“If Ukraine emerges as a stable democracy, rebuilt with billions of dollars in foreign funds and frozen Russian assets, bonded together by narratives of a great patriotic war, then the country will stand as a living testament to Putin’s recklessness.”

“The world may now consist of deeply unequal societies and states that can exert once unimaginable degrees of control over their citizens, but it didn’t have to be this way—and maybe it doesn’t have to be this way in the future.”

“Countries may be refusing to repatriate their citizens from Syria in the name of protecting against terrorism, but in so doing, they are setting in motion a new cycle of suffering and alienation.”

With rising temperatures causing deadly heat waves in cities around the world, what steps can urban leaders take to mitigate the worst effects of the climate crisis?

“Putin has turned everything upside down. He has destroyed all the achievements of recent decades, including his own.”

From the archive: In a 1934 essay, Leon Trotsky described an interwar Europe trapped by its capitalist systems, with economic nationalism fueling the rise of fascism, and fascism threatening to bring “nothing except ruin.”

“Can the reimagining of the dawn of today’s flawed societies help foster new, better ones?” Read @WalterScheidel ’s review of David Graeber and David Wengrow’s new book “The Dawn of Everything.”

“A free-world strategy can eventually produce a happy ending. But ‘eventually’ may be a very long time.” @HalBrands  discusses how the Biden administration can refine the democracy-versus-autocracy framing behind its foreign policy.

“Putin has turned Victory Day into his own personal holiday, but even Russians could see that this year’s edition came without a victory, and that he was utterly alone.”