By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 2 December 2025

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 12 April 2025

Russian historian Viktor Zemskov estimated in 2012 that total Soviet losses in the “Great Fatherland War” were sixteen million (11.5 million military casualties and 4.5 million civilian deaths), a far lower total than the official Soviet claim since 1990, inherited by the Russian Federation, of twenty-seven million.
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 21 August 2022

It was on this day in 1968, fifty-four years ago, that the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia, one of its colonies in the “Warsaw Pact”, which had embarked on a program of liberalising reforms. The Czech leadership did not intend to depart from the socialist path, merely to soften its edges—and ran into the brute fact that this was not possible. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 12 December 2018

© AP Photo / Jim Hollander, Pool
Essay: “Zionism is Making Us Stupid”: The Russian Relationship with Israel from the Soviets to Putin Continue reading