Russia: international hockey? Nyet!

This is a Facebook post from Todd Vanderklooster, who says "Dean Blundell sets the record straight with the facts."

Russia has spent almost four years bombing maternity wards and stealing Ukrainian children, and this week its sports minister went on a TV channel owned by the Russian Ministry of Defence to warn Canada about the consequences. The offence? We won’t let his teenagers play hockey in Red Deer, Alberta because the team’s owner (Putin) keeps murdering and kidnapping and raping Ukrainians.

 

How we got here

 

The IIHF kicked Russia and Belarus out of international hockey in February 2022, right after the full-scale invasion. The problem is how they did it. Rather than say “you invaded a country,” the IIHF hung the ban on safety and security concerns, and they kept renewing it on those grounds every year.

 

On October 30, a three-man panel at the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne said that wasn’t good enough. Giulio Palermo, Ismail Selim and Mark Hovell ruled the IIHF hadn’t produced enough evidence of a security risk and ordered Russia back into every IIHF championship this season, effective immediately. That starts with the World Juniors in Edmonton and Red Deer on December 26.

 

Now for the part that stinks. A Swiss outlet reported that two of those three arbitrators had been attending Russian arbitration conferences in Moscow. Palermo, the chair, spoke at one in a Moscow hotel in September. On October 9 he was put in charge of the Russian hockey case. CAS says he travelled privately, paid his own way, and that nobody objected to his appointment at the time. Fine. There’s no proof anybody was bought. There’s also no version of this where a guy working the Moscow legal conference circuit should be the one deciding whether Russia gets its hockey back, and CAS knows exactly how that looks.

 

The first casualty was Norway. Their kids won Division 1A last year and earned promotion to the top tournament for the first time since 2024. On Sunday, the IIHF told them they’re out because Russia needs the spot. A group of teenagers who did everything right lost their place to a country running a war of extermination next door to them.

 

Nobody wants to play them

 

The reaction from actual hockey countries took about 72 hours.

 

Finland went first and said it would not play Russia while the war continues. Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Latvia and Czechia followed for the 2027 World Championship in Germany. Austria is weighing the same move. Germany is openly considering walking away as host. For the World Juniors, Sweden, Finland, Czechia, Latvia and Switzerland have all said their teams won’t take the ice against Russia. The Finnish city of Turku says it won’t co-host next year’s World Juniors if Russia shows up. Latvia doesn’t even have a choice in the matter, because its parliament passed a law in 2024 banning national teams from playing Russia or Belarus under any flag.

 

Then the money started leaving. Skoda, the main sponsor of the World Championship, says it will reassess. AJ Products, a Swedish sponsor since 1989, wants its logo pulled if Russia plays. Even the IIHF, which is obeying the ruling, says it disagrees with it and that the fallout was badly underestimated.

 

So that’s the “return to the hockey family.” The family changed the locks.

 

Carney did the one thing CAS can’t touch

 

Mark Carney was asked about it on November 3 at the Commonwealth Summit in Antigua, and he didn’t need a committee. As long as Russia and Belarus are backing what he called an illegal, unjustified, horrific war, nobody competes for those countries in Canada. On the World Juniors specifically: “the Russians will not be there.”

Here’s why that ends the conversation. CAS is a private arbitration body in Switzerland. It can order the IIHF around all day. It cannot order Canada to stamp a passport. Dick Pound, who has sat as a CAS arbitrator himself, said as much. Visas are a sovereign decision, and since 2023 Canadian immigration law makes anyone on our sanctions list inadmissible, full stop. Ottawa says the measure covers athletes representing Russia or Belarus, and that it exists to stop both regimes from using Canadian events for state representation and propaganda. Individual Russians are assessed case by case and neutral athletes can still compete, which is why Russians in the NHL and junior hockey are still playing here. The target is the flag, the anthem and the delegation of Kremlin officials who travel with it.

 

Degtyarev’s threats are hilarious

 

Russia’s response is that boycotting teams should take forfeit losses, that Canada could lose the right to host international events, and that Moscow will be reporting us to the IOC. Scandinavia, the Baltics and Canada are now “outcasts of world sport,” according to the man whose country has been barred from most of it since 2022.

A reminder about hosting rights. Russia was supposed to host the 2023 World Juniors in Novosibirsk and Omsk. The IIHF stripped them of it after the invasion. The tournament went to Halifax and Moncton. Canada has hosted this event more than any country alive, sells it out every time, and funds half the IIHF’s good years doing it. If the Kremlin thinks the hockey world is going to pick an empty building in Omsk over a full one in Edmonton, the Plan B is better drugs than we thought.

 

And then there’s Ovechkin

 

Alex Ovechkin rolled into Ottawa on Tuesday for his first game in Canada since he starred in a September campaign ad for United Russia, Putin’s party.

He defended the ad with “I’m Russian, and I support my country.” Latvia banned him from entering the country that same week. The Ukrainian Canadian Congress met him outside the Canadian Tire Centre with a protest.

 

His take on the World Juniors is that fans want to see the best players and athletes just want to play. He also said nobody is using him.

 

Alex. You founded a group called Putin Team. You made a campaign ad for the party running the war. You are the single most valuable piece of sports propaganda the Kremlin owns, and you’re doing it from a mansion in Virginia on an NHL salary.

 

“They just want to play” is bullshit

 

I get why the line works on people. They’re 18- and 19-year-old kids. They didn’t order anything.

 

But a national team is the state in a jersey, and in Russia that’s literal. CSKA is the army’s club. The government ran a doping program through its own security services at the Sochi Olympics. Athletes were put on stage at Putin’s stadium war rally in 2022 wearing the Z. The sports minister making threats this week is also the head of the Russian Olympic Committee. A gold-medal game in Edmonton, with the Russian anthem playing, is a Kremlin broadcast, and it tells every Russian watching that the world has moved on and the war cost them nothing.

 

It’s sport washing at its finest.

 

Meanwhile, the International Criminal Court has an arrest warrant out for Putin over the deportation of Ukrainian children, and Ukraine has documented more than 19,000 of them taken. Hundreds of Ukrainian athletes and coaches are dead. Russian missiles flattened the hockey arena in Druzhkivka in 2023. Ukraine’s juniors just want to play too. Some of them are in the ground.

 

And Russia does this to its own. Navalny died in an Arctic prison. People get years for a Facebook post. When goalie Ivan Fedotov signed with the Philadelphia Flyers in 2022, he was grabbed off the street and shipped to a naval base in the far north. That’s how the regime treats hockey players who want to play somewhere it doesn’t approve of.

Alberta alone is home to about 70,000 Ukrainians who fled this war. Asking them to share a rink with the flag that drove them out so a TV schedule stays tidy was never going to happen, and it shouldn’t.

 

The road back is simple, and Russia knows where it is. Leave Ukraine. Return the children. Until then, enjoy the KHL, keep the Plan B a secret, and stay the f*** out of Canada.

 

Trump's tax returns, 2016-2020

 

I read the following post by Trump on Truth Social:

Does anybody remember, in my First Term, the relentless effort by the anti-American Dumocrats to get my personal Tax Returns, something that has always been off limits for anyone other than Donald J. Trump. Shockingly, they won this unprecedented right in the U.S. Supreme Court, and hired the best and toughest accountants in the Country to “get Trump.” After one year of intense work, these brilliant Democrat inspired accountants FOUND NOTHING except that I paid my taxes and did everything right. Now, in order to deflect from MASSIVE BLUE STATE CORRUPTION & CRIME, they are at it again, illegally threatening Republicans with knowingly false accusations and charges. Other than cheating, this is how they won the Midterms - But we won’t let our Country go to hell! President DJT 

Being skeptical, I wanted to check it out, so I had the following conversation with ChatGPT: 

Trump claims the democrats have his tax returns and they show nothing wrong. Is that true?

Partly true, but Trump's description leaves out some important details.

Democrats did obtain and examine Trump's federal tax returns for 2015 through 2020. In December 2022, the Democratic-controlled House Ways and Means Committee released them publicly.

What did the examination find?

1. No finding that Trump had committed tax fraud was announced by the committee.

2. But the returns revealed that Trump paid just $750 in federal income tax in both 2016 and 2017, and nothing in 2020.

3. They also revealed extensive use of business losses and deductions to reduce his tax bills.

4. The congressional investigation raised questions about the IRS's handling of his returns and the effectiveness of presidential tax audits.

   The important distinction: Not finding proven tax fraud is not the same as establishing that everything was proper.

   Trump's statement that Democrats examined his returns and found nothing wrong is therefore misleading. The committee did not issue a blanket certification that his tax affairs were above reproach.

   Also, the returns covered six years, not his entire financial history.

$1,500 in three years; how much did he pay in 2018 and 2019?  

According to the returns released by the House Ways and Means Committee:

• 2018: $999,466 in federal income tax.

• 2019: $133,445.

So, across 2016–2020, the figures were:

Year	Federal income tax
2016	$750
2017	$750
2018	$999,466
2019	$133,445
2020	$0
Five-year total	$1,134,411

Source: Washington Post's breakdown of the tax returns.

 

 

Affordable housing in Canada

This is from a Facebook post by Brandon Blades, shared by Ric Cross:

Every time someone says the Liberals caused the housing crisis, they leave out the part where Harper and Poilievre built it.

 

This is what happened, in plain words.

 

For decades, the federal government helped keep rents low in non-profit and co-op housing. Those deals had expiry dates. When they expired, the government had to renew them or the homes would go to market rent.

 

Under Stephen Harper and his government, they didn't renew them. The help stopped. The homes went to market rent or got sold off to corporate landlords and developers. 800,000 affordable rental homes, gone.

 

That's not my number. It's on the record in the House of Commons. And the data behind it is worse. Between 2011 and 2016 alone, Canada lost 322,600 low-rent homes, 15 affordable homes lost for every single one built. Another 180,000 non-profit homes lost since 2015 as the agreements kept expiring.

 

Poilievre was Harper's housing minister. On his watch, Parliament's record says six affordable homes built, and 800,000 lost. Six.

 

Then the same people who did that turn around and blame the Liberals for the housing crisis they created. The Liberals brought in the National Housing Strategy, Build Canada Homes, and a budget that puts $44.7 billion into housing and 200,000 new homes. The Conservatives brought in a wrecking ball and called it fiscal management.

 

There's a reason they haven't won an election since 2011. Canadians remember, and if they don't, we have history to look back on. At this rate, they won't win another one for decades to come.

 

Memories

The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

Because it was, in fact, really cool

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) November 11, 2026

Click here for Heather Cox Richardson's diary entry on Substack for November 8, 2026. She explains how "One hundred and fifty years ago, after the Civil War, General Ulysses S. Grant believed the cause of the Confederacy was 'one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and for which there was the least excuse.' But when he accepted General Robert E. Lee’s surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia in the hamlet of Appomattox Court House, Virginia, in April 1865, he allowed Confederate soldiers to go home with only a promise that they would not take up arms again, in the hope that they would “be able to put in a crop to carry themselves and their families through the next winter.' It was a humanitarian gesture and also a practical one, for southerners were starving, and if they missed planting season, the devastation would get worse."

But following Lincoln's deaht, President Andrew Johnson pardoned most of the leaders of the rebellion, in hopes that they would support him. But those leaders claimed that the pardons were because Johnson recognized the virtue of their cause: "Within a decade, white southerners were lamenting the 'Lost Cause,' and northern sympathizers threw Black Americans overboard in their rush to reunite with white southerners against a government that worked for all Americans. The true history of the Confederacy—a brief rebellion against the United States to create a slave-holding nation—was whitewashed as a stand against federal overreach. As such, it endured, carrying racism and rebellion forward for more than a century."

Gerald Ford's preemptive pardon of Nixon for any offenses he may have committed further undermined the principle of accountability. "Nixon never publicly accepted responsibility for his obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and contempt of Congress. Instead, Nixon blamed the press, whose members designed their 'leaks and accusations and innuendo' to destroy him.

Reagan also escaped accountability when his "advisors ignored both U.S. sanctions on Iran’s revolutionary government and the law prohibiting aid to the right-wing Contra rebels trying to overthrow Nicaragua’s Marxist Sandinista government. In what became known as the Iran-Contra affair, they sold highly marked-up arms to Iran, and sent the proceeds—off the books—to aid the Contras."

In 1989 the head of the Office of Legal Counsel, William Barr, wrote a memo warning officials in the George H.W. Bush administration to be wary of “legislative encroachments” on the president’s authority. When he later became attorney general, he backed Bush’s pardons of the eleven Reagan officials charged in the Iran-contra affair.

She continues: 

Barr went on to become the attorney general in Donald Trump’s first administration, and that administration continued the push against accountability. Then, after one grand jury charged Trump with 40 criminal counts for retaining and mishandling classified documents after he left office and then obstructing justice to cover up that retention, and a second charged Trump with four felony counts related to his attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, Trump moved to dismiss the cases on the grounds that “a President has absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions performed within the outer perimeter of his official responsibilities.

On July 1, 2024, in Trump v. United States, the Supreme Court agreed, shattering the fundamental principle of U.S. democracy: that no one is above the law. Since returning to office, Trump has taken advantage of that immunity by turning the machinery of the federal government against those he perceives as his enemies.

She concludes:

“'[W]here, say some, is the King of America?' Thomas Paine wrote in Common Sense, the 1776 pamphlet that convinced British colonists in North America to cut ties with their king and start a new nation. '[I]n America the law is king. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other.'” 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bookmark

The best bookmark.. 😅 https://t.co/8kInvbcZfo

— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) November 7, 2026

Newsom proposes a "Buffett Rule" -- tax the rich

Click here for Gavin Newsom's Substack article of June 26, 2026, entitled "It's time for a national billionaires' tax and a new social compact," subtitled "We must democratize the American economy to save democracy."

Newsom opposes California's proposed wealth tax (the vote was held on November 3, but the results are not yet known; as of this writing, the vote is roughly 54% opposed, 46% in favor, with about 72% of the votes counted), on two grounds. First, he says, "You may not be able to pick up and move to Texas or Florida to shelter your income from taxation, but I promise you that billionaires can, and do. Wealth is movable, and it shops for the state with the lowest taxes. The fight belongs at the federal level, where this broken system was created in the first place." 

His second reason for opposition is the fact that the proposal dedicates 90% of the tax income to healthcare, effectively allowing one interest group (the healthcare workers' union that sponsored the initiative) to dictate a major portion of California's budget priorities. He specifically objects that the measure leaves out public schools, housing, homelessness programs, public safety, and other state priorities.

In a New York Times article in 2011 titled "Stop Coddling the Super-Rich," Warren Buffett famously complained that his secretary paid a higher rate of tax than he did. Newsom proposes "a modern Buffett Rule": He wrote: "So here is what I support: A national billionaires' tax."

His proposal includes:

• A minimum tax on people with net worth exceeding $100 million.

• Ensuring billionaires pay at least the tax rate paid by their own workers.

• Closing loopholes that allow wealthy people to borrow against stock portfolios without paying taxes.

• Changes to inheritance taxation.

• Restoring corporate tax rates to pre-2017 levels. 

  He writes:
  

  It’s clear that we are entering an entirely new economic paradigm. Automation could create unfathomable growth, but who benefits from that wealth? We need to ensure every American owns a stake in the future being built by AI through a national public equity fund that takes a major stake in the new economy. Simply, as artificial intelligence reshapes the country, every American should own a piece of the future it builds.
   

  Further: 

  There is a working coalition in this country of blue-collar and white-collar, urban and rural, the people who built this country and the people who are trying to find their place in it. They did everything right, and the system still has nothing for them. They are asking for the basics of a decent life, a home in a safe neighborhood, and a doctor they can see without dread. They need child care, an affordable college education, and something left over at the end of the month. What stands in their way is the federal tax code, a corporate code, and an inheritance code written for a different set of Americans. We can rewrite all three together at the federal level with a new social compact. It’s time for an economic reset for America.

  If we do act, it becomes a once-in-a-century chance to renew the American Dream by funding universal child care, making higher education and career training free, funding healthcare, and making a down payment on a real industrial policy for the AI century.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trump hardens his position.

Big news today:Trump fires his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, and replaces here with MAGA hard-core Stephen Miller.

Click here for Heather Cox Richardson's diary entry, Letters from an American, on Substack for November 6.

 She points out how Trumpism, and with it the beliefs of Stephen Miller, were firmly rejected in Tuesday's election, and yet Trump appoints a hard-core ideologue as his chief of staff.

Miller was already assistant chief of staff, so things might not change much. But Miller has often been described as Trump's power behind the throne, and it looks as though, as Trump concentrates more and more on his vanity and home renovation projects, Miller might take even more control. 

  

Click here for Paul Krugman's Substack entry for November 6, 2026, titled "America's Backlash Against Oligarchy," subtitled "Why the megabillionaires lost big Tuesday." Here's a good chart illustrating political donations of the megarich:

 

That tiny billionaire elite spent massively in this year’s midterm elections, with the spending overwhelmingly in support of Republicans:

 

Best league in the world!?

I'll play this every time men criticize the level of play in the WNBA:

I think this explains the reason for the explosion in popularity of the WNBA better than any Angel Reese / Caitlin Clark argument ever could. https://t.co/t4mXvrhh69

— Sports Patriot (@SportsPatriotUS) November 7, 2026

Iowa Blue!

IOWA BLUE 💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙 https://t.co/dE2rGurRak

— Gaby :) (@ouatdemii) November 4, 2026

Nathalia Filgueiras

I am absolutely sickened by the horrendous comments directed at this heroic young woman who did her duty to the very end. She wasn’t even the Pilot in Command (PIC). Her job at that time was handling all the comms. The male pilot at the controls had already realized the graveness of the situation and had started praying as there was nothing either of them could do to save the aircraft. Do not listen to the cockpit audio of her last minutes, please. It should not even have been made public. Nathalia Filgueiras did her duty under the absolute worst of circumstances. She relayed factual information right up until impact while shoulder-rolling at 60° bank at 600 MPH. The information will be invaluable in the investigation. Even as she knew her short but amazing 20 years of life were about to end, she devoted those last seconds to saving future lives by providing critical information to ground control that will inevitably save lives in the future by preventing these types of crashes. The very definition of Heroism. At only 20 years old. 😭💔🕯️ Please keep her, her family and the other crash victims in your prayers. 💔😭😢🙏

— Lilith✡️🌈🖤🏳️‍🌈🪷💜 (@Lilith_Curses) November 2, 2026

The electoral pendulum is swinging

Click here for Heather Cox Richardson's Substack diary entry for November 2.

It summarizes Trump's ridiculous "closing argument for the midterm elections," his speech at the Reflecting Pool, where he rambled on about the pool for 16 minutes, then turning to the usual lies and wild exaggerations he's been spouting at every one of his rallies lately.

 Being a historian, she compares today's situation -- where "a small group of men has rigged the system to funnel the wealth produced by ordinary people into their own pockets. With that wealth, they have bought power and undermined democracy in favor of themselves" -- with similar situations the country has been in since its founding.

She starts with the push of settlers across the Appalachian Mountains into "the miraculously rich resources of the land to the west" discovered by Daniel Boone. She says the settlers "quickly discovered that equality was not the inevitable result of economic freedom. Some men settled on better land than others, some had family money, some were just lucky, and quickly, those men accumulated more than others."

Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance, "which was designed to prevent wealthy men from dominating the new western lands. However, "over the next fifty years, a handful of wealthy enslavers tightened a stranglehold on the South. After 1854, when their intention to control the whole nation became obvious, Americans from a range of political parties came together to oust them from power. They created a government that worked to develop the economy from the bottom, educating young men and giving them land to farm. They tried to make America into a land where every man, regardless of race or background, could rise through hard work. They abolished human enslavement except as punishment for crime, then gave freedmen the vote to enable them to protect their own economic interests."

After the Civil War, "Money and power again began to concentrate at the top of society, among those who became known as “robber barons.” When their control of the government helped to crash the economy in 1893, the American people once again came together to oust them from power, and the Progressive Era recreated a government intended to work for everyone."

But then "The same old pattern of demonizing Black Americans and immigrants for supposedly stealing tax dollars repeated. Men determined to control the country insisted that government regulations and taxes took away a man’s liberty to run his business as he saw fit and undermined the individualism that made America great. In the 1920s, they convinced American voters to turn the government over to businessmen, whose policies, once again, concentrated wealth. When the bottom fell out of that system in 1929 with the Great Crash, Americans came together to demand government work for all Americans, rather than a privileged few."

The result was FDR's "New Deal," and "and most Americans thought the system that regulated business, provided a basic social safety net, promoted infrastructure, and protected civil rights was so popular it would last forever."

But starting in 1980, Reagan began to undermine that system. Blaming "socialism," the Republicans cut regulations and taxes, helping money—"more than $50 trillion—move upward to the richest 1% of Americans. With it moved political power"

And so the U.S. finds itself in a situation today where voting is suppressed while billionaires pump money into the electoral system -- Elon Musk has spent at least $446 million, an astounding sum for a midterm election -- to buy Republican control of Congress. 

However, it seems the pendulum is swinging again: "the open looting of the government in Trump’s second term appears to have revealed to a majority of the American people that the policies the Republican Party has enacted since 1981 benefit only a few. Once again, it seems, Americans are coming together, ready to follow the pattern of the past and rebuild a government that works not just for the wealthy, but for everyone." 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

https://x.com/pitlessball/status/2107939018721706395/video/1

Caitlin surrounded!

The single best play of the season https://t.co/veOHh8fjkK

— The WNBA is Openly Corrupt (@power_ties) October 24, 2026

Click here for Heather Cox Richardson's Letters from an American, her Substack diary, for October 4, 2026.

It's a short discussion of the Roaring '20s, the stock market crash (October 24, 1929, was the beginning; the market teetered on the edge until the bottom fell out on October 29, Black Tuesday), the Great Depression, and economic recovery and the New Deal under FDR. 

Witkoff backlash - Putin a humanitarian?

Steve Witkoff -- not a diplomat, but Trump's NYC real estate buddy acting as "special envoy for peace missions" --  is facing backlash after calling Vladimir Putin a “humanitarian” during talks in St. Petersburg, after Russia released American Stephen Hubbard from four years of detention. I've copy-and-pasted the following response from one of my favorites, Caring Guy, on Twitter. It's in the form of a reply to Witkoff:

WTAF is wrong with you? Stop emarrasing the US. 

You actually stood in front of Vladimir Putin today and called him a humanitarian. You thanked him for releasing a 74-year-old American whom his government had wrongfully imprisoned for more than four years. I’m glad Stephen Hubbard is free, but apparently you need a history lesson about the man you’re praising. 

Let’s start with Ukraine. Putin ordered the full-scale invasion of a sovereign country in February 2022, launching a war that has killed and wounded hundreds of thousands of people. Russian forces have bombed residential neighborhoods, hospitals, schools, and critical civilian infrastructure. They’ve destroyed entire communities, attacked power grids, and left families without electricity and heat during freezing winters. According to the United Nations, at least 2,570 civilians were killed and another 15,211 injured in Ukraine during just the first nine months of 2026. Those are verified casualties, not the total human cost of this war. 

Let’s talk about the Ukrainian children forcibly deported or transferred by Russian authorities. The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Putin in March 2023 over alleged war crimes involving the unlawful deportation and transfer of children. A United Nations investigation subsequently concluded that Russian authorities committed crimes against humanity through these deportations and enforced disappearances. The investigators documented more than 1,200 affected children, most of whom had not been returned to their families. 

Then there’s Bucha, where Russian troops summarily executed civilians during their occupation. There’s the systematic torture of Ukrainian prisoners, sexual violence, enforced disappearances, and the deliberate targeting of civilians. United Nations investigators have documented these atrocities and concluded that Russian authorities committed multiple crimes against humanity. These aren’t accusations invented by Putin’s political opponents. They’re the findings of international investigations. 

And Putin’s record didn’t begin with Ukraine. Under his leadership, Russian forces devastated Chechnya, where human rights investigators documented disappearances, torture, and summary executions. In Syria, Russian forces helped Bashar al-Assad wage devastating military campaigns that struck hospitals, schools, markets, and residential neighborhoods. Human Rights Watch documented war crimes committed during those operations. 

Now let’s look inside Russia. Putin’s government has systematically suppressed political opposition, imprisoned critics, censored journalists, and criminalized antiwar dissent. Alexei Navalny, one of Putin’s most prominent political opponents, survived poisoning, was imprisoned, and died in Russian custody in February 2024. Russian authorities have continued persecuting his supporters and lawyers. 

And let’s not forget Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17. All 298 people aboard that civilian aircraft died when a Russian Buk missile brought it down over eastern Ukraine in 2014. International investigators subsequently identified strong indications that Putin authorized the supply of the missile system to Russian-backed separatists. 

Steve, diplomacy sometimes requires dealing with people responsible for terrible things. I understand that. But negotiating with Putin doesn’t require flattering him, ignoring his record, or pretending that releasing one wrongfully detained American somehow makes up for the suffering inflicted on millions of innocent people. 

You can thank Putin for releasing Stephen Hubbard without rewriting history. You can negotiate peace without abandoning the truth. And you can represent the United States without standing in front of a man wanted by the International Criminal Court and praising his humanitarian credentials. 

The people buried beneath the rubble of Ukrainian cities, the families searching for their missing children, the prisoners who have endured torture, and the millions driven from their homes deserve more than an American diplomat publicly praising the man whose government inflicted so much of that suffering. 

Do you even know what "humanitarian" means?