Some updates from the Good Authority team on Ukraine 🇺🇦. 1) In Ukraine, fewer women are having children: goodauthority.org/news/in-ukra... 2) Rethinking how Europe can lead peacekeeping in Ukraine: goodauthority.org/news/rethink... Read our latest on Ukraine at the links👆.

As talk of negotiations continues, ordinary Russians remain uncompromising. Around 40% say that troops should withdraw only after annexing part of Ukraine & regime change (i.e., ousting Zelensky). Only 10% support an unconditional, immediate withdrawal.

Tere! I'm in Estonia 🇪🇪 at Uni of Tartu Skytte Institute for 2 months researching the intergenerational effects of Soviet repression. I'm interviewing Estonians whose family experienced deportation/other repression. Interested? Please DM me, email [email protected] & share widely. Aitäh!

Ukrainians don’t think much of Putin’s ‘peace’ plan. Our surveys from earlier this summer show overwhelming opposition to a Russian land grab. See the data here: goodauthority.org/news/ukraini...

How has Russian public opinion shifted in the wake of the "Alaska Summit," which took place on August 15. One notable change: approval of Donald Trump has increased considerably from its all-time low at the beginning of the month.

Found this mug commemorating Kyiv’s 1500 anniversary (1982) in a thrift shop in Tartu, 🇪🇪!

So Putin gets a red carpet welcome, a ride in the presidential limo, speaks first at the presser, frames the meeting as a successful talk among equals, while making absolutely no concession on the conduct or outcome of the war.

'The world is behaving irrationally' - Putin's warm welcome in Alaska gets cold reaction in Ukraine

As the Trump-Putin meeting draws near, it's worth pointing out that although support for negotiations has been increasing steadily in Russia (see linked 🧵), Russians still want to keep the territories Russia already annexed & oust Zelenskyy - hardly a compromising position.

Yup. that’s why I ended my piece that’s out today with this: “Trump already fooled us into this hope twice—once after the talks in Saudi Arabia in February and a second time in July, when he imposed this deadline. If he does it a third time, the shame will be on all of us.”

Check out my latest piece on the recent protests in Ukraine 🇺🇦. Includes some interesting figures based on surveys about corruption perceptions in Ukraine from 2015-24.

"Ru will insist it is prepared to have a ceasefire, but (only) under the conditions that it has formulated for the last two or three years" Can we stop with the idiotic euphemisms? Ru’s conditions are Ukrainian surrender. Ru wants to win without continuing to fight. apple.news/ADU72OUGXQX6...

🤡 Putin says his ultimatum to Ukraine from 2024 has not changed

Russian state media published an article titled: “No other option: no one should remain alive in Ukraine.” This is how Russia claims to want peace. ria.ru/20250730/ukr...

News: Ukraine’s parliament voted to restore the independence of the country’s anti-corruption agencies, reversing a push to place them under the authority of a presidential appointee that triggered rare wartime protests and criticism from western partners. www.ft.com/content/0289...

Russia’s Justice Ministry has added Patriot, the posthumous memoir of opposition politician Alexey Navalny, to its list of banned “extremist” materials. meduza.io/en/news/2025...

How will the Romanian far right (especially AUR and George Simion) interfere in Moldova's elections? A couple of major directions to pay attention to. First, by having allies running directly for seats. An example: the Democracy at Home Party (PDA), run by Simion ally ...

Spotted this highly evocative scene while crossing the border from Romania into Zakarpattia, Ukraine, last week. A sad symbol of the shameful US withdrawal from global affairs.

On one of the most unbelievable satellite images I've ever seen, showing hundreds of Palestinians surrounding aid trucks north of Rafah. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/29/w...

Trump’s rating in Russia just keeps going down… this is the lowest approval rating we’ve ever recorded as part of Russia Watcher. (We started tracking this stat daily in April 2024.)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will urge European partners to help fund higher wages for his soldiers fighting Russia’s invasion, in a renewed effort to bolster military recruitment amid growing fatigue in the war-torn country. www.ft.com/content/5483...

Please join me tomorrow at noon for a conversation on all things Putin, Russia, and Trump with the wonderful Mark Beissinger. Sign-up link here: www.crowdcast.io/c/civicforum...

What is authoritarian backscratching – and why is this a threat? Quid pro quo policies help authoritarian regimes stay in power. We break it down here: goodauthority.org/news/what-is...

Just published in @goodauth.bsky.social: my piece on what I call “authoritarian backscratching” - quid-pro-quo policies between dictators - and how it helps authoritarian regimes survive. goodauthority.org/news/what-is...

⚡️Fire engulfs iconic Odesa market amid Russian attack. A Russian drone attack on Odesa damaged residential buildings, a gas station, and the city's Pryvoz market overnight on July 24.

"Shame!" shouted many Ukrainian lawmakers as a majority formed from Zelensky's ruling party, pro-Russian oppo bloc & Yulia Tymoshenko's Batkivshchyna voted to, in effect, dismantle Ukraine's independent anticorruption institutions. My story on a grim day: www.ft.com/content/21cf...

Huge wave of repression in Iran following the bombing campaign time.com/7298282/iran...

Friday night (science) massacre

A headline like this would have seemed unthinkable a month ago

💙💛 Where the kids were taken by Russia #BringKidsBackUK

@marchvidkjaer.bsky.social has been through hell — an ordeal he discusses with painful clarity and eloquence in his latest blog post. I wish him the speediest of recoveries — not least because he is my friend (and also an incredible political scientist)! open.substack.com/pub/marchvid...

❗️ Sunbathing with the enemy: Meet the Kremlin propagandists who vacation in Europe despite demonizing the West on air A new @ezhovs.bsky.social investigation finds 70 of Putin’s propagandists remain unsanctioned, freely traveling to the "russophobic" West.

I've been teaching at Princeton over the same period and the drop-off in reading stamina has been staggering. I'm not sure of the cause -- some blame K-12 shifts to "chunk reading" while others pin it on COVID -- but it's undeniable.

Worth also noting that in my experience polls tend to be biased pro-Pas/ Sandu

This is important context. Ru doesn’t seem to have a realistic chance of achieving this goal but Trump giving an arbitrary 50-day window is suspicious.

I was explaining to my Ukrainian colleague the phrase ‘There’s no such thing as a free lunch’. She told me the equivalent in Ukrainian is ‘The only free cheese is in the mousetrap’ - which is so much better

A Borges story about a guy who gets AI to summarize all the world’s information for him, and then summarize the summary, until the AI has the whole world summarized into a single word. He sits alone at his desk, staring at the word, repeating it endlessly, certain he is experiencing everything

As political scientists, we really want to know when, where, and why people mobilize against repressive governments. Happy to share my latest article is out that helps us understand this in a specific context: intl legal petitions in the UN. How do courageous individuals overcome barriers?

I remember taking Prof Fallon’s con law class! It was one of my favorites. My friends and I would get to the lecture hall early to get a good seat.

Russia's war has struck Ukrainian teens in a uniquely cruel way — already navigating the turbulence of adolescence, they also face the emotional and psychological scars the war continues to leave on them.

"Five months into its unprecedented dismantling of foreign-aid programs, the Trump administration has given the order to incinerate food instead of sending it to people who need it" @hana-kiros.bsky.social, on spending $130,000 to burn food worth $800,000 www.theatlantic.com/health/archi...

“I get home, I say to First Lady 'I had the most wonderful talk with Vladimir. I think we are finished.' And then Melania says to me that Putin has just bombed a nursing home,” — Trump

YES

Journalists have been asking me whether Pu is concerned by Trump’s tariff threat. I’d say only mildly. OTOH, secondary tariffs on Ru exports and extra aid to Ukr can weaken Ru’s position significantly and Trump is fickle enough that it’s not impossible he’d follow through. OTOH…

The fight between the Trump administration and Harvard has become a test for the president’s ability to impose his political agenda on all 2,600 universities in the U.S. Our reporters break down how the crackdown is affecting the world. https://trib.al/IZ4aZU8

“Descended from Immigrants and Revolutionists”: How Family History Shapes Immigration Policy Making doi.org/10.1093/qje/...

FEMA Didn’t Answer Thousands of Calls From Flood Survivors, Documents Show Two days after deadly Texas floods, the agency failed to answer two-thirds of calls from survivors because Noem had let the call center contracts expire on 5 July. It took her until 10 July to renew the contracts

Trump's rhetoric on Russia has hardened: he's blasted Putin's "bullshit," promised Patriots for Ukraine & vowed a "major statement" Monday. But will this mark a real pivot in his policy on the war? Story w/ comrades James Politi @henryjfoy.ft.com @maxseddon.bsky.social: www.ft.com/content/8260...