The Ukraine and Iran conflicts are close in a strictly geographic sense. The northwesternmost point in Iran is just 550 miles from the occupied Crimea—a shorter distance than most of Ukraine is from the city of Moscow, as the drone flies.

More importantly, Iran and Russia are authoritarian accomplices.

Iran outfitted the Russian military with Shahed attack drones and provided specialists to train Kremlin forces to murder Ukrainians with them. Russian forces have fired 57,000 Iranian drones at Ukraine since the full-scale invasion began. Ukraine, ever the resilient and innovative nation, has become a hub of expertise in drone interception.

The US could have tapped Ukraine for insight on how to stop Iranian UAVs before it took on the Islamic Republic. Washington could have provided Ukraine with Tomahawk missiles for the purpose of destroying the Alabuga drone factory in southern Russia, where localized production of Shaheds is taking place. America declined.

Because the Trump administration is openly hostile to Kyiv, it missed these opportunities and left American troops, bases, and allies exposed to pilotless attacks from Iran.

It’s not too late to change course. Given the Islamic Republic’s support for Putin, the Ukrainians are eager for the Iranian regime to take a hit (among world leaders, few seemed happier than Volodymyr Zelenskyy to see Ali Khamenei “pay for [his] crimes;” Democrats who are typically keen to support Zelenskyy should listen to him here).

On Thursday, the Ukrainian leader announced that he’d complied with an American request for help dealing with Shaheds (will JD Vance say “thank you”?). The US and the Gulf Arab states are now reportedly looking to buy Ukrainian interceptor drones to combat the Shahed threat. To think, the most powerful country on Earth and the wealthy oil kingdoms are turning to Ukraine for their defense. Imagine the kind of collaboration that would be possible if the US and its allies threw their full weight behind Kyiv.

ICYMI: Tune in to the latest episode of the Older/Wiser podcast:

Back to the Moscow-Tehran partnership. It isn’t just a matter of Iran sending drones to Russia. The deadly Russia-Iran trade is a two-way street. Under Vladimir Putin, Russia has emerged as the Islamic Republic’s top arms supplier. The Kremlin has managed to keep up the flow even as its forces are ground down along the line of contact in Ukraine.

The fact that Moscow is still able to supply Iran with weapons after four years of war in Ukraine is a monumental policy failure on the part of the United States and its European allies. If the Ukrainians had received everything necessary to deal more decisive blows to the invaders, Russia might not have had the resources to help its fascist friends in Tehran.

Russia has improved upon the Shahed’s design after using it to lethal effect in Ukraine. While President Trump was busy feting Putin with handshakes, phone calls, and flyovers, Iran acquired new Russian attack helicopters, armored vehicles, rifles, jets, and critical spare parts for air defenses and planes. Fresh deliveries of Su-35 fighters are slated to begin this year. Those weapons are already being turned against Americans in uniform and civilians in neighboring countries who are forced to weather the death throes of the ayatollahs’ regime.

There is a lot of talk about a new war in the Middle East depleting stocks of American weapons that could have gone to Ukraine. Yet the United States still has plenty of Cold War-era equipment collecting dust in the California desert. Those weapons aren’t exactly state of the art, but they would offer a welcome boost to Ukraine’s fight. Currently, American taxpayers are footing the bill for the storage of tanks and other systems. Well, there’s no time like wartime to go for cost optimization.

The US-Israel attack on the Iranian regime is an opportunity to turn the tide against a global authoritarian network centered on Moscow. However, that objective cannot be accomplished piecemeal.

I am not holding my breath for Donald Trump’s fundamental attitude toward Kyiv to change. But this is no longer just a question of attitudes. The United States’ failings on Ukraine have now cost American lives in the Middle East. Perhaps those brave US servicemembers’ sacrifice can finally put sufficient pressure on the administration to give Ukraine what it needs to win.

An update on the Renew Democracy Initiative’s work in Ukraine

Now, something a little more positive!

Since 2022, the Renew Democracy Initiative (publisher of The Next Move) has delivered roughly $15 million in humanitarian aid to frontline communities in Ukraine. That includes bulletproof vests, food, medical supplies, and sleeping bags, among other essentials. It won’t win the war by itself, but it keeps people warm, well-fed, and, most importantly, alive.

We recently ordered 70,000 meals ready-to-eats (MREs, an acronym familiar to anyone who’s spent time around the military), mostly for the Kharkiv region. Kharkiv is located on the Russian border and is the target of relentless bombardment. The first tranche—21,504 MREs to be precise—were delivered this past week. Roughly half will go to civilians, and another half for the Ukrainian soldiers bravely defending their homeland.

On top of that, the Renew Democracy Initiative recently secured 31,000 warm meals for the capital city of Kyiv, where residents are enduring freezing nights and blackouts. We hope our Ukrainian friends like soup!

You can support RDI’s work by upgrading to join our premium subscriber community. RDI CEO Uriel Epshtein will also be leading a delegation to visit our partners on the ground in Ukraine later this month, so stay tuned for firsthand updates from the front here at The Next Move!

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A note from Garry Kasparov: Perhaps you recently canceled a subscription to an oligarch-owned newspaper. Might I humbly suggest that you put that money toward supporting mission-driven media like The Next Move? I don’t receive a cent from your subscription fees—everything goes to supporting the work of The Next Move’s parent organization, the Renew Democracy Initiative. RDI is bringing political dissidents to tell their stories to students, business leaders, and public officials. Delivering life-saving humanitarian aid to frontline communities in Ukraine. And, of course, driving the conversation here on Substack. To help make the decision easier, we’re offering 30% off an annual subscription, now through March 4.

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Ariane de Gennaro is a communications intern at the Renew Democracy Initiative and an incoming JD candidate at Harvard Law School. She previously wrote for the Yale Daily News and worked in the office of Senator Mazie Hirono.

Today marks four years since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. In that time, thousands of Ukrainians have been killed, children abducted, cities destroyed, and critical energy infrastructure decimated. 2025 has been a particularly bloody year, with mounting casualties and, under President Trump’s second term, flagging American will and a renewed push to accommodate Vladimir Putin.

From the very first day of the full-scale invasion, the Renew Democracy Initiative—publisher of The Next Move—has worked to help our friends on the frontlines of freedom, rallying support in the United States, sharing Ukrainians’ stories, and delivering millions of dollars of humanitarian assistance to communities in Ukraine.

We’d like to take this moment to highlight some of our most important commentary and work on Ukraine. Yet as we reflect on the past, let’s remember: the war is not over— Ukraine still needs sustained and resolute support in order to win.

RDI is continuing to bring material assistance to Ukrainians who most need it. As of 2026, we have delivered $15 million in dual-use humanitarian aid to Ukraine, providing concrete necessities such as water filtration units, generators, sleeping bags, and MREs (meals ready to eat). At the end of last year, RDI delivered 150 New Year’s presents to children undergoing treatment at a Kharkiv oncology clinic. Most recently RDI supplied chemical heaters to help families endure the winter amid a severe energy and heating crisis.

We urge you to join us in standing for Ukrainian victory. The war is not over. The fight for Ukraine is the fight for freedom around the world.

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ICYMI: Tune in to the latest episode of the Older/Wiser podcast:

A note from Garry Kasparov: Perhaps you recently canceled a subscription to an oligarch-owned newspaper. Might I humbly suggest that you put that money toward supporting mission-driven media like The Next Move? I don’t receive a cent from your subscription fees—everything goes to supporting the work of The Next Move’s parent organization, the Renew Democracy Initiative. RDI is bringing political dissidents to tell their stories to students, business leaders, and public officials. Delivering life-saving humanitarian aid to frontline communities in Ukraine. And, of course, driving the conversation here on Substack. To help make the decision easier, we’re offering 30% off an annual subscription, now through March 4.

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This piece was originally delivered as a speech at the Ukrainian Institute of America on Tuesday, February 10, 2026 in New York City. The talk focused on the need to proactively support Ukrainian victory over Russia through the lens of Garry Kasparov’s new book, The World of Fake Values. More details about Garry’s book will be available in the next week.

Good evening. I want to thank the Ukrainian Institute of America for being our gracious hosts and partners for this event.

I want to speak with you tonight about The World of Fake Values. The World of Fake Values is the title of my new book, and it is the best description I have for a society that is too self-absorbed to defend its founding principles. It is the big picture look at the cauldron of different issues that have come together to produce the current dilemmas we face in democracy, diplomacy, and technology.

What are fake values?

Fake values are foolishness and short-sightedness masquerading as wisdom. Malice passed off as virtue. In essence: a scam.

We are all raised on stories of good and evil. No one reads The Lord of the Rings and comes out thinking that the Fellowship should have negotiated terms with Sauron.

Yet in the real world, we hear the appeals to accommodate evil. In this sense, Ukraine has become a litmus test for fake values.

In our stories, we like to imagine that we would render any aid to our heroes in order to help them fight evil. Yet in real life, when we demand that the US and other countries provide Ukraine with everything that it needs to win, academics, bureaucrats, and talking heads beseech us with buzzwords like “escalation.” Their fake theories, spelled out in lengthy essays and press releases, mean nothing in the face of real atrocities.

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In fantasy, we like to believe that we can tell you who is a good guy, and who is a bad guy. Yet in the real world, when we call to support Ukraine against the fascist Russian aggressors, we hear mealy-mouthed excuses about NATO expansion. Imagine arguing that Tolkien’s heroes encroached too close to Mordor’s borders—they forced the Dark Lord’s hand; he had no choice but to attack!

Now, some may argue that reality demands complex moral choices that fiction does not. They are wrong. When a movie ends, the lights go up and the credits roll and your opinion about the story has no real bearing on anyone. Reality, by contrast, means real consequences, and the worship of fake values can cost lives. It is a sad thing that real values are easier to spot in stories of make believe.

It was not always like this. In World War II, we could tell you who was on the right side, and who was not. In the Cold War, President Reagan decried the USSR as an “evil empire.”

But the fall of communism dulled our senses. Idle hands are the devil’s playthings, and without the specter of Soviet aggression, we—the Free World—lapsed into intellectual indulgence. We over-analyzed. We became afraid to call a spade a spade.

Moral relativism didn’t defeat Naziism and communism. A steadfast belief in freedom did. We forgot that.

America didn’t put a man on the moon by avoiding risk. You accepted sacrifice and faced the challenge head on—as President Kennedy said, “not because it is easy, but because it is hard.” We forgot that too.

Today, lost elections are stolen. Life-saving vaccines are poison. Free markets are evil and communism is the wave of the future. Ukraine, a nation fighting for its survival, is smeared as a “neo-Nazi regime.”

Yet we struggle to fight back against the lies because—above all—we became afraid of being right.

We need to break out of this ideological confusion and return to the self-confidence that ushered in nearly a century of unprecedented peace, prosperity, and innovation in the democratic world.

This is why I founded the Renew Democracy Initiative. To remind Americans that democracy needs a survival instinct. That what the United States, Ukraine, and other free countries have is worth cherishing and protecting. Through a program we call the Frontlines of Freedom, I and many other political dissidents meet with students, business leaders, and elected officials to share our stories and drive the point home. Our network includes over 100 democracy advocates from more than 40 different countries because the cause of liberty is interconnected. What happens in Ukraine affects what happens in Taiwan, Iran, and Venezuela. You cannot isolate one from the other.

RDI is also setting the record straight in the information war, fighting back against tired talking points with a positive belief in freedom on our publication The Next Move. But we don’t just talk. We are walking the walk: As of 2026, RDI has provided over $15 million in humanitarian aid to frontline communities in Ukraine.

This is a far-ranging fight. As I lay out in my book, it spans borders and industry, demanding bold action in diplomacy, security, and technological innovation. But returning to the path of real values starts in one place: Ukraine. It means providing our Ukrainian friends everything that they need to defeat Russia. Ukraine is the frontline of freedom. There is no clearer test of our commitment.

Slava Ukraini!

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I have a New Year’s resolution for you.

In 2026, I want you to trust dictators.

On the surface, it may seem like a strange thing coming from an advocate of freedom. Yet it’s my experience as a political dissident in Russia that informs this very recommendation.

Last week the National Security Archive released the transcripts of meetings between then-President George W. Bush and still-President Vladimir Putin, made public as the result of a Freedom of Information lawsuit.

The files go back nearly twenty-five years, and their contents are revealing.

Had President Bush and other American leaders paid closer attention to the imperial master plan Putin was articulating a quarter century ago, they might have been able to thwart the invasions of Ukraine and Georgia.

Consider this comment from Putin during a June 2001 summit in Slovenia.

…Russians gave up thousands of square kilometers of territory, voluntarily. Unheard of. Ukraine, part of Russia for centuries, given away. Kazakhstan, given away. The Caucasus too.

In other words, Ukraine is Russian property that Moscow was cheated out of. Bush never disputes Putin’s revisionist account of the collapse of the Soviet-Russian Empire.

In another newly-unveiled transcript from April 2008, we see Putin take an even more assertive tone with Bush. During a meeting at Putin’s Black Sea palace in Sochi, the Russian dictator affirms that:

[Ukraine] is not a nation built in a natural manner. It’s an artificial country created back in Soviet times.

And what if that upstart ex-colony, the “artificial” nation of Ukraine, were to join NATO?

Putin is about as blunt as he can be, telling Bush:

Russia would be creating problems there [in Ukraine] all the time.

(Russia, for what it’s worth, was already creating problems in Ukraine in 2008 with blatant political interference).

Four months later, Russia invaded Georgia—a trial run for the war in Ukraine.

Six years later, Russia invaded eastern Ukraine and annexed Crimea (in that 2008 Sochi meeting, Putin had reminded Bush that Ukraine’s east was land “obtained…from Russia”).

Fourteen years later, Russia launched a brutal attack against the remainder of unoccupied Ukraine.

Days before the all-out assault, with Russian troops massed along the Ukrainian border, Putin delivered a meandering, ahistorical lecture on national television, repeating the same line he relayed to George W. Bush about Ukraine’s supposed status as an “artificial country.”

See what I mean about listening to dictators?

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We might forgive some of Bush’s early missteps because Putin was a relative unknown at the start of the twenty-first century. Yet the Russian regime’s intentions should have been unmistakable by the end of Bush’s tenure in office.

Bush’s successors have fewer excuses. Barack Obama saw the war in Georgia and still pursued a shameful “reset” in relations with the Kremlin. Joe Biden saw eight years of war in Ukraine and still slow-rolled life-saving military aid to Kyiv over manufactured fear of “escalation.”

And don’t get me started with Donald Trump.

We all hoped that Russia would change with the end of the Cold War. But the new bosses in Moscow quickly slammed the window of opportunity shut. In 1994, Boris Yeltsin took to war to prevent Chechen independence, firmly putting Moscow back on its traditional path of conquest and aggression. Putin made this clear from the beginning of his reign. Successive American presidents and European leaders closed their eyes and covered their ears.

Tyrants often lie about what they’re doing in the present, but they are quite open about their future plans. Aspiring autocrats were laying their blueprints out in the open as early as 1925, when a now-infamous Austrian published Mein Kampf. Nondemocratic rulers are weak—they need to inflate their stature to match their democratic counterparts and placate hungry publics. So they announce ambitious plans with a remarkable degree of transparency.

There’s a maxim that when someone tells you they want to kill you, you should believe them. That wisdom is very apt when it comes to authoritarians. In the New Year, trust the despots, demagogues, and dictators when they tell you what they are going to do.

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In geopolitics, timing is not a detail. It is the move.

When Vladimir Putin calls Donald Trump before Trump meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, it is not coincidence or courtesy. It is a deliberate effort to frame the conversation before Ukraine ever has a chance to make its case.

This happened back in October, when Putin and Trump chatted the day before Zelenskyy visited DC. Then, it happened again today, with another Trump-Putin call just before Zelenskyy arrived at Mar-A-Lago.

Two times in two months is enough for this phenomenon to deserve serious attention—and even describe what’s happening as a pattern.

It goes like this: Trump prepares to meet with Zelenskyy. Ukraine intends to argue for security guarantees, deterrence, and continued Western resolve. And just ahead of that meeting, Putin calls. Not after, when Ukrainian arguments might still be fresh, but before—when expectations can be set, doubts seeded, and the scope of “realistic” outcomes quietly narrowed.

The objective is not persuasion in the dramatic sense. It is conditioning.

By speaking with Trump in advance, Putin positions Russia’s interests as the backdrop against which Ukraine’s requests will be evaluated. Zelenskyy is then forced to argue uphill. The Ukrainian president must wage through pre-loaded nonsense (to use a family-friendly term) like Trump’s repeated insistence that “Russia wants peace” while Moscow continues its terror bombing of Ukrainian civilians. Just this week, Russia lobbed more missiles at Kyiv, killing innocent people and destroying civilian infrastructure.

Meanwhile, the Russian tyrant can frame Ukrainian demands as excessive before they are even presented. Providing Ukraine the aid it needs to repulse the Russian invaders becomes “escalatory.” Security guarantees with real teeth and clear red lines become “obstacles to peace.” Deterrence becomes “provocation.” None of this requires Russia to concede anything; it merely shifts the burden of justification onto Ukraine.

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The timing of these calls is especially significant given the ambiguity and weakness of the proposed Western security framework for Ukraine.

Ukraine—the country that actually wants peace—has been willing to play ball with a hostile United States, despite all of the obstacles. That is why Zelenskyy produced a 20-point plan based on his negotiations with the White House.

But Trump may have thrown out his own team’s homework, eschewing any of the specifics his American colleagues may have worked out with their Ukrainian counterparts.

For Putin, ambiguity is leverage. And ambiguity is exactly what Putin received in Florida. No timeline. No specifics.

Putin has always exploited impressionable American officials (take a look at the recently unveiled transcripts of George W. Bush’s deferential calls with Putin, or the extreme naivete displayed by Barack Obama in his “reset” with Russia).

After Georgia in 2008, Russia tested how far it could go without lasting consequences. After Crimea in 2014, it tested how much ambiguity the West would tolerate. After the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, it tested how long outrage would last before fatigue set in. Each time, Moscow learned. Each time, it adjusted.

Trump makes each of his often-misguided predecessors look like Winston Churchill. Hell, he makes Churchill’s own infamous predecessor Neville Chamberlain look like a hard-nosed negotiator. At least Chamberlain was operating in terms of the public interest (albeit a fatal misinterpretation of that interest), not just flattery and personal attention.

In chess, the most decisive move is often not the attack, but the quiet preparation that constrains your opponent’s options before they even begin. Putin’s calls function in exactly this way. They narrow the field of what feels “reasonable” before Ukraine ever speaks.

This is why the weakness of the proposed security deal cannot be separated from the diplomacy surrounding it. A framework that lacks clarity invites manipulation. A process that tolerates ambiguity encourages pressure. And negotiations that allow an aggressor to shape the sequence reward precisely the behavior they should deter.

Putin keeps calling before Zelenskyy arrives because he understands that setting the board often matters more than playing the next move. If democratic leaders fail to recognize that logic, they risk drifting into outcomes shaped less by principle than by preparation.

In geopolitics, as in chess, losing control of the opening is often how the game is forfeit.

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Just in time for the holidays, a legion of priests and other representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church descended on Capitol Hill last week. These bearded visitors might evoke old Saint Nick, but there was nothing jolly about their appearance in the middle of the Christmas season.

American lawmakers need to recognize: These unholy men were in Washington on Kremlin business.

Predictably, the Muscovite delegation told anyone who would listen that Ukraine persecutes Christians.

It is propaganda that is as well-worn as it is false.

The crux of the Kremlin allegations is that Kyiv has cracked down on the Russian Orthodox Church. Russian dictator Vladimir Putin summed up the claim earlier this month, saying that “The Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine is practically banned.”

Ukraine is actually one of the most religious countries to come out of the former Soviet Union. More Ukrainians than Russians identify as Orthodox Christians.

Before February 2022, church attendance in Ukraine was already five times higher than in Russia. Since the full-scale invasion, that religiosity has only intensified, with more and more Ukrainians showing up for services. It really is hard to find an atheist on the frontlines.

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Now, while Ukraine respects Orthodox Christians, the Ukrainian government did ban the activities of the Russian Orthodox Church in 2024. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church split from its Russian counterpart five years earlier.

Calling those Ukrainian actions “persecution” is deliberate misdirection on Moscow’s part. Russia is exploiting Americans’—especially American conservatives’ and Christians’—commitment to religious liberty by telling an incomplete story.

Here in America, church and state are blessedly separate. But the Russian Orthodox priesthood is an extension of the Russian government.

Under the Russian Empire, the Tsar was the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, and in communist times, it became a wholly-owned subsidiary of the KGB. It remains so today.

In fact, Patriarch Kirill, the current leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, started working for the KGB in the 1970s—around the same time Vladimir Putin did. Kirill is not some apolitical monk. He is a billionaire supporter of Putin who’s fond of luxury watches and fancy cars. The patriarch even sanctioned the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a “holy war.” Russian Orthodox priests have supplied information to Russian forces about Ukrainian troop movements. This is an institution with a lot of blood on its hands and an indispensable part of Putin’s regime, which is actively at war with Ukraine.

Kyiv clamping down on the activities of a Kremlin-backed church is no more anti-Christian than America’s war with al Qaeda and Taliban terrorists was anti-Muslim.

Put simply: Ukraine doesn’t persecute Christians. It fights back against Russian operatives. Putin tries to portray himself as a defender of Christendom, but the Russian tyrant and his loyal Orthodox clergy are just taking advantage of a pliant American audience to shift the focus off of their own record of wanton destruction in Ukraine. Russia’s invasion has already claimed hundreds of thousands of Christian lives. As of June 2025, Russian troops had destroyed or damaged 670 churches and other places of worship in Ukraine.

Back in Russia, Vladimir Putin’s regime regularly goes after non-Orthodox Christian denominations. Protestants, Baptists, and others face arrests, fines, and general abuse. Russian authorities spent years pressuring Yevgeniy Peresvetov, an Evangelical pastor, to become an intelligence agent; after repeated refusals, Peresvetov was deported. His story is sadly not unique.

The claim that majority-Orthodox Ukraine abuses Orthodox Christians belongs to the same family of obvious untruths as the notion that Ukraine (with its Jewish president) is a neo-Nazi state. Meanwhile, with Putin’s overt persecution of non-Orthodox Christians, we see that every Russian allegation is in fact an admission.

Still, some members of Congress—namely Anna Paulina Luna, Eli Crane, and Derrick Van Orden—are eagerly amplifying these Russian lies. They join other Kremlin-aligned actors like Tucker Carlson, who have taken up the cause of “persecuted” Ukrainian Christians.

Yet there are others—including prominent Republicans—who have called out the Russian government’s Church-run influence campaign.

Last week, Iowa’s Chuck Grassley affirmed unambiguously on the Senate floor that “The Russian Orthodox Church is a leading perpetrator of the persecution of fellow Orthodox believers, as well as Catholics, Evangelicals and others.”

Congressman Joe Wilson of South Carolina has even suggested a federal investigation to determine whether Moscow is using Russian Orthodox churches in the US for malign purposes. Such an inquiry would be a welcome and important step in rolling back Kremlin influence operations.

Anyone with doubts about the situation of religious freedom in Russia and Ukraine should look to conservative stalwarts like Grassley and Wilson for moral clarity on this issue.

The Russian government will always cry religious persecution when its black-robed agents are subjected to scrutiny.

But the ones abusing religious freedom are not leaders in Kyiv who go after agents of a dangerous aggressor or members of Congress who call for exposing their US-based enablers. They are the leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church itself, appropriating the trappings of the faith in order to advance a campaign of genocidal war against their Ukrainian neighbors and ostensible co-religionists. I cannot think of more un-Christian behavior.

One of the most renowned Soviet dissident rockers, the late Igor Talkov, took aim at Russia’s historic perversion of religion in his song “Globus”:

“Show me the kind of country where the temples are boarded up,” Talkov quips, “Where a priest hides a KGB officer’s epaulettes under his robes.”

Show me such a country, indeed. That country is Russia, and it must be stopped.

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The new world order is here and it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

There are whispers in DC that President Donald Trump is looking to sideline the G7—the grouping of seven major industrialized democracies—and replace it with what the beltway press is calling the “Core 5”: the United States, Russia, China, India, and Japan.

Notably lost in the G7-to-C5 transition are five of the other free countries that make up the old alignment: Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, and Canada. Thrown in are two dictatorships (Russia and China) and a deeply flawed pro-Russian democracy (India).

Japan—a consolidated democracy and longtime US ally—is the only G7 survivor and, on the surface, the oddest inclusion. It can really only be chalked up to personal preference. Trump likes the Japanese, though, as recent events have shown, not enough to actually defend them from an aggressive Beijing.

Why such a cockeyed assortment?

The answer is twofold:

First—unlike the democracies of Europe—Trump has a personal affinity for these four nations and their leaders.

Second, and perhaps more importantly in Trump’s mind, they’re big.

Here, Trump’s interview from last week with POLITICO’s Dasha Burns is instructive.

On Russia and Ukraine, Burns asks Trump: “Which country right now is in the stronger negotiating position?”

To which Trump replies:

Well, there can be no question about it. It’s Russia. It’s a much bigger country.

Russia is bigger than Ukraine. What novel insight!

The president goes on to repeat:

Russia has the upper... upper hand. And they always did. They’re much bigger. They’re much stronger in that sense.

This is basically the same argument put forward by foreign policy “realists” like Professor John Mearsheimer, who are keen to remind all of us that Russia is larger than Ukraine and that there are more Russians than Ukrainians.

Too many people still treat Mearsheimer as a serious academic for making the same facile points that Trump is rightly ridiculed over.

Like many self-described “realists,” Trump and Mearsheimer are capable of only the most basic geopolitical analysis: Recognizing which countries are big, and which countries are even bigger. But they struggle with math—specifically, addition.

And addition is what makes the Free World work.

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Russia only seems so big when you look at America’s democratic allies in isolation from one another. Yet the sum total of the democratic alliance’s economic and military might is several orders of magnitude greater than Russia’s.

Americans should be the first to recognize that size doesn’t always matter. This country was born out of a victory over the largest empire on the planet. With the help of allies like the French, Spanish, and Dutch, the colonists were able to challenge and defeat the eighteenth century’s premier superpower, Great Britain.

It is much the same today. Ukraine is only smaller than Russia if it is cut off from its natural partners. The support of the United States and an active NATO in Europe and allies like Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea in Asia are sufficient counterweights to any would-be hegemon.

The Free World is wanting for willpower, not resources.

If Trump’s C5 materializes, it will be a departure from the democratic coalition’s strength in numbers. It actually looks a lot like the Russian- and Chinese-backed regional blocs, which no one has ever paid much mind to because they’ve always lagged far behind Western institutions.

Imperfect as it is, the EU forged a real political-economic union, innovative common currency, and shared institutions. Cheap imitators like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, Eurasian Economic Union, and the Collective Security Treaty Organization mostly do photo-ops for dictators while papering over the deep conflicts between their members (like India versus Pakistan at the SCO or Armenia’s isolation from its neighbors in the Russian-sponsored groupings).

So it will be with the C5. The Core 5 will give Trump the image he craves of a big man at the head of a big table. But an image is just that. On substance, the C5 cannot resolve China’s conflicts with Japan or India—or, frankly, Russia and China’s deeper disputes with the United States. It is a poor substitute for Washington’s lucrative partnerships with other free countries, and may actually end up harming them.

The question is: Why such obvious self-sabotage in front of the entire world?

I’ll let you answer that one.

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Last week, I spoke at the Halifax International Security Forum. I had a few choice words for NATO and the US when it comes to the Western response (or non-response) to Russia’s ongoing genocidal war in Ukraine.

Those comments have gone viral over the past week. Here’s what I had to say (edited very lightly for clarity):

This is the best show Putin can hope for. Not a single straight answer.

It’s not about how many weapons you have, ammunition… it’s: are you willing to fight and die?

Oh, it’s nice, you have a Canadian-led brigade in Latvia. What are the orders for this brigade? Will they shoot if Russians cross the border?

We know the answer. It will take ages to negotiate.

I still didn’t hear a clear response to this.

I can’t even imagine this. How can we discuss seriously the deal made by Trump’s business partner [Witkoff]? It’s a real estate deal to enrich Trump’s family and sell Ukraine. How can we seriously discuss that Ukraine will have to give up fortifications that are saving Europe?

Ah, we’re celebrating NATO! NATO is not strong. NATO doesn’t exist.

It’s a fake. It’s N-A-T-O, four letters.

The reason you are still sitting here and celebrating it: Ukraine is dying every minute. It’s a massive sacrifice. If not for Ukraine, if not for Ukraine standing in front of Russia, Russian tanks would be in Poland already.

You all suggested that Ukraine would give up. You offered Zelensky a ride. And he said, “I don’t need a ride, I need ammunition.”

Four years, Ukraine is fighting for the whole of Europe.

NATO was built to fight only one war. Not to go to Afghanistan, not to go to Syria. One war: To save free Europe from Russian aggression.

Ukraine is the only country that is fighting this war, and we’re still discussing: Should we include them or not?

Ukraine is the only country that is fulfilling NATO’s destiny. And we owe them everything.

“Oh, let’s sacrifice them.”

I don’t know how to explain this choice. As a Russian, I also feel guilty. That’s why I cannot tell Zelenskyy to show Trump the middle finger. But again, we have how many senators here? Are you going to tell Donald Trump that he cannot do that?

You have 85 [senators]. 85 is more than two-thirds, yes? If I’m out of 100. So, yes. How come that, you know, this bill is still sitting somewhere on the floor of the Senate, and it’s not still being done? Putin, Xi Jinping, all others, they are celebrating it.

And by the way, Russia has North Koreans, they have Cubans, they have Africans, volunteers, and we’re still talking about escalation?

We have everything—military, political, economic power on our side—and we’re still losing the war. Thanks to Ukraine, Russia is not fulfilling Putin’s dream of restoring the Russian Empire.

But, if, god forbid, Ukraine is forced to make this deal, then, it’s very clear: Putin will realize his dream.

And then, guys, you are next, but you are not willing to fight.

My comments—especially the remark that “NATO doesn’t exist”—touched a nerve with critics and supporters alike.

I stand by what I said, and I’d like to expand upon it a bit.

As a formal entity, yes, there is an institution called the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The terms of international accords are spelled out in great length and detail. But do they mean anything?

I often return to the formulation set forth by Lord Ismay, NATO’s first secretary-general, laying out the alliance’s core purpose: To keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.

(Readers may recall that I revisited Ismay’s quote back in August when the buzz was all about “NATO-style” security guarantees for Ukraine, whatever that means).

The Soviet Union’s zombie successor is in free Europe—on the ground in Ukraine and with deep influence in NATO capitals from Washington to Budapest, Berlin, and Bratislava.

The Americans are out of Europe. The MAGA wing of the political spectrum actively wants out, and is doing everything possible to isolate the US from its democratic allies. But the non-MAGA wing is not guiltless. The invasion of Ukraine started on Joe Biden’s watch, and his administration responded to a Russian blitzkrieg with all the vigor of a garden snail.

And that last part: When Lord Ismay talked about keeping “the Germans down,” he wanted to prevent the rise of a hegemonic empire on the continent in the mold of Hitler’s Reich. Russia is abusing Western indecision and proceduralism to grab territory from its neighbors just as the Nazis did in Central Europe ninety years ago. Meanwhile, democratic Germany is unwilling to lead.

Judged by Lord Ismay’s standard, does the NATO alliance meaningfully exist? Why isn’t NATO collectively standing with the one country fulfilling its founding mission?

For too long, the West has chosen comfort over action, offering words and gestures to Kyiv while the Ukrainian people die every day in a desperate battle to hold the frontlines.

Yes, there was anger in my voice at Halifax. I spoke with a level of indignation appropriate to watching a free country sold out to a fascist aggressor. If the Free World allows its historical purpose to be watered down by caveats, then “never again” will quickly become “again and again.”

Join RDI on the Frontlines of Freedom in DC next week

At The Next Move, we argue, we disagree, but we share a fundamental cause: Strengthening democracy and putting the authoritarians on the back foot.

We’re inviting you to continue the conversation in person from December 9-10, 2025 as the Renew Democracy Initiative, publisher of The Next Move, hosts our third annual Frontlines of Freedom Conference (FOFCON) right in the heart of the action in Washington, DC.

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Last week ended on a high note: I won a rematch against my fellow World Chess Champion Vishy Anand, and my friend and RDI Hero of Democracy María Corina Machado was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Call them small wins, but we don’t have enough good news these days. To celebrate, I’m giving away three chess sets, autographed by yours truly. Anyone signed up as a premium subscriber by October 31, 2025 will be automatically entered to win.¹

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Victory requires understanding the board. For Ukraine, that means leveling an uneven playing field. For three-and-a-half years, Ukraine has had to overcome a numerical deficit against the much larger Russian military. Since Donald Trump returned to office, the Ukrainians have also needed to conquer a diplomatic disadvantage.

Today’s meeting between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy showed that no matter who speaks to the US president last, Vladimir Putin always gets the final word. Even though this most recent US-Ukraine summit looked chummy on the surface, Trump’s focus was clearly still on his Thursday call with the Russian dictator.

There’s no way around it: Putin takes precedence over Zelenskyy in Trump’s mind. No grinning photo ops are going to change that. But this handicap doesn’t mean Ukraine has to lose. Kyiv and its allies still have options.

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First, let’s consider the events of the past 24 hours.

On Thursday, Trump took a phone call with Putin. Trump claims the Russian leader congratulated him on “the Great Accomplishment of Peace in the Middle East.” A bit of an oversell, but I have no doubt that Putin showered him with praise for the Gaza ceasefire. The old KGB hand remembers his training in psychological manipulation well.

The big takeaway from that call was Putin’s proposal of a summit with Zelenskyy, Trump, and Hungarian petite-despot Viktor Orban in Budapest. Now, Hungary is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Russia, about as neutral a territory as a toilet stall in the Kremlin. And at least in the bathroom, Zelenskyy might have a chance at catching Putin with his pants down.

Zelenskyy came to the White House today seeking Tomahawk missiles. He didn’t have to weather a meltdown of the kind Trump and JD Vance threw back in February, but he didn’t get his missiles either. Trump’s focus was, predictably, with Putin in Budapest.

The offer of a summit in the Hungarian capital is clearly a trap. Zelenskyy would find himself outnumbered three-to-one.

Here is the thing: That summit doesn’t have to happen.

Hungary is landlocked. It is impossible to get into its airspace without passing through a European Union member. Putin would need to fly over those countries to reach his Danube destination. The EU (and the United States) maintains a ban on Russian air traffic as a result of Moscow’s criminal war in Ukraine.

It would only take one EU nation to insist upon enforcing the ban to throw the whole Budapest bash off. And it is critical that the union’s member states step up.

Trump’s plan for a meeting with Putin in Budapest is an affront to European sovereignty. It would show that an American president can, by diktat, overrule European decisions like the Russian flight ban. The Ukrainians and their supporters need to remind their friends in the EU of this.

The Trump administration had to make a special exception to America’s flight ban in order to facilitate the embarrassment that was this summer’s Alaska summit. But that shame rests with America, and the Europeans don’t need to do the same.

There’s a fleeting chance that a gutsy stand like this might even play well with Trump. The American president doesn’t respect much of anything, but he does seem to appreciate strength.

Part of Trump’s contempt for America’s European allies stems from his understanding—not entirely unfounded—that the continent is weak on Russia, dependent upon Washington, and unable to stand on its own.

Yes, even Putin-friendly Trump has called out the Europeans for being weak on Russia. Consider this comment by the president in 2018.

They want to protect against Russia and yet they pay billions of dollars to Russia, and we’re the schmucks paying for the whole thing.

He wasn’t wrong.

Trump puts Putin first because in his overly-simplistic worldview, Russia is strong and defiant, and Europe is weak and compliant. The Europeans have a chance to prove him wrong—and help Ukraine in the process.

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There’s a new US plan for Israel and Gaza. Can it work? Tune in to our next premium subscriber-exclusive Zoom call, featuring Palestinian, Israeli, and American perspectives about the war in Gaza and where Israelis and Palestinians go next on the second anniversary of the October 7 attacks. TODAY (Tuesday, 10/7) at 5pm ET/2pm PT. Register here.

Fatima Abo Alasrar is the founder of the Ideology Machine Project and a senior policy analyst at the Washington Center for Yemeni Studies.

When Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, the speed of regional alignment left little room for ambiguity. Within days, Hezbollah opened fire on Israel’s northern border, Iraqi militias struck US positions, and the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen began targeting Israel and commercial vessels in the Red Sea.

What Western policymakers had long treated as isolated actors with independent grievances turned out to be a single, synchronized network—Iran’s Axis of Resistance, suddenly and unmistakably activated, with Russian and Chinese support as well.

It was the Houthi militia campaign that exposed this collaboration most vividly. For a group operating nearly a thousand miles from Gaza, and often described as autonomous from Tehran, the Houthis demonstrated military capability in their strikes after October 7 that they couldn’t acquire on their own.

For years, officials in Washington and European capitals treated the Houthi militia as a domestic Yemeni problem, contained within that country’s civil war. Iran’s role was sometimes acknowledged but consistently minimized.

Iran’s policy of denying involvement with groups like the Houthis became a convenient fiction that spared Western governments from confronting Tehran’s growing, destabilizing interests in the region.

A sense of groupthink emerged in policy institutes and in government. One International Crisis Group report confidently asserted that “The Houthis are not Hezbollah and, despite their publicly expressed sympathies for the Islamic Republic, have not developed a similarly tight relationship with Tehran.” A 2022 statement from a group of US senators opposing the re-designation of the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization made no mention of the group’s Iranian patrons. Any suggestion—despite ample evidence—that coordination extended beyond Tehran to Russia and other powers was treated as the stuff of conspiracy theories.

The Red Sea attacks shattered that illusion. These were neither gestures of solidarity with the Palestinians nor emotional responses to events in Gaza; rather, they were an expression of longstanding capabilities, strategic positioning, and deliberate network design. The Gaza war served as a trigger, not a cause, activating a regional system built for precisely such a moment.

Since the attacks on Israel, the US government stepped up scrutiny on the so-called Axis of Resistance, sanctioning Houthi operatives for recruiting Yemeni civilians to fight for Russia in Ukraine under false pretenses. That scheme funneled money back into the group’s military operations and demonstrated the Kremlin’s aggressive pursuit of its interests and means to achieve them. The US Treasury Department also exposed a broader network moving tens of millions of dollars’ worth of Russian goods and weapons through Yemen.

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Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps ships provided targeting intelligence for Houthi militia strikes on vessels that had switched off their identifiers.

Meanwhile, in April 2025—well after the Houthi attacks began—the State Department finally accused Chinese firms of supplying satellite imagery to the Houthis used to target vessels in the Red Sea. The revelation came late, suggesting either intelligence gaps or reluctance to confront Beijing’s role in enabling the attacks.

The result of all of this collaboration? over 520 attacks in the Red Sea by mid-2025. A 90% reduction in container shipping through the Red Sea. $1 trillion in disrupted trade and disruption at Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport and Port of Eilat.

This nefarious cooperation took place in plain sight. What was missing wasn’t evidence, it was the willingness and ability to understand the implications.

The architecture of authoritarian coordination

Tehran, Moscow, and Beijing have found it in their best interests to use chaos as leverage. As such, these states aren’t building an alliance in the traditional sense but rather constructing an informal transnational authoritarian system through the convergence of dissatisfied powers with a shared purpose of overturning the principles and rules that underlie the prevailing international system. Each claims a sphere of influence it believes the current order unfairly denies.

Despite clear signs of coordination and local cries of Iranian influence, Western analysis has been too quick to dismiss this coordination, viewing it as opportunistic rather than structural or ideological.

The logic is that historical tensions, whether China-Russia border disputes, Sunni-Shia sectarian divisions, or divergent economic interests, will prevent meaningful alignment.

This misses the fundamental point: these actors don’t need absolute unity or deep trust to coordinate against a common adversary. They need only tactical alignment and space for mutual support.

The coordination extends across three theaters simultaneously. North Korea supplied Russia with troops, 2.5 million rounds of ammunition, and ballistic missiles for use in Ukraine. Iran supplies Russia with combat drones, ballistic missiles, and manufacturing assistance for Russian drone factories. China and Russia continued joint naval exercises with Iran in the Gulf of Oman. China-Russia bilateral trade exceeded $240 billion in 2023, with Russia replacing Saudi Arabia as China’s largest oil supplier.

This alignment isn’t just logistical, it’s ideological. The same network that trades drones and oil also trades narratives, using every Israeli strike to reinforce its posture as the vanguard of “resistance” and is heavily invested in Russia’s vision for a multipolar world.

Israel’s military operations in Gaza and Lebanon—however one judges their necessity or proportionality—drive Axis recruitment. Tehran’s proxies don’t need to manufacture grievances when Israeli actions deliver them. This creates a perverse incentive: The more Israel strikes, the more the Axis can position itself as “resistance,” even as it exploits Palestinian suffering for its own regional ambitions.

The West’s next move

Western democracies can’t counter a coordinated network by treating each crisis separately. And it can’t counter it by withdrawing. The authoritarian axis (alongside Iran’s complementary Axis of Resistance) offers a clear alternative vision: spheres of influence, might makes right, sovereignty without accountability. The West needs to offer something better: a system built on values, not just transactions. The authoritarian axis offers money and weapons with no questions asked; the West’s advantage is offering partnerships that actually improve governance and people’s lives.

That means staying engaged, not as world police, but as the anchor of a system where smaller countries aren’t forced to choose between American neglect and authoritarian coercion. It means making governance, economic partnership, and security cooperation more attractive than what Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran offer. It means investments in institutions that work, in allies that matter, in the patient work of building alternatives to authoritarian influence.

Most fundamentally, it means recognizing that retreat isn’t neutrality, it’s ceding ground. The network doesn’t take breaks. It doesn’t go home. Every space the West abandons, someone else fills.

October 7 exposed a network that was already operational. The question isn’t how to manage this network but rather if the US can build a compelling alternative to it. That’s not just a strategic challenge. It’s a test of whether we can sustain the patience, coherence, and confidence needed for a competition measured in decades, not news cycles.

Combating the chaotic rise of authoritarian powers and proxies in the Middle East and Europe demands a long, cohesive strategy. Something rooted in an idea bigger than self-interest, a willingness to shape a world where autocratic power is contained not by slogans, but by steady, deliberate action toward a better order.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Americans’ First Amendment freedoms face unprecedented threat. We’re hosting an exclusive Zoom call with Garry Kasparov to address this crisis, this Thursday, September 25 at 12pm ET/9am PT. Space is limited in order to keep the discussion interactive. Don’t wait to sign up. Register here.

Jack Thomas Tomarchio is an attorney in Philadelphia. He served as principal deputy undersecretary of Homeland Security for Intelligence under President George W. Bush.

The assassination of right-wing political activist Charlie Kirk two weeks ago is a tragedy. It is the latest high-profile politically-motivated attack in this country, a scourge that claimed the lives of Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband and nearly killed Paul Pelosi and even Donald Trump himself.

After Kirk was killed in Utah, many politicians issued cookie-cutter denunciations of political violence. Yet the national security ramifications of Kirk’s death—and political violence writ large—were strikingly absent from the public discourse. That’s a mistake. As a former intelligence official, I can tell you: When blood is spilled in our streets, unfriendly powers take notice.

Case in point: Just hours after Kirk died, my local Fox News affiliate asked me to appear on the 10 o’clock news to give my analysis of the situation.

The producer apologized for calling me since, saying, “This is not really a national security matter, which is what we usually call you for.”

I disagreed. Here’s why.

A lesson from Napoleon Bonaparte

“Never interrupt your opponent while he is in the middle of making a mistake.” It’s a strategic lesson commonly attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte.

As the logic goes, let your enemy wear themselves out with internecine battles until they lose their unity of will—in turn, erodes their national resolve and ability to oppose you.

The partisan rancor and the race to weaponize Charlie Kirk’s death plays right into this strategy. Russia and China await such developments with great anticipation.

Almost immediately after Kirk’s death, many right-wing pundits, influencers, and elected officials including President Donald Trump began calling for vengeance.

Right-wing provocateurs Alex Jones and Steve Bannon both announced that Kirk’s death meant “war” with the left. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene demanded a “divorce” between red states and blue states—in other words, a dissolution of the union. Before a suspect had even been identified, Donald Trump pronounced that the killer was a member of the radical left. Senior Trump advisor Stephen Miller vowed that the administration would hunt down all leftist groups in the United States. And while it hardly merits the administration’s aggressive response, some far-left social media users did throw fuel on the fire by celebrating Kirk’s murder—ignoring the sheer horror of a young husband and father being killed in front of scores of students.

America’s rivals can follow Bonaparte here: Don’t interrupt our downward spiral. Let the fevered rhetoric speak for itself. Declarations like these which call for violence against Americans are tailor-made for our enemies in China and Russia, both of which have amplified the worst responses to this month’s assassination

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Cold War precedent

We don’t even have to look back as far as Napoleon to see the roots of this strategy. The Soviet Union eagerly exploited America’s violent domestic disarray in the 1960s.

That turbulent decade offered ample grist for the communist propaganda mill. The deadly race riots in LA’s Watts neighborhood in 1965 and in other major cities a few years later. The assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy just two months apart. The anti-war demonstrations—and the heavy-handed police response—that disrupted the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Soviet propagandists pointed to these events as proof positive that American society was unraveling and that our democratic system was at the breaking point. American diplomats posted in Moscow at the time noted how Soviet media painted a stark picture of life in the United States in order to reinforce the supposed superiority of their regime. The Soviets played both sides, on the one hand framing America as neo-colonial in order to hurt US ties with the developing world, while on the other discrediting King and other civil rights activists as being co-opted.

True to his KGB training, Vladimir Putin never fails to remind the world of America’s long history of racial and economic inequality. As a former senior intelligence professional, I am familiar with the methods used by our adversaries to capitalize on fissures in American society.

The opportunities today for spreading anti-American rhetoric are further amplified by the ubiquity of social media, “fake news,” and other forms of mass information dissemination. As such, America’s enemies can reach a far wider audience than Soviet propagandists ever could sixty years ago.

International consequences

The attacks on Kirk, Paul Pelosi, Melissa Hortman, and others offer Russian and Chinese operatives ample evidence of a divided America coming apart at the seams.

And these stories do not happen in a vacuum. The succession of knock-on controversies that follows such an attack becomes a renewable resource for US rivals. Take, for example, ABC’s firing of Jimmy Kimmel after pressure from the federal government over the comedian’s comments about Charlie Kirk. Russian outlet RIA Novosti found a place to shoehorn in Kirk’s pro-Russia, anti-Ukraine views into their coverage of Kimmel’s dismissal.

All of this information can be weaponized in a number of ways.

It can be leveraged in countries in transition between democracy and dictatorship like Hungary and Turkey to sell an authoritarian future with China and Russia rather than in the US.

America’s social self-immolation may also impede our ability to pay attention to events now unfolding in Asia and Eastern Europe. American dysfunction didn’t cause Soviet actions in the Cold War, but it’s no coincidence that the US was unable to do anything meaningful when the USSR invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968 or Afghanistan in the late 1970s—both periods of serious domestic malaise in the US.

American distraction at home could now be viewed as a green light by Putin and Xi Jinping to conduct their own variety of geopolitical mischief in Europe and Taiwan. Already, recent incursions by Russian drones and fighter planes into the airspace of NATO members Poland, Romania and Estonia should signal that Putin sees an opportunity.

Refocusing

What can be done?

Obviously, the domestic political temperature needs to be dialed back. In the aftermath of major outbursts of political violence, it would be nice if the president could play his customary role of “uniter in chief.” But I’m here to put forward realistic recommendations.

Members of the legislative branch, however, may have a moment here. Elected representatives need to carry back to their districts the danger that the current political climate of hate poses for our national security. Members of the House and Senate must educate their constituents as to how enemies are exploiting our pitched political battles for their own benefit.

Further, our elected representatives need to provide peaceful outlets for our anger. People do not know how they can act productively on the issues and causes they are passionate about. Hostile entities are all too eager to fill this gap.

Political violence is incompatible with democracy. The US and our foreign allies face significant security risks around the world. There is a global conflict raging between free and unfree countries. That is not a war we need to bring home.

Remember, we have met the enemy, and he is not us.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Garry Kasparov is hosting an exclusive Zoom call to address the state of Americans’ First Amendment freedoms, this Thursday, September 25 at 12pm ET/9am PT. Space is limited in order to keep the discussion interactive. Don’t wait to sign up. Register here.

Andrei Sannikov is a Belarusian politician and activist living in exile. He served as deputy foreign minister of Belarus, later ran for president, and was held as a political prisoner. Mr. Sannikov is also a Frontline Fellow at Renew Democracy Initiative.

Earlier this month, Belarus released 52 political prisoners. Longtime Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko framed the move as a gesture of goodwill, which occurred “at the request of President Trump.”

International headlines heralded the Belarusian regime’s action as liberatory. “Belarus frees 52 political prisoners,” (emphasis added) the Associated Press reported.

The reality was more complex. And “Belarus exiles political prisoners” would be a more appropriate description than “Belarus frees”.

Here’s what actually happened, and how Lukashenko—and Vladimir Putin—scored a triple victory: Good press, sanctions relief, and opening a backdoor for Russia into the West.

In the early hours of September 11, Belarusian political prisoners were extracted from penal colonies and detention facilities, hands often tied behind their backs with sacks or masks thrown over their heads. They were transported first to the capital, Minsk, then packed into minibuses and driven almost 100 miles to the Lithuanian border. There, they were forcefully deported, in many cases without passports or identification.

One detainee refused to comply. Opposition leader and former presidential candidate Nikolai Statkevich rejected forced exile, breaking open the bus door and stepping into the no man’s land between Belarus and Lithuania. After several hours, Belarusian security services removed him from the border area. Statkevich, imprisoned since June 2020, had spent over five years behind bars. For more than half of that time—31 months—he was held incommunicado.

Statkevich disappeared for several days after the confrontation on the border, and authorities provided no information regarding his whereabouts. A Belarusian news outlet claimed that he was returned to a penal colony, but Statkevich’s family says that they have no confirmation of his whereabouts and that there is reason to doubt unverified media reports. The opposition politician’s wife has received no response to a missing persons report that she filed after the incident at the border. Statkevich’s defiance highlights both his courage and the regime’s continued reliance on brutal repression as tools of control.

The plight of Belarusian political prisoners

The September release was the second such move linked to US pressure. Early in the summer, Lukashenko let out a smaller group of detainees.” Donald Trump initially demanded the release of 1,300 political prisoners, later raising the figure to 1,400.

Yet between the two releases, only 66 have been freed. At the current pace, the target will not be met within the US president’s term. Nevertheless, Donald Trump called Lukashenko a “highly respected President.”

The numbers significantly understate the scale of repression. Some independent estimates suggest that Belarusian security forces have made tens of thousands of political arrests in recent years. The human rights organization Vyasna (Spring) reports that while 170 prisoners were released between January and September 2025, 283 new individuals were arrested and sentenced on political charges during the same period.

The dynamic is clear: for every prisoner freed, more are detained.

Conditions inside Belarusian prisons remain severe. Testimonies from former detainees describe systematic torture, beatings, psychological abuse, and denial of medical care. Belarus has become, in effect, a vast system of political detention in the middle of Europe.

The regime’s repression at home is closely tied to its alignment with Russia’s regional aggression, making Belarus both a domestic and international security concern.

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Lukashenko’s cynical strategy

Lukashenko’s approach follows a consistent pattern: detain political opponents and civil society activists, then offer selective releases as bargaining chips in negotiations with the West.

The strategy is designed to extract concessions, particularly sanctions relief, while ensuring that the machinery of repression remains intact. His track record demonstrates that meaningful prisoner releases occur only under sustained external pressure, primarily in the form of meaningful sanctions.

However, recent US actions risk undermining this leverage. Despite the limited number of releases, Washington has already granted partial sanctions relief, including measures allowing Belarus’s national airline, Belavia, to procure spare parts for its fleet, including from American manufacturer Boeing.

This decision not only weakens the credibility of Washington’s stated benchmarks but also risks creating a sanctions loophole through which Russia could exploit to access aircraft and critical spare parts otherwise unavailable under Western restrictions.

The Belarusian government has been a co-belligerent in Russia’s war against Ukraine, yet the United States is now treating Minsk’s situation like a separate case.

While the humanitarian value of each release should not be minimized, policymakers must avoid conflating tactical concessions with strategic change. The deportation of 52 prisoners, while welcome, does not signal a shift in Minsk’s behavior. On the contrary, it reflects Lukashenko’s ability to manipulate negotiations through selective gestures while maintaining systemic repression.

What to do about Belarus?

For US and European policymakers, several lessons emerge:

First, Lukashenko’s behavior has consistently demonstrated that sanctions are the only effective leverage. His alleged “good will gesture” after talking to President Trump is nothing more than an attempt to get rid of sanctions. Weakening sanctions in exchange for limited releases incentivizes the regime to continue hostage bargaining.

Next, there is a need for the Western democracies to coordinate policy. Belarus exploits divisions between Washington and Brussels. Effective pressure requires alignment between US and EU measures, ensuring that Lukashenko cannot trade concessions from one side against the other. Of course, Trump may not want to align with the EU—in which case there is an even greater imperative for European countries to get on the same page.

That also means recognizing the regional dynamics at play. The internal repression the Belarusian regime carries out is directly linked to its role as a strategic partner for Russia. Weakening sanctions on the regime risks undermining broader efforts to isolate Moscow and constrain Russia’s military-industrial base.

Finally, Western policymakers need to set clear, human rights-oriented policies.

Vague targets allow Minsk to manipulate outcomes. Any negotiations should be tied to verifiable, comprehensive benchmarks, such as the release of all political prisoners and an end to politically motivated prosecutions, rather than incremental figures that Lukashenko can game.

Commercial incentives, such as the possibility of potash deals (according to some sources), must not outweigh the fundamental principle that human lives are not bargaining chips. Any agreement that strengthens the regime economically without systemic reform prolongs dictatorial rule and worsens the humanitarian situation.

In the short term, the release of 52 individuals has provided relief for their families and communities. In the long term, however, it underscores the continuing danger of Lukashenko’s regime. Without sustained and principled pressure, further repression is inevitable.

The international community must resist the illusion of progress and instead adopt a strategy that recognizes Lukashenko’s tactics for what they are: hostage-taking at the state level.

Anything less risks legitimizing the last dictatorship in Europe and undermining the broader struggle for security and democracy on the continent.

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Evan Gottesman is the director of communications and special projects at the Renew Democracy Initiative.

Cheering on political violence is never a good look. But the person who seemed most excited about the assassination of Charlie Kirk might have escaped your notice.

It wasn’t some edgy Gen Z TikToker.

It was an anonymous Russian propagandist. Whoever runs the Twitter account of Russian state media outlet RT was downright giddy after Kirk’s murder.

As news from Utah started rolling in last week, I was struck by how prominently RT was featuring in my social media algorithm. The Russians seemed to be reveling in the chaos.

Bombastic headlines with all-caps for emphasis (mirroring the over-the-top style of Jackson Hinkle, another pro-Russia grifter).

Above a screenshot of a two-word tweet—“civil war”—RT exhorted Americans to internecine violence: “Andrew Tate thinks it’s TIME.”

Andrew Tate. RT really knows how to raise up the best of us.

And RT didn’t just give a spotlight to far-right figures like Tate. RT also blasted out left-wing social media users short on sympathy for Kirk.

Of course, the people saying the slain TurningPointUSA founder “deserved it” are responsible for their own posts. These over-eager social media users have agency and we can’t blame the Russians for their words.

Still, we can emphasize how Russia is deliberately fanning the flames by making sure that every nasty post has an audience. Some of the people Russian media amplified were influencers. Yet many of the people RT boosted were nobodies with negligible viewership. Several accounts had just a few hundred followers.

To RT, that’s what passes as news. And the selection of TikToks, Instagram reels, and Twitch streams Russia blasted out was carefully curated. Russian disinfo artists know exactly what caricature they are reinforcing when they focus on videos from black Americans, women, trans people, folks with dyed hair and piercings, and so on.

RT’s tweets practically scream: “Look at the evil trans leftist blue hairs!”

One RT tweet wasn’t doing anything to hide the ball. Responding to an account called “LGBTQ Nation,” which declared that it would not be mourning Kirk’s loss, the Russians chided:

“No one asked, LGBTQ Nation. Let people mourn!”

Racism, misogyny, and anti-LGBT rage not your thing? How about antisemitism?

Well, RT had another menu to rile up the Jew-haters in the crowd too. Maybe the Israelis killed Charlie Kirk. Or Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Or perhaps it was Soros, as Kremlin ideologue Alexander Dugin suggested.

RT gave a wink and a nod to each of these well-worn conspiracy theories.

Russia was also quick to take advantage of the somewhat whitewashed coverage of Kirk’s career.

In life, Charlie Kirk parroted Putin’s talking points about the War in Ukraine. In the hours after the shooting, RT re-upped Kirk’s Kyiv-bashing content. RT’s logic seems to go as follows: If you were inclined to feel a little more sympathetic for Kirk because of the way he died, perhaps you’ll be a bit more receptive to his views on Ukraine.

Someone in Russia certainly thinks this line of attack is worth a try.

If this all looks like a scattershot approach, that’s because it is.

Russia’s gambit is not about philosophical consistency. RT is not such a sophisticated op. On a more visceral level, the Russians are clearly pleased whenever we in the United States are miserable.

It doesn’t even have to be ideological. Watching a bloody murder has an effect on the viewer. Media companies know this. Where US outlets added content advisories or cut off footage of the fatal gunshot before things got really gory, RT blasted the uncensored snuff film from multiple angles.

Look, I’m not going to tell Americans what to say (and what not to say) or what to watch (and what not to watch) because of what a hostile foreign government might do. Demanding we all get behind a veneer of false unity only rewards domestic authoritarians here in the US.

But it would be irresponsible not to point out Russia’s strategy. According to Moscow’s zero-sum game, whatever makes Americans angry should make Russians happy. Whatever sows disorder in America is good for order in Russia. If you find yourself scrawling out a rant or recording one for your story, recognize how your words are being used. And if you find yourself getting heated over something you see online, recognize how you are being used.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: We are all still processing the murder of Charlie Kirk. After you read Garry’s analysis on the strategic consequences of the September 11 attacks, please read RDI CEO Uriel Epshtein’s reflection on Kirk’s death. Stay tuned for more from The Next Move on where the nation goes after this tragedy.

Whenever we come around to the anniversary of the September 11 attacks, the foreign policy retrospectives pour in. Those reflections tend to focus on Afghanistan and Iraq.

That’s understandable. However, I’d like to offer a countervailing analysis. America’s greatest foreign policy failure after 9/11 was not in the Middle East, but in Russia. While the twisted metal and aircraft wreckage was still smoldering, US leaders made strategic errors in their dealings with Russia.

Those mistakes have deadly echoes in the present. Just this week, Russia launched its largest aerial strikes on Ukraine since the current war began. Russia once again trespassed on NATO territory, flying drones over Poland.

Al Qaeda’s attack on America took place in the early days of Vladimir Putin’s rule. He had been a totally unknown quantity in Russia just a few years prior, and he was still fairly obscure in the West.

Putin suddenly accrued a lot of goodwill in the US for reportedly being the first foreign leader to call George W. Bush after terrorists struck the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. It made for a convenient post-Cold War story. In America’s hour of need, it was a Russian leader who was the first to pick up the phone.

Putin told Bush that Russia was America’s ally in the war on terror. He explained that Russia was fighting Islamic fundamentalists in the Caucasus just as the United States was fighting them in Afghanistan.

Bush earnestly believed him. The United States broadened intelligence cooperation and joint military exercises with Moscow. When Bush identified North Korea, Iran, and Iraq as an axis of evil, Russia was conspicuously absent despite its close collaboration with all three. Instead, Bush showered Putin and Russia with praise.

At the 2002 G8 Summit, Bush had this to say:

I view President Putin as an ally, [a] strong ally in the war against terror.

The forty-third president would frequently repeat those platitudes about his Russian counterpart. But, true to form, Putin had ulterior motives in his interactions with Bush after 9/11.

To the extent that there were Islamic extremists among the Chechen rebels, Putin empowered them on the condition that they stay in the fold of the Russian Empire.

As chief mufti of Chechnya, Akhmat Kadyrov declared a jihad against Russia in the 1990s. A decade later, Putin installed him as president of the Chechen Republic. Today, Akhmat’s son, Ramzan Kadyrov, is Putin’s loyal enforcer in Chechnya. The Kadyrovtsi are Russia’s most brutal shock troops in Ukraine. Under Chechnya’s strict Islamic society, LGBT rights are now somehow even worse than in the rest of deeply homophobic Russia.

That’s because Russia’s war was never about terrorism or religious extremism, but colonial control. And that agenda received American blessing after 9/11.

In the years since, Putin has adopted an ever more expansive definition of terrorism to include anyone who speaks out against the regime. In fact, the Russian government officially designated me as a terrorist just last year!

Looking back, it’s easy to criticize Bush’s approach to Russia in the aftermath of 9/11. Indeed, there is a lot worth criticizing.

Yet Bush was also overtaken by events while Putin benefited from relative anonymity. What’s even more outrageous is the fact that Bush’s successors continued to embrace his fatally misguided view of Russia as an American partner in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary.

Barack Obama pursued a dead-on-arrival “reset” with Moscow after Putin had already sent planes, tanks, and soldiers into Georgia. In a now-infamous presidential debate, he went after Republican challenger Mitt Romney for labeling Russia a geopolitical threat. Obama’s argument was all snark, no substance, saying:

The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.

Obama won the election, but Romney unquestionably won the debate: Four years after that exchange, Russia directly intervened in a US presidential race.

Of course, it didn’t end there.

Months into Joe Biden’s administration, the United States was still coordinating with the Kremlin on US operations from independent nations like Kyrgyzstan, treating those places as if they were still Russian colonies. This was after Russia invoked its imperial heritage to justify invading eastern Ukraine and annexing Crimea.

And don’t even get me started on Donald Trump.

From the day Vladimir Putin enlisted in the KGB, his mission—preserving and expanding the Soviet-Russian Empire—has remained the same, even as the circumstances have changed. The tragedy of September 11 provided Putin with an opportunity. The Russian dictator cultivated political capital and complacency in the West after 2001. He then cashed in those assets to carry out audacious operations in Georgia, Syria, Ukraine, and right on American soil.

Next year will mark a quarter century since the 9/11 attacks, yet millions the world over are still living with the consequences of Russian aggression enabled by American strategic blindness. The only way to course correct is to recognize the pattern.

Instead of sending me hate mail under a pseudonym, why don’t we have a real conversation? Join me for The Next Move’s first Zoom call, exclusively for paid subscribers: today (Tuesday, September 9) at 6:30pm ET/3:30pm PT. Click here to register.

Some of you may recall a particularly nasty piece of fan mail I received a few months back from one “Diego Sanchez,” which is definitely a real person’s name and not the nom de guerre of some anonymous troll.

Well, “Diego” evidently has a sister (or is experiencing an identity crisis). Meet “Estefania Sanchez” of “Indiana Democrats” (see the sender’s email address):

“You, as a Jew”…

They always go for the Jewish ancestry. An old, dirty, and might I add, Soviet trick. Yes, my father was Jewish, my mother was Armenian, and I identify with the Russian language and culture. It’s what the communist authorities called an “explosive combination” when I was growing up.

I can’t help but laugh at the transparency of the whole bit. The Kremlin is still recycling the same schtick decade after decade, hoping it will finally land. Get new material or just call me a zhyd to my face!

And “Indiana Democrats?” Give me a break. Unless there’s an Indiana Oblast I haven’t heard of, the only question we should be asking is whether this email was sent from Moscow or from St. Petersburg.

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