Publications

There is an old piece of folk wisdom which, in light of current events, must translate neatly into Russian: "Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me."

As an already shaky second cease-fire crumbles following the Russian capture of the Ukrainian town of Debaltsevo and with Moscow's intent to also seize Mariupol, it is becoming ever clearer that Russia has no intention of keeping the peace with Ukraine — and that the Kremlin is emboldened by what it perceives to be Western weakness.

With the likes of the Islamic State's self-declared caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in the running, the competition is stiff indeed. But it would be fair to say that Russian President Vladimir Putin currently ranks as one of the world's most dangerous men.

Russia's political opposition has been put on notice. The Feb. 27 murder of prominent opposition leader Boris Nemtsov just steps from the Kremlin marks a dramatic escalation of the Russian regime's long-running war on its opponents. Nemtsov, after all, wasn't merely a dissenting politician. He was part of the old system, having served as a deputy prime minister in the government of President Boris Yeltsin in the late 1990s. Beginning in the early 2000s, Nemtsov had moved into the political opposition, emerging as a critic of Yeltsin's successor, Vladimir Putin, and his policies. Even so, his position as a member of Yeltsin's inner circle had given him a degree of immunity from official retribution.