Executive Summary A New, More Permissive Context for Authoritarian Influence at Scale / Kevin Sheives (NED) China’s Authoritarian Influence: Ambition and Scale Meet Open Doors and New Opportunities / Caroline Costello (Atlantic Council) & William Nee (NED) Losing Allies, but Doubling Down: Russian Authoritarian Influence after the Invasion of Ukraine / Alexander Cooley (Barnard College…
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The International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced on Tuesday that it’s lifting its three-year suspension of Russia, paving the way for Russian athletes to compete in future Olympic Games despite the country’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine. The group said in a press release that the decision was made after a “thorough analysis” by its legal arm concluded that the Russian Olympic Committee…
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On Monday night, Russia launched a large-scale attack on cities across Ukraine, reportedly killing at least 22 people in one of its largest assaults on the country in months. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Tuesday that Russia had launched 656 drones and 73 missiles overnight, with the heaviest strikes reported in Kyiv and the city of Dnipro. Tens of thousands of residents took…
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This story originally appeared in Professor Richard Wolff’s Substack on May 21, 2026. It is shared here with permission.
By the end of World War 2 in Europe, that continent’s extremely violent self-destruction had killed tens of millions and wrecked many economies. Its politically dominant employer classes had driven their national governments to a clash that had produced those results. By 1945 the war’s outcome had proved far worse than many in those classes had imagined or wanted before the war. Europeans had struggled after 1917/1918 to overcome their self-destruction in World War 1. In the short span between the end of the First and the beginning of the Second World War, Europe destabilized itself via its reparations program, Germany’s staggering inflation, and then global capitalism’s worst ever collapse in 1929. The consequences of those destabilizations ramified across Europe and undermined the League of Nations effort to prevent a second world war.
In 1945, for most Europeans, the greatest urgency attached to recovery from the war. For Europe’s employing classes, more urgent still were defenses against certain immediate threats. Russia’s army had been crucial to defeating the Nazis and to forging Russia’s post-war alliances with Eastern Europe. The mass of the USSR’s military forces, potentially supplemented by those of its new Eastern European allies, struck western Europe’s employer classes as existential threats. After 1945, western Europe’s employer classes smoothly and quickly refocused their hatred from a dead Hitler to the living Stalin and to their nations’ communist parties allied to Stalin.
Western Europe’s employer classes were threatened domestically by communist and socialist political parties whose militants had often led underground anti-fascist or anti-Nazi
There were some hopes that U.S. and Iranian officials would try to advance the diplomatic process over the weekend, but neither country sent a delegation to Islamabad. This leaves an uncertain dynamic in which the hot war is paused, but hardly any meaningful efforts are underway to work toward a resolution.
Iran’s foreign minister is expected to travel to Russia to meet with Vladimir Putin on Monday, and the conversation is likely to be of interest to the White House. With this in mind, Trump spoke to Fox News’ Jacqui Heinrich on Sunday morning for a live telephone interview, and the host asked whether he’d spoken with the Russian leader recently. “I have,” the president replied.
As the exchange continued, Heinrich added, “What was the last conversation you had with Putin?”
HEINRICH: You referenced Ukraine. Have you spoken with President Putin at all recently?TRUMP: I have. We’re trying to get something done. I settled eight wars.HEINRICH: What was the last conversation you had with Putin?TRUMP: I don’t want to reveal that.— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-04-26T15:37:30.085Z
“Well, I don’t want to reveal that,” Trump replied, failing to explain why he believes their conversation needed to be kept secret.
Let’s not forget that the White House routinely discloses interactions between the president and world leaders, and Trump frequently uses his social media platform to boast about his conversations with foreign heads of state, including recent talks with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
But asked about his latest chat with Putin, Trump doesn’t want to “reveal” that, for reasons he also doesn’t feel the need to share.
If this sounds at all familiar, it’s because
Shortly after Donald Trump launched the war in Iran, the president’s administration confronted a crisis in the energy sector that it appeared wholly unprepared to address. In early March, the Republican operation said part of its response would be temporarily lifting sanctions on Russian oil, allowing money to flow into Moscow as part of a larger effort to contain prices.
Pressed for an explanation, U.S. officials insisted that the shift would be brief and that sanctions would quickly return. It was against that backdrop that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced last week that the administration had agreed to end the policy, restoring the sanctions on Russian oil.
Two days later, Team Trump made Bessent look quite foolish. The Associated Press reported:
The U.S. Treasury Department on Friday extended its pause on sanctions on Russian oil shipments to ease shortages from the Iran war, days after Secretary Scott Bessent ruled out such a move.
The so-called general license means U.S. sanctions will not apply for 30 days on deliveries of Russian oil that has been loaded on tankers as of Friday. It extended a similar 30-day license issued in March for Russian oil that had been loaded by March 11. The extension underscores how the fallout from the Iran war has boosted Moscow’s ability to profit from its energy exports, which had been restrained since the invasion of Ukraine.
Almost immediately, three Senate Democratic leaders — Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Ranking Member Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Senate Banking Ranking Member Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts — issued a joint statement condemning the move as “shameful.”
“Make no mistake,