Europe News & Analysis (including Russia/CIS)

A Flurry of Telling Parallels Between the 1939-1940 Soviet-Finnish Winter War and Russia’s 2022 Ukraine War
Apart from other thematic ways I already discussed that Putin today is repeating Stalin's mistakes from the disastrous launching of the 1939 Soviet invasion of Finland, here are a number of other illuminating similarities between the two debacles (Russian/Русский перевод) By ...
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Moscow’s 1939 Finland Hubris Repeats Itself in Ukraine in 2022
Stalin and his Kremlin inner circle were egregiously overconfident in their planning for the Soviet Union’s invasion of Finland in 1939. Disaster would follow. That Soviet-Finnish Winter War today is a gift of lessons for Putin and his Kremlin inner ...
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How Delusions of Phantom Fascists Duped Stalin in 1939 and Putin in 2022
Before Stalin launched his war against Finland in 1939, Soviet war planners based their planning on the self-serving, inaccurate fiction that Finland was rife with fascists. This delusion would cost them dearly in the war, and in 2022 Putin and ...
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“Banderites”: What Russia Really Means When It Calls Ukraine Nazi and Fascist
Putin thought he could use Ukraine’s complicated history that even divides Ukraine to his significant advantage in his massive military escalation there. He was wrong. (Russian/Русский перевод) By Brian E. Frydenborg, May 31, 2022 (Twitter @bfry1981; LinkedIn, Facebook); this is ...
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A Brief History of Russian and Soviet Genocides, Mass Deportations, and Other Atrocities in Ukraine
War crimes, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and mass killings carried out by their eastern neighbor are nothing new for Ukrainians; while not comprehensive, this brief outline focuses on what is most currently relevant from a series of horrors visited ...
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A Terrifying Comparison Between Putin and Stalin
Looking at the geopolitics of Eastern Europe in 2022 and 1939 is both illuminating and disturbing (Russian/Русский перевод) By Brian E. Frydenborg, May 23, 2022 (Twitter @bfry1981; LinkedIn, Facebook); this is the first of a series of articles excerpted and/or ...
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A Super-Short Guide to Why Ukraine is Kicking Russia’s Ass in Putin’s Ukraine War
A quick-and-dirty brief on why Zelensky’s Ukraine is winning so handily and Putin’s Russia losing so badly on the battlefield (Russian/Русский перевод) By Brian E. Frydenborg, April 30, 2022 (Twitter @bfry1981, LinkedIn, Facebook); excerpted from Brian's other recent April 24 article, How Ukraine ...
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How Ukraine Can Take Back Crimea from Putin’s Reeling Russian Military
Russia’s position is deceptively weak; here are the main reasons Ukraine has a good chance to take Crimea (Russian/Русский перевод) By Brian E. Frydenborg, April 24, 2022 (Twitter @bfry1981, LinkedIn, Facebook); discussed in an SOF News update for April 25 and excerpted in ...
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Ukraine Will Easily Destroy or Sideline Russia’s Navy with Game-Changing Anti-Ship Missiles
Just twenty anti-ship missiles and their accompanying systems could wipe out all of Russia’s big warships in the Black Sea and Sea of Azov. Anti-ship missiles that were announced yesterday will soon be deployed in significant numbers in Ukraine will ...
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The Real Context News Podcast #9: Oleksandra Matviichuk, Head of Ukraine’s Center for Civil Liberties, on Democracy & War in Ukraine
By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981, YouTube) April 2, 2022 (recorded March 31, 2022); see Brian's other coverage of Putin's war against Ukraine here Ninth Episode on the struggle for democracy and war in Ukraine as Russian President ...
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Time for the Russian Army and Russian People to Revolt and Overthrow Putin
While any NATO attack on Russia—including a no-fly zone where Russian military aircraft are operating in Ukraine—would likely mean World War III and Putin quite possibly using nuclear weapons, revolution from within does not pose such risks and hardly foreign ...
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Putin’s Zombie Russian/Slavic Ethnonationalism Is Utterly Banal
As Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addresses the U.S. Congress, a look at the emptiness of his Russian counterpart’s ideological and revisionist historical underpinnings girding his revanchist, blatantly imperialist war against Ukraine (Russian/Русский перевод) By Brian E. Frydenborg, March 16, 2022 ...
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