Contributing Writers

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has warned that if a Third World War were to take place, it would be a nuclear war. His comments come just days after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered Russia’s nuclear forces on high alert and after Russian nuclear submarines set sail for tests in waters near Norway. Meanwhile, voters in Belarus have approved a referendum opening the door for Russia to station nuclear weapons in Belarusian territory, and Russia has called on the U.S.

We speak with Ukrainian American journalist Lev Golinkin about the rise of the far right in Ukraine. Golinkin says Russian bombing of the sacred Jewish site of Babi Yar disproves Putin’s claims that the invasion is about “denazification,” and attacks on cities in eastern Ukraine show he does not care about Russian-speaking Ukrainians either.

As the Russian military escalates its invasion in Ukraine, Russian police are cracking down on antiwar protesters at home, arresting more than 8,000 over the past eight days. Meanwhile, Russia’s lower house of parliament has passed a new law to criminalize the distribution of what the state considers to be “false news” about military operations, and remaining independent news outlets in the country are shutting down under pressure from the authorities.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Russia of “nuclear terror” after Russian forces shelled and subsequently set on fire the largest nuclear power plant in Europe on Friday morning. The fire at the Zaporizhzhia plant burned for hours but reportedly did not spread to any of the plant’s six reactors before the Russians ultimately seized the site. Ukraine heavily relies on nuclear power, with 15 active nuclear power reactors across the country.

We speak with acclaimed Filipino scholar and activist Walden Bello on the Global South’s response to the unfolding crisis in Ukraine. Bello says there’s hesitation from many world leaders to take an active role in the crisis, arguing that there is a lack of explicit national interests and a general suspicion the U.S. provoked the invasion to take advantage of the subsequent backlash against Russia.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has warned that if a Third World War were to take place, it would be a nuclear war. His comments come just days after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered Russia’s nuclear forces on high alert and after Russian nuclear submarines set sail for tests in waters near Norway. Meanwhile, voters in Belarus have approved a referendum opening the door for Russia to station nuclear weapons in Belarusian territory, and Russia has called on the U.S.

While President Biden has ruled out sending troops into Ukraine, the U.S. is directly aiding Ukraine militarily and has imposed unprecedented sanctions on Russia amounting to what some have called “economic warfare.” We look at Biden’s response with Senator Bernie Sanders’s foreign policy adviser Matt Duss, who is also Ukrainian American. He says the U.S. should continue to exhaust all diplomatic avenues in order to stop violence in Ukraine. Duss also details the U.S.

As the United Nations reports more than a million refugees have now fled the violence in Ukraine, the U.N. General Assembly voted 141 to 5 to denounce the Russian invasion. Meanwhile, Russian troops have reportedly seized their first city: the strategically located southern port of Kherson. Heavy shelling continues to be reported in the cities of Kharkiv, Chernihiv and Mariupol, and a 40-mile-long Russian convoy approaching Kyiv has been stalled due in part to Ukrainian resistance.

We speak with acclaimed Filipino scholar and activist Walden Bello on the Global South’s response to the unfolding crisis in Ukraine. Bello says there’s hesitation from many world leaders to take an active role in the crisis, arguing that there is a lack of explicit national interests and a general suspicion the U.S. provoked the invasion to take advantage of the subsequent backlash against Russia.