🇨🇦⚜️ polisci prof @mcgillu, Director Jean Monnet Centre Montreal; Rule of law, anticorruption, democracy; Book on Ru-Ukraine War: https://xitter.cf/t.co/8ZtQUyWPFG
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Joined May 2013
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Our book isn't straightforwardly about "war and peace", but about the regime and identity divergence between Ru and Ukraine, which Ru refuses to accept. We'll take the "hot new releases" label, though! Thanks, Amazon. @OxanaShevel @politybooks
Repeat after me: Russia has no legitimate security concerns; only its neighbours do. Russia has been the only one invading others.
Maria Popova 🇨🇦 retweeted
If defending yourself is prolonging the war, then what is attacking you? A peace initiative?
A little story about how dehumanizing the russian state is and how passive/docile russian society is, devoid of any efficacy and agency. Putting any hope on russian society ending the war or demanding deimperialization or democracy after Putin is gone is extremely naive.
Maria Popova 🇨🇦 retweeted
Absolutely. No one should mistake Moscow’s proposal to involve Europe for a sign that Russia has suddenly come to its senses. Quite the contrary.
What Ushakov is effectively referring to is Russia’s ultimatum to NATO in December 2021, demanding, among other things, a rollback of NATO’s military deployments in Europe to their 1997 levels.
In other words, Moscow wants Europe involved not to accommodate European interests, but to impose its own demands not only on Ukraine but on Europe as well.
Maria Popova 🇨🇦 retweeted
Zelenskyy: Russia already has an army of around 2M. No country in Europe has an army ready for such a fight. I'm not talking about people, I'm talking about armies.
That is why Europe needs a strong Ukraine as part of NATO, on its eastern flank — Hudson Institute. 1/
And most of the Russian soldiers aren't even conscripts but contract.
Russian conscripts have a choice:
1. Overthrow Putin’s regime;
2. Flee the country before conscription;
3. Go to prison;
4. Surrender as soon as they end up on the front.
Instead, they choose to invade another country and kill.
Honestly, there’s already no point in reacting to the stupidity of the current American administration and its lobbyists.
A Russian conscript is not a lonely island in an ocean of madness. He is an integral part of the Russian ecosystem of terror that once drove a mine fragment into my neck and will gladly do it again and again.
Maria Popova 🇨🇦 retweeted
Zelenskyy: I offered the US three options if they want us to stop hitting Russian refineries:
1. Russia stops attacking our energy.
2. Open Starlink over Russian ballistic missile launch sites.
3. Give us Patriot missiles.
We got none. Instead, Starlink was restricted.
Maria Popova 🇨🇦 retweeted
Why the War Was the West's Fault — and Why Mearsheimer Is 100% Wrong
I'm always puzzled by people who profess to be huge fans of Mearsheimer because of the supposed depth and strength of his theory of Realism, and who seem totally unaware that his own theory shows that his takes on the war in Ukraine are wrong.
Start with the word that frames his entire position. His 2014 essay in Foreign Affairs was titled "Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West's Fault," and everything he has said since repeats that verdict: the West provoked Russia by expanding NATO, so the West is to blame for the war.
But fault is not a category in Realism. The theory is about incentives and constraints, not blame. If we translate "fault" into something the theory can work with, namely the key cause that made the war happen, then his own theory assigns it to the opposite of what he asserts.
The West didn't cause the war by threatening Russia. It caused it by failing to make aggression costly.
1/5
Maria Popova 🇨🇦 retweeted
It’s a remarkable coincidence that SpaceX discovered and closed a “loophole” in a way that severely harmed Ukraine in the very same week that the White House had a dispute with Ukraine. Just astonishing luck that SpaceX lawyers got to the issue at the very same time by chance!
Correct.
Using Starlink, a civilian commercial service, for offensive drone strikes to kill people has never been allowed, nor should it be.
Starshield, a different system, is controlled by the US government. What they decide to do is up to them.
Ukraine military violated Starlink terms of service and used it for offensive drone strikes to kill people. That loophole was closed last week.
Starlink remains critical to the defense of Ukraine, as it is the only system that cannot be jammed or blown up, at least for now. Were Starlink to be turned off, the Ukrainian front line would collapse immediately. This is NOT a threat, it is simply a statement of fact.
Starlink was also crucial to preventing Russia from overrunning Ukraine in the early days of the war, as all other means of communication were destroyed or jammed by Russia.
SpaceX has done more to defend Ukraine than any private company on Earth BY FAR.
That said, I have nothing but UTTER CONTEMPT for the virtue-signaling evil warmongers who push for endless slaughter and offer no realistic solution to the conflict. May you burn in hell.
End of story.
The number of bullshit narratives about Ukraine is already too large but the latest-- Putin offered to withdraw all Ru troops in 2023 but Zelensky refused-- breaks the bullshit-o-meter! It tops "Boris Johnson forced Ukrainians to fight" in lack of logic and situational awareness.
Maria Popova 🇨🇦 retweeted
I’ll be honest: I’m scared tonight. The Russians have launched another round of ballistic missiles at Kyiv, where it’s increasingly clear this is the new frontline.
So I’m back to the shelter with my water bottle, passport and medication, just in case.
Maria Popova 🇨🇦 retweeted
Wahnsinn wie viel militärisches Gerät diese "pro-russischen Separatisten" da im Juni 2014 im Donbas hatten. Wo kam das so plötzlich her, frage ich mich. Hat da irgendjemand eine Idee?🤔
Maria Popova 🇨🇦 retweeted
Amen.
Nuclear armed country with intercontinental ballistic missiles by very this fact is secured with no ground to promote spheres of influence under rubric of valid security concerns.
Overall without post-imperial transition in RU there would be no true peace in Europe.
Maria Popova 🇨🇦 retweeted
For a variety of reasons (which I have outlined elsewhere) I believe that if these talks have indeed been cancelled this should not be seen as bad news...👇
Zelenskyy said the planned visit would gather Ukraine, the US, EU and NATO in high-level talks on security guarantees and diplomatic efforts to end Russia's war against Ukraine.
➡️ l.euronews.com/3Bfv
Maria Popova 🇨🇦 retweeted
Przypominam, że oferta "pokojowa" z wiosny '22 (Stambuł) zakładała, iż rosyjska armia zostaje pod Kijowem, a ukraińska wraca do baz. Nie było mowy o wycofaniu się Rosjan
Dziś rosyjskie wojska są setki kilometrów od stolicy i na mocy żadnego porozumienia już nie wrócą pod Kijów
In yesterday’s euphoria over Vucic’s defeat and Lula’s re-election, no one noticed that Bulgaria held presidential elections. The pro-Russian incumbent underperformed and the pro-EU challenger beat the polls but turnout was a paltry 20%. Impossible to guess how the runoff will go
Maria Popova 🇨🇦 retweeted
Bolsonaros embrace of Trump hurt him at the polls.
Orban and Vucic also suffered from too close association with a very unpopular American president.
It’s becoming an international trend.
The Trump brand will fade even further once he becomes a lame duck.
Maria Popova 🇨🇦 retweeted
Within Trump administration RU is having the most receptive audience to manipulations to weaken NATO and drive a wedge between Central and Eastern Europe and rest within alliance.
A Kremlin foreign policy aide said Europe should be included in the negotiations between Russian, Ukrainian and American officials because the Continent would be crucial to reaching an agreement.
But diplomatic sources told The Telegraph that Russia’s motive for including European nations was to use the next round of talks to win concessions over Nato expansion, which Vladimir Putin has called the “root cause” of the war ⤵️
telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/10…
Maria Popova 🇨🇦 retweeted
This. Putin was delusional in 2021, when he demanded NATO expells Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, and Baltic countries. In 2026, after five years of unsuccessful war with Ukraine, his demands are the same. And he still believes that he will get his demands, by some miracle. The war will not end until Putin is removed.
Vladimir Putin should have pursued a career as a self-esteem coach instead of becoming a dictator and war criminal.
For five years, he’s been unable to capture the village of Mala Tokmachka in Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region. Ukraine is bombing his airfields and military factories from Voronezh to Omsk, oil depots in Moscow are burning, and so are the ports of St. Petersburg — yet he demands that NATO roll back to its 1997 borders and grant him an exclusive sphere of influence stretching from Helsinki to Prague, as if he were sitting at the helm of a new Warsaw Pact.
Maria Popova 🇨🇦 retweeted
People still talk about the foreign policy of the Trump administration as if (a) it's designed to advance US national interests, rather than private ones and (b) there's a reasonable expectation of competence and coherence. Neither of these things is correct.
