Following Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 U.S. presidential election, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democratic congresswoman from New York, publicly appealed to those who had voted for both her and Trump. She wanted to know what motivated such an apparently inconsistent choice, and the predominant answer she heard was that she and Trump seemed more sincere, whereas Vice President Kamala Harris came off as too calculating.
It was a fruitful exercise and we can ask the same of leftists who support both the Palestinians and Russia. After all, the latter has been bombing Ukrainian cities until they resemble Gaza, and just as the right-wing parties in Israel’s government want to create a greater Israel, the Kremlin hopes to create a greater Russia. Russia’s eliminationist project should thus remain top of mind whenever we assess developments on the ground.
Immediately after the recent decision by U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration to allow Ukraine to launch U.S.-furnished ATACMS missiles (with a range of up to 190 miles) into Russia, the Kremlin warned that any use of Western arms against the Russian Federation could trigger a nuclear response under its new nuclear doctrine. Nonetheless, the Ukrainians countered by firing six ATACMS missiles at a military facility in the Bryansk region (adjacent to the Ukrainian border) the next day.
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