1 November 2023 Ukraine: The Big Push Fails By Gwynne Dyer On 10 September, the great breakthrough was underway. “The Ukrainians went forward again,” said breathless reports from the front lines. “The Ukrainian Armed Forces are moving west of Novoprokopovka, east of Verbovo and between Novoprokopovka and Verbovo, expanding the breakthrough zone.” Fifty days later, …
27 September 2023 Pantomime Politics in Eastern Europe By Gwynne Dyer The Polish hate the Russians The Slovaks hate the Czechs, The Bulgars hate Ukrainians And everybody hates the Jews. With thanks and apologies to Tom Lehrer Tom Lehrer’s original song, ‘National Brotherhood Week’, was about how different kinds of Americans hated each other, but …
30 August 2023 Pope Francis: Some Confusion, Perhaps By Gwynne Dyer Javier Milei, who is very likely to be elected president of Argentina in the October election, is fairly frank in his view of Pope Francis, a fellow Argentine. He calls Francis “a Communist turd” and “the representative of the Evil One on Earth”. Even …
10 July 2023 NATO Summit 2023 By Gwynne Dyer When NATO held its annual summit in Brussels two years ago, all 31 presidents and prime ministers of the alliance’s member states dutifully showed up, but their hearts weren’t really in it. France’s President Emmanuel Macron had publicly declared NATO “brain-dead” in 2019, and nobody could …
20 February 2023 Ukraine War and International Law By Gwynne Dyer Just before the first anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine (Friday, 24 February), France’s President Emmanuel Macron declared that he wanted to see Russia “defeated, but not crushed.” That is a very fine distinction, but an important one. Macron is seen as ‘soft’ …
12 February 2023 The Earthquakes and the Blame By Gwynne Dyer If you are trying to dodge the blame for a great disaster, the best policy is to say that it was God’s will. So Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, visiting one of the 6,000 buildings that collapsed on their sleeping residents in eastern Turkey …
29 January 2023 A Bad Case of Cultural Lag By Gwynne Dyer “I wish you a world without Babiš. Forget about Babiš. Try to live without Babiš,” said former Czech prime minister Andrej Babiš on Saturday after his campaign for the presidency failed to convince the voters. “Stop waking up in the morning with hatred …
25 January 2023 Ukraine: Will Western Tanks Bring Victory? By Gwynne Dyer On Tuesday they reset the Doomsday Clock to 90 seconds before midnight. How did they know that Germany would agree to give Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine on Wednesday? Now we’re all doomed! No time to run! Ninety seconds is barely time to …
26 September 2022 Is Putin Bluffing About Nukes? By Gwynne Dyer Vladimir Putin’s desperation was plain in the emergency measures he declared last week: immediate mobilisation of at least 300,000 more troops, the sudden decision to use fake referendums to turn all the occupied parts of Ukraine into Russian territory, and more explicit threats than …
24 August 2022 Might Russia Use Its ‘Tactical’ Nuclear Weapons? By Gwynne Dyer On 25 August the president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, announced that the country’s combat aircraft have been ‘upgraded’ by the Russians to carry nuclear weapons, and Belarusian pilots are being trained to deliver them. It got a single paragraph, or no notice …
Might Russia Use Its ‘Tactical’ Nuclear Weapons? Read More »