21 August 22 Killing Darya Dugina: Own Goal for Ukraine? By Gwynne Dyer “I am a political observer of the International Eurasianist Movement and an expert in international relations…. In this capacity, I appear on Russian, Pakistani, Turkish, Chinese and Indian television channels….The situation in Ukraine is really an example of a clash of civilisations; …
14 August 2022 Ukraine War: Mother May I? By Gwynne Dyer “This obviously does not happen because of a thrown butt,” said British Defense Minister Ben Wallace. But the Russian Ministry of Defence insisted that the explosions that destroyed at least eight warplanes at Saki Air Base in Russian-occupied Crimea on 9 August were due …
18 May 2022 By Gwynne Dyer Russian President Vladimir Putin will almost certainly not be in power three years from now. The war he foolishly began in Ukraine has fatally undermined his political credibility among the Russian elite (and among a large though mostly silent part of the population). One way or another, he will …
16 May 2022 By Gwynne Dyer It’s easy to imagine Vladimir Putin coming into the shop marked ‘Sweden’, breaking some fine china accidentally on purpose, and growling: ‘Nice little shop you’ve got here. It would be a pity if something happened to it.’ But Sweden is not a pottery shop, Putin is not a Mafia …
4 May 2022 By Gwynne Dyer We were talking recently about how clever the Ukrainians had been to call the invading Russian troops ‘Orcs’ even before all the atrocities in the Russian-occupied towns around Kyiv came to light. Then Tina said: “If Putin’s troops are Orcs, then he must be Sauron.” You can guess what …
27 April 2022 By Gwynne Dyer Two months ago, when Russian tanks first rolled into Ukraine, every message from Washington or NATO about the invasion included a prominent passage saying what the western alliance would not do. It would not send NATO troops to help Ukraine. It would give Ukraine some ‘defensive’ weapons but no …
20 April 2022 By Gwynne Dyer Last Sunday Vladimir Soloviev, the anchor of Russia’s most popular current affairs show, ‘Sunday Evening’, was delivering his usual ‘all is going splendidly’ take on the war in Ukraine when he suddenly went off-piste. The United Kingdom, he suggested, is planning to use nuclear weapons against the Russian forces …
17 April 2022 By Gwynne Dyer It’s generally bad form to quote another journalist, but Stewart Lee’s day job is stand-up comedian, so we can make an exception just this once. Writing in The Observer on Sunday, Lee offered a summary of Britain’s Conservative government as its twelve-year reign stumbles towards its close. The Conservative …
13 April 2022 By Gwynne Dyer Ukraine wants more offensive weapons including modern tanks, self-propelled artillery and combat aircraft from NATO countries for its war with the Russian invaders, but it won’t be getting them from the United States in the latest tranche of American military aid. There is a good reason for that. Germany …
30 March 2022 Do the Russians Have War in Their Blood? By Gwynne Dyer The geopolitical views of my grandmother, Florence O’Driscoll, could have been summed up in seven words: ‘The Germans Have War in their Blood’. Even as a child I suspected that the world must be more complicated than that, but I never …