Leon Aron

Leon Aron is a writer in Washington, D.C. His most recent book is Riding the Tiger: Vladimir Putin’s Russia and the Uses of War.

Tuesday

Leon Aron

Trump’s ‘peace plan’ for Ukraine is wicked

From our UK edition

It is necessary to deal with criminals. It is immoral – and, if history teaches, dangerous – to absolve them of crimes and reward them. Yet this is how Trump’s peace plan treats Putin’s Russia. In the morally inverted universe of the plan, there is no distinction between perpetrator and victim, aggressor and defender, militarised dictatorship and democracy. Invading a peaceful neighbour with no provocation whatsoever, Russia killed as many as 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers and 14,534 civilians, including over 3,000 children, who perished in incessant missile and drone bombings of residential buildings, schools, hospitals, churches, maternity wards, kindergartens and children’s playgrounds.

Sunday

Leon Aron

Putin’s cannon fodder: an anthem for Russia’s doomed youth

From our UK edition

Many were killed. Others hid in the fields, forests and basements, sometimes for days, before surrendering to the Ukrainian forces. Frightened, ill-equipped and with very little – if any – training, hundreds of Russian conscripts (prizyvniki) have been captured in the two months since Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region began. Yet another of the innumerable tragedies of Putin’s criminal war, the plight of conscripts is a window into Russia’s ability to conduct a 'long war'. When neither the army's relentless press-ganging nor its exorbitant sign-up bonuses and soldiers’ salaries appear to attract enough men to make up for the staggering casualties on the front, it is these boys who are sent to the slaughter.