Anne Applebaum
She is also a senior fellow at the Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University, where she co-leads a project on 21st-century disinformation. Her books include Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine; Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944–1956; and Gulag: A History, which won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Her most recent book is the New York Times best seller Twilight of Democracy, an essay on democracy and authoritarianism. She was a Washington Post columnist for 15 years and a member of the editorial board. She has also been the deputy editor of The Spectator and a columnist for several British newspapers. Her writing has appeared in The New York Review of Books, The New Republic, The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, and Foreign Policy, among many other publications.
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Paul Spella / The Atlantic; RUSSEIL CHRISTOPHE / … Gorbachev Never Realized What He Set in Motion
Almost nobody has ever had such a profound impact on an era, while understanding so little about it.
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Laetitia Vancon / The New York Times / … The Country That Suffers Whenever Russia Schemes
Moldova’s president has high hopes. Putin has other ideas.
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Jedrzej Nowicki The Other Ukrainian Army
Imperiled by Russian invaders, private citizens are stepping forward to do what Ukraine’s government cannot.
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Paul Spella / The Atlantic; Getty Russia’s War Against Ukraine Has Turned Into Terrorism
The Russian military isn’t just bombing civilians. It’s also targeting the laws and values that protect human rights.
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Ben Stansall / WPA Pool / Getty What Brexit Did to Boris Johnson—And Britain
The prime minister’s fake populism led to his undoing—and will keep haunting his country.
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Mark Peterson / Redux The Reason Liz Cheney Is Narrating the January 6 Story
The committee is laying out the facts in a way optimally designed to cultivate trust.
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Mikhail Klimentyev / Sputnik / AFP / Getty The War Won’t End Until Putin Loses
Offering the Russian president a face-saving compromise will only enable future aggression.
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Kirill Kudryavtsev / AFP / Getty World War II Is All That Putin Has Left
The regime offers Russians little more than selective memories of Soviet-era military triumph.
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HIP / Art Resource, NY Ukraine and the Words That Lead to Mass Murder
First comes the dehumanization. Then comes the killing.
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Photograph by Christopher Occhicone for The Atlantic Liberation Without Victory
In a wide-ranging conversation at his compound in Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky tells The Atlantic what Ukraine needs to survive—and describes the price it has paid.
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Oliver Munday There Is No Liberal World Order
Unless democracies defend themselves, the forces of autocracy will destroy them.
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Ismail Ferdous / Bloomberg / Getty Ukraine Must Win
Ukrainians and the world’s democratic powers must work toward the only acceptable endgame.
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Getty; The Atlantic Why We Should Read Hannah Arendt Now
The Origins of Totalitarianism has much to say about a world of rising authoritarianism.
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The Atlantic America Needs a Better Plan to Fight Autocracy
By enabling Putin and other global kleptocrats, the West undermined democracy. It’s time to change tactics.
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Sean Gallup / Getty; The Atlantic The Impossible Suddenly Became Possible
When Russia invaded Ukraine, the West’s assumptions about the world became unsustainable.
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Daniel Leal / AFP / Getty Calamity Again
No nation is forced to repeat its past. But something familiar is taking place in Ukraine.
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Tobias Hase / AP There Are No Chamberlains in This Story
But there are no Churchills, either. And Ukraine will fight alone.
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Associated Press Why the West’s Diplomacy With Russia Keeps Failing
American and European leaders’ profound lack of imagination has brought the world to the brink of war.
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Adam Maida / The Atlantic ; Mikhail Svetlov … The Reason Putin Would Risk War
He is threatening to invade Ukraine because he wants democracy to fail—and not just in that country.
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Sergei Supinsky / AFP / Getty The U.S. Is Naive About Russia. Ukraine Can’t Afford to Be.
Putin is right about one thing: A free, prosperous, democratic neighbor is a threat to his autocratic regime.
