A wide-ranging discussion of many topics of maximum interest for students of contemporary history, including the fall of the Soviet Union, chiefly caused by internal enemies; the role of Stalin, and similar questions, with Harpal Brar, Indian-born intellectual and political activist, founder of Communist Party of Great Britain (M-L).
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EDITOR’S NOTE—Probably the West’s longstanding hostility, disdain for, and ultimately isolation of Russia have contributed to the country’s natural drift to autarky, and stimulated her sons’ and daughters’ desire to make the motherland proud and independent. Further, in many cases where Russian creativity in the pro-Communist period could have also secured an honor position for the country, the plans were thwarted by the nation’s relatively small capital markets and the dead weight of a czarist bureaucracy that was not too sympathetic to innovations.
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ALEX RUBINSTEIN—The covert nature of Ukrainian drone attacks inside Russian territory makes them difficult to tally on an authoritative basis. A reporter for the British state-funded BBC pressed a Kiev official to provide such data to no avail while participating in “a training session for Ukraine’s latest group of drone pilots in a secret location on the outskirts of Kyiv.” The BBC filed its dispatch from the heart of Ukraine’s “Army of Drones” on April 25, just two days after the alleged SBU-directed aerial assassination attempt on Russia’s president.
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DEBORAH ARMSTRONG—“We were clearing the central part of Bakhmut, clearing civilian houses,” an unidentified member of Wagner said. “The civilians started running out of the basement. They said there were children in the basement. There was an 11-year-old child, a little girl, frightened. During the evacuation, they opened fire on us and a sniper was shooting at us. It was not in our direction, but directed at the little girl. During the evacuation we had to cover her with flak jackets, but she survived and was taken away.
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JIM KAVANAGH—The accumulation of ludicrous moves by the United States and its pawns over the past few months has reached a stage that would be risible if it were not so dangerous. The danger is exacerbated by the insistence of American media on, first, ignoring the most provocative and reckless moves, then proposing explanations for them that can’t withstand three minutes of critical thought. The object is to keep the American public ignorant, make it stupid, and maintain the national-security state’s prerogative to do anything it wants.
