Director, Institute for Democracy in Eastern Europe (https://xitter.cf/t.co/swBAcnjA5x). Principle author Democracy Web. Tweets my own. At BlueSky: ericdchenoweth@bsky.social.
New York, NY
Joined July 2016
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"The free world is responding with purpose, albeit belatedly, to defend free #Ukraine against Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion. . . The question remains: will this newfound resolve be maintained." 1/
My latest w/ Irena Lasota, in @just_security
justsecurity.org/80726/from-…
If you really wondered if it was exaggeration that AfD's leaders and AfD generally are agents of Russian influence, wonder no more. 👇
Weidel: "Prolonging the war and shooting drones into the hinterland of Russia, destroying refineries, houses, and buildings near Moscow, is a huge provocation."
Host: "It's defending itself."
Weidel: "No, it's not."
Host: "Every night, drones and ballistic missiles rain down on Ukraine..."
Weidel: "This strategy is very risky, and we've been criticizing it. We want to end this war.
It doesn't help if a country [Ukraine] launches drone attacks against a country [Russia] that has nuclear weapons. It doesn't make sense, it's very risky and very stupid.
We need to end this, and we need to actually put pressure on Ukrainian president to have the willingness to end the dying and stop this very risky strategy for all of Europe."🔚
Folks, here is Weidel's imaginary reality: black is white, the victim is to blame for the crime against them, and defending your home against a bloody, illegal invasion that murders children and razes towns is "stupid," while letting Russia occupy you and carry out a country-wide Bucha massacre is probably smart.
And defending yourself is risky! Risky, did you hear that? Well, no shit, just standing there and catching Russian ballistics with your face is risky, too. So we may as well take the risk and, hear me out, fight back?
Please don't vote for this evil Russian appendix in Germany!
As noted, if one can support Ukraine (u24.gov.ua) & contribute to defeat Rs betraying Ukraine (due to slavish support for Trump, nearly all of them), this is how I'm making a last contribution for the mid-terms. IMHO, the most effective means to achieve the goal.
As we enter the final 2 weeks of the election, the battlefield for control of Congress is more expansive than anyone expected just a couple weeks ago. These are the most important Senate and House races where Democratic candidates need dollars most and where your dollar can go the furthest. Let’s talk about this week’s Immediate Impact Fund! This week's fund includes @Hamilton4Kansas, @DrAmishShah, and @Villegas_CA22.
We’ll update the fund each week until Election Day. Follow Swing Left for updates on this fund every Wednesday, and visit swingleft.org/iif to donate to the 20 races where money is needed most, based on our conversations with campaigns.
One is torn. What is more immediately important: contribute to defeat Rs betraying Ukraine in mid-term elections or directly support Ukraine? If one can do both, please do. Today, I'm contributing to Sky Defense (there non-military support needs also). u24.gov.ua/sky-defense
This is just an ordinary day in the life of Ukrainians.
In reality, there’s nothing ordinary about it, but constant russian attacks have sadly made it routine. Nights of ballistic missiles and Shaheds, mornings without power, working from shelters, and news of strikes on apartment buildings, shopping centers, and universities, even in broad daylight and hundreds of kilometers from the front.
Every single day. Ukrainians keep living, working, and supporting each other, but no one should ever have to get used to this.
Support Sky Defense. Help bring ordinary, peaceful days back to Ukrainians.
u24.gov.ua/sky-defense?utm_s…
Also true. 👇
If crippling Starlink and Starshield was Elon Musk's decision, the implications are enormous. It would demonstrate that SpaceX is an unreliable defense contractor, whose critical services can be disrupted at the whim of its CEO.
No private individual should wield this much unchecked power over another country's national security. Governments must be able to rely on contracted defense services without fear of political or personal interference.
Nationalization is an option worth considering, not as punishment, but to ensure government control over strategically indispensable infrastructure. At a minimum, stronger oversight and alternatives to SpaceX are urgently needed.
True.
When you praise a mass murderer as a 'humanitarian,' you become complicit in his crimes.
You insult the memory of the victims of the destruction of Grozny, Aleppo, Mariupol. You gaslight the women raped in Bucha. You mock the families of stolen Ukrainian children. You show that you share the same nihilistic universe as the perpetrator of these atrocities.
Eric Chenoweth retweeted
Today’s newly released @HouseForeign report “Pay to Play in the Balkans” (first reported in @semafor) is a landmark development in Congressional oversight of U.S. policy towards Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Western Balkans.
Not since the end of the Bosnian War (1992-1995) and the signing of the U.S. brokered Dayton Peace Agreement has Congress released a report of this depth and political significance. @USRepKeating and his colleagues on the @HouseForeign deserve immense credit for recognizing how wildly U.S. policy in the region has flown off the rails in the past two years, and the need for Congress' intervention.
The report is a complex read and weaves together at least three distinct controversies which the @HouseForeign (correctly) concludes are all part of a singular campaign: the U.S. decision to lift sanctions on Sino-Russian backed secessionist Dodik and his Banja Luka regime; the extraordinary incorporation of a U.S.-registered shell company, AAFS, into the energy law of the Federation entity, a company operated by Joseph Flynn, the brother of Dodik's registered lobbyist Michael Flynn, and Trump family lawyer Jesse Binnall; and the U.S. role in pushing out Christian Schmidt as @OHR_BiH in seeming coordination with secessionist Dodik, and with an eye towards fast-tracking the construction of the Southern Interconnector (SIC) natural gas pipeline.
The report is more than thirty pages long and includes recommendations for the U.S., EU, and Bosnian civil society. It even includes a passing but timely rebuke of Croat nationalist separatism (and renewed chatter about efforts to create a “greater Serbia”) (pg. 6). But its centerpiece is are the series of recommendations to Congress to compel “testimony of administration officials regarding...policies towards [Bosnia], the removal of Dodik sanctions, the facilitation of the SIC pipeline contract, and the present-day implementation of the Dayton Peace Accords”; calls for investigations into “AAFS Infrastructure and Energy LLC for its corrupt practices in [Bosnia]”; and for Congress to “compel testimony from Michael Flynn, Rod Blagojevich, and other lobbyists working on behalf of Dodik regarding their connections with administration officials and their lobbying efforts to facilitate Dodik’s delisting.”
In sum, it is an unprecedented rebuke of the White House's post-war Bosnia and regional policy, which has by Washington standards been traditionally marginal, and broadly bipartisan. No more, it seems.
A final point: journalists, researchers, and civil society activists on both sides of the Atlantic have worked on this issue for more than a year. This report represents validation of their tireless efforts. It is also an important signal to folks in Sarajevo, in Washington, in Brussels; rule of law still matters. It may have frayed; it may be weaker across the board than it was a decade ago, but it still matters. The U.S. Congress has sent a clear signal with this report that Dodik's delisting is anything but settled policy.
Read the full report here: cdn.sanity.io/files/ifn0l6bs…
.
@ZelenskyyUa setting the terms of the negotiations.
(He knows precisely what to do & what he is doing on the day Witkoff-Kushner supplicate Putin with fawning praise on the pair's eighth trip to Moscow prior to their travel to Kyiv for the first time.)
"We are not ready to give our freedom to this fucking terrorist, Putin”
-@ZelenskyyUa September 6, 2026 on @MeetThePress
Dems (@RepGregoryMeeks, @RepJeffries) must prepare for Congress to prevent unilateral acts by the President to alter core US relations. Kushner & Witkoff were telling Putin the plan after the mid-terms: economic deals even as his murderous war against Ukraine continues. 👇Expand.
This is beyond reprehensible.
According to The Washington Post, while Witkoff and Kushner were supposedly in Moscow trying to negotiate an end to Russia’s war against Ukraine, they were also discussing potentially large U.S.-Russian economic projects with the Kremlin. (One thing to watch closely: whether any U.S.-Russian economic deal emerging from these negotiations creates direct or indirect financial benefits for Trump-linked businesses or members of his family.)
Putin’s foreign-policy adviser Yuri Ushakov said that “economic issues and potentially large, mutually beneficial joint projects for Russia and America were discussed in considerable detail.”
Russia is waging a war of aggression against Ukraine, Putin is showing little willingness to abandon his maximalist demands, and the two men Trump has ostensibly "entrusted" with negotiating a settlement are simultaneously discussing potentially large U.S.-Russian economic projects with the Kremlin.
Then Witkoff sits across from Putin, a war criminal, and tells him that, when they retire and look back on their lives, their conversations with him will be “right at the top” of their incredible memories.
Utterly disgusting.
The Washington Post reported the economic discussions today, citing Ushakov. Reuters has independently reported that economic cooperation was discussed in detail during the three-hour meeting.
To call these "negotiations" is laughable. A more apt description would be: two hucksters meet a war criminal to do business.
👇👇👇 (read in full)
Any Western government that sees these scenes - the Vucic regime burying a convicted genocidaire with full military honors, the entire Serbian Orthodox Church ‘blessing’ the process, thousands of ordinary Serbian citizens standing for hours to grovel at his coffin - and continues with business as usual with Belgrade (the arms sales, the fiction of EU enlargement, ‘pulling Serbia out of China’s orbit’) is knowingly undermining the security of Europe and the Atlantic community.
Because this carnival of horrors is not just about glorifying the extermination of Bosniaks in the 1990s. It is the Vucic regime socializing the Serbian public for their next war(s).
One might consider Witkoff & Kushner a pair of comical "peace negotiators" in the diplomatic annals. But for their stated purpose. Both make clear (on their first trip to *Kyiv* & in front of President @ZelenskyyUa!) their purpose as Trump's envoys is to serve Putin's interests.
We need to start to understand the damage Trump has done. The war against Iran has many results:
(a) It makes the US a rogue power (tariff wars & territorial threats against Den/Can/Nato already put it in that category);
(b) it has militarily & strategically weakened the US; 1/
(c) as a consequence, it has weakened NATO & Europe militarily to a point that it is vulnerable to Russian aerial attacks.
The US is now both too weak & too friendless to enforce freedom of navigation. And its depleted military capacity means it can no longer protect Europe. 2/
Indeed.
APPLEBAUM: Corruption investigations in Ukraine are coming from inside Ukrainian government.
Try to imagine that right now in United States, and you can't do it.
It's as if FBI were investigating Trump family companies, which is unimaginable, right?
TARLOV: That's very funny.
APPLEBAUM: In other words, these are Ukrainian inside the government organizations that are dedicated to looking for corruption and fighting it.
And so, actually, what you have, this exposure of corruption, is evidence of democratic institutions working in Ukraine.
The fact that so much is known, that it's openly discussed, that people debate it and talk about what should be done.
That makes Ukraine right now a more open and more effective democracy than United States.
Always keep that in mind when you talk about corruption.
Argh. Now we know only what "people familiar with the visit" *want* media to report. And yes, one hopes it's true, but even if the sole reason, the real question is what could Ratcliffe possibly have to "warn" Russia with? And why would Putin take seriously any such warning? 1/
True. And on all issues, *including* immigration (no majority ever wanted net negative immigration, ICE separating parents from their kids on the 1st day of school, returning asylum seekers back to dictatorships, or allowing only white South Africans to enter the US as refugees).
As much as we should be concerned about popular support for authoritarian-minded "populist" leaders in Europe & the US, Russia is singular in its population's level of support for strongmen. (Putin's current approval rating is *still* 66 percent.)
In 2001, 39% of Russians viewed Stalin positively, while 44% viewed him negatively. According to Levada Center polling, by 2026 the picture has been completely reversed: 59% now view Stalin positively, while only 7% view him negatively.
The rehabilitation accelerated after Russia’s aggression against Ukraine - and intensified further during the full-scale war.
Stalin is no longer just remembered in Russia. Stalin and his crimes are being fully rehabilitated. And the Kremlin’s war against Ukraine has helped drive that process.
Yup.
Foreign policy pundits trying to find some substantive meaning in Ratcliffe's trip to Moscow have lost the thread.
