Foreign Affairs committee  It will be a while before Mr. Putin understands the effect of the sanctions. I can say that the Russians were surprised by the scale of the sanctions. They were not prepared for this level of sanctions. Their idea was that the war would be over so quickly that we wouldn't really

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Oliphant.

Foreign Affairs committee  I'm going to link the two questions and try to minimize the speculation by telling you what I think the scenario would like look. I think that when we imagine the palace coup, we imagine it kinetically, three-dimensionally and very dramatically: the army storms the Kremlin or the

Foreign Affairs committee  Honestly, the communist structure looks like a bounteous flower shop of institutions compared to what we have now. When the Chinese try to understand Russia, they have trouble, because in China they at least have a party with party organs. In Russia, there really are no meaningfu

Foreign Affairs committee  I would be misleading you if I said that I or anybody else in the world were sure about the answer to that question. My own feeling is that Mr. Putin still believes that the big victory is within reach. I think he's mistaken about that, and he'll find out within the next month

Foreign Affairs committee  That's a wonderful question. I think what Mr. Putin has done since 2014 has been to promote nuclear weapons more than any other leader has done before in history. As everyone here will know, in 2004 Ukraine, by the numbers, had the third-highest number of nuclear weapons in the

Foreign Affairs committee  I think that your two questions hang very closely together. Whether this is meaningful for the future depends very much on how we apprehend it now, what we're trying to do now and what we're aiming for now. You may be right that there's no way to win this war. I don't actually a

Foreign Affairs committee  I put this argument into 30 points on my Substack, if anyone knows what Substack is. That's my second tease for Canadian parliamentarians today. Here are some of the lines of division. The number one line of division is Putin versus Putin, tactical Putin versus ideological Putin

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you. In answering this question I'm also going to take the opportunity to say a word about the palace coup scenario, because I'm afraid I think they are integrally connected. I would like to believe that negotiation is simply a matter of there not being enough goodwill, bu

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you. Those were both very cheerful questions, and I congratulate you on making my remarks even darker than they were in the original formulation. On the first question, that of tactical nuclear weapons, I think my broadest point here would be that there has to be an antici

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you very much. It's an honour to be asked to testify. After this extremely competent introduction, this tour d'horizon, what I would like to do with my time is just present a few concepts that I think help to understand the overall shape of what's happening. Then I'll look

Foreign Affairs committee  I think people who believe in liberalism and democracy have to go on the offensive. They have to say “these are good things” as opposed to just saying “we're the normal people when everyone else is abnormal”. I think they also have to go on the offensive in the sense of [Technica

Foreign Affairs committee  Can I comment?

Foreign Affairs committee  With Twitter in particular you have two problems. One is that Twitter ends up defining the problem. In American relations with North Korea, for example, it is what happens on Twitter rather than what happens in the real world that ends up mattering. The second problem is the cons

Foreign Affairs committee  Ukraine, perhaps more than other places in Europe and in the west, understands that one has to have a relationship with other democratic countries in order to be a democracy. That is what I take to be the central meaning of the Maidan. Another central meaning of what you correc