Damn! They was fast. Ukraine has launched its first satellite for its own communications network

Putin, Trump and MAGA love repeating the story that NATO betrayed Russia by expanding eastwards, supposedly breaking a promise never to admit countries once trapped under Soviet communist rule. There is one rather inconvenient detail they always leave out: those countries desperately wanted to join. And with good reason. They remember Soviet occupation, political executions, mass deportations to Siberia, forced collectivisation, prison camps, secret police, censorship and generations of lives destroyed by Moscow’s glorious socialist paradise. Families disappeared. Countries lost their independence. Ordinary people could be imprisoned for expressing the wrong opinion. When communism collapsed, these nations did not need NATO to persuade them to escape Russian influence. They practically ran towards the door. Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Czechia and the others understood something the MAGA intellectual establishment apparently struggles with: living next to Russia is considerably more pleasant when Russia cannot decide how you live. And that brings us to Serbia. Aleksandar Vučić, a leader who spent years cultivating Moscow while balancing Serbia’s European ambitions, has just been defeated by a student-led democratic movement. The celebrations in Belgrade tell their own story. Serbia has its own complicated history, and nobody should pretend this election settles every question about NATO or EU membership. But it exposes the central absurdity of Moscow’s worldview. When a European leader continually argues against Western integration while protecting Russia’s influence, the obvious question is whose interests he actually serves. There is no need to invent secret payments to recognise a politician doing Moscow’s work. NATO did not expand eastwards because Washington forced unwilling nations into an alliance. It expanded because countries with experience of Russian domination wanted protection from ever experiencing it again. Putin, Orban, JD Vance, Hegseth and Trump calls that Western aggression. Russia, meanwhile, has spent centuries discovering that keeping its neighbours within its sphere of influence generally requires threats, repression or an army. That tells you almost everything about which civilisation has something worth offering.

Mitch McConnell has just delivered a warning Trump cannot afford to ignore. In The Wall Street Journal, the veteran Republican senator warned that Trump’s continued submission to Putin could jeopardise his entire legislative agenda. McConnell calls Trump’s Russia policy strategically naive and morally bankrupt. More importantly, he signals that Republican senators may withhold their support unless Trump changes course. This is no longer merely about Ukraine. It is about whether Republicans will allow an American president to keep rewarding a Russian dictator while undermining America’s allies. For once, Trump may discover that Congress has a spine.

This footage is from the very beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. Look at that little Ukrainian boy, walking towards the border in tears, surrounded by families fleeing a Russian invasion. Now consider the extraordinary moral bankruptcy of Trump, Rubio, Hegseth and Musk, whose message to Ukraine increasingly amounts to: “Fuck Ukraine. Russia gets our sympathy.” Meanwhile, Steve Witkoff apparently sees Putin as some sort of humanitarian. Quite remarkable. Most people can distinguish a humanitarian from a man whose army bombs hospitals and forces children to flee their homes. Apparently, this requires a level of intellectual sophistication beyond certain members of the American establishment. It hardly takes a magnificent imagination to work out which side these gentlemen might have found more accommodating in 1939. “Never again” was supposed to mean something. It wasn’t a decorative slogan to be dusted off once a year while making excuses for the next dictator. And to those who admire Russia as some glorious defender of Western civilisation, perhaps try learning something about the country. Russia has millions of Muslim citizens. It is hardly the anti-Muslim paradise some of its Western admirers imagine. Nor does Putin’s dictatorship represent the democratic freedoms they claim to cherish. But then, understanding history, geography or basic human decency does rather spoil the pleasure of having absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. That little boy understood who the aggressor was. Remarkable how many supposedly powerful adults still struggle with it.