[I]t's very important to understand that this is the dictators always operate short-term, and democracies must operate long-term because it’s not abo… - Garry Kasparov

The old joke about the two main Soviet papers, Pravda (“Truth”) and Izvestia (“News”), was “There’s no news in the Truth and no truth in the News!”

Since ’91, it was more of poker because again, it’s America, even today is much more powerful than all the enemies combined. It’s probably the first time after the collapse of the Soviet Union that the forces of freedom, the free world, had overwhelming military and economic advantage. And also politically, it dominated the field because even the worst dictatorships now they’re trying to pretend that they have elections. Not pressing it’s advantages looks quite odd because it again create this vacuum, and also I think it affects ordinary people in these countries. Whether it’s Iran, Arab countries, Russia, because they used to look at America as a beacon of freedom and the country that stood firm defending the free world. And now it’s quite odd because America is there, but America is not there. The whole stories about current political climate here and elections, they’re for the eroding reputation of the United States, and I think the damage caused by this administration to the prestige of the country, and especially to the prestige of the presidency, this damage could take years to recover and rebuild.

You cannot look at the images from Ukraine in recent weeks and say there is no pure evil. Mariupol destroyed, Bucha slaughtered, Kramatorsk train station massacred. And worse is yet to come. And these horrors are not from Poland in 1945. Not from Rwanda in 1994. Not Aleppo 2016. This is Europe this week. How could this happen? How did we forget what evil can do? We have lost the generation that saw World War II firsthand. Otherwise we reserve absolute evil for fiction. In fables, they believe in true evil. Good is harder to define. There is no pure good. If anyone says they know what pure good is, it's probably evil. In fantasy tales of hobbits and elves and dwarves, there was an idea that good comes in different forms and shapes, often in conflict. But they had to be united when facing absolute evil. Good will disagree. Evil says, "No more disagreements ever." That was life in real Mordor, the Soviet Union. That's what Putin wants for Russia and the world. We celebrated the end of the Cold War, but for too long, we forgot that evil doesn’t die. It can be buried for a while under the rubble of the Berlin Wall, but it grows back through the cracks of our apathy.