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Julia Ioffe

A veteran of The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and Politico reporting from Washington, D.C. on politics and media after Trump.

THE LATEST ARTICLES
NEWSLETTERS
Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin shake hands during the signing ceremony at the Grand Kremlin Palace.
WASHINGTON • March 21, 2023
Xi Jinping, Superstar
An ecstatic reception for the Chinese president in Moscow revealed the dearth of diplomatic and military options before Russia, and just how few friends Vladimir Putin has left.
Kremlin state media has been elated at Ron DeSantis’s statement on Ukraine.
WASHINGTON • March 14, 2023
Putin’s Boy from Tallahassee
In the zero-sum world of rightward Republicanism, politicians are using a yearning to confront China as a veil to abandon Ukraine.
Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny, imprisoned since January 2021, is the subject of the Oscar-nominated documentary ’Navalny.’
WASHINGTON • March 7, 2023
Surviving Putin
A gripping conversation with Christo Grozev, lead Russia investigator for Bellingcat, about his role in the Oscar-nominated documentary ‘Navalny,’ sleeper agents in Europe, and why he can’t go home again.
Russians in Putin’s governing class have begun to feel that, even if the initial blitzkrieg failed, things are back on track.
WASHINGTON • February 28, 2023
Putin’s Oligarchs Fall in Line
The shock and disgust that many Russian elites felt at the beginning of the war—at the notion that Putin had just single-handedly made a disastrous decision that would destroy their own country—has abated. “The universal position is to trust their commander in chief.”
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken at the 2023 Munich Security Conference.
WASHINGTON • February 21, 2023
Peace & Gossip in Munich
News and notes on the future of Putin, Ukraine, NATO, and trans-Atlantic unity, at least as determined by the international heavies at the Munich Security Conference—including the readout on what everyone really said at Trader Vic’s and Schumann’s Bar.
The great Russian offensive has, so far, been remarkably lackluster—and people don’t seem to realize that this current series of sputtering pushes is the offensive, itself.
WASHINGTON • February 14, 2023
Ukraine’s Four-Letter War
As the battle for Ukraine enters its second year, neither side seems willing to negotiate. A source familiar with the Russian posture described Moscow’s opening position as “go fuck yourself.” Another well-informed source said that’s Kyiv’s opener, too.
The balloon has become a brilliant political foil: Republicans painted Joe Biden as weak on China for not immediately blasting the thing out of the sky; when his administration did, it allowed Democrats to show their boss as cool and in control.
WASHINGTON • February 7, 2023
Balloon Mind State
The D.C. foreign policy set responds to the ultimate meme-worthy, news cycle-driven international mini crisis of our times.
What has kept Putin from giving the green light for a wider, more forceful and disruptive asymmetric offensive in Europe?
WASHINGTON • January 31, 2023
Putin’s Plot Against America
There is a growing fear in Washington that Russia will resort to hybrid tactics to inflict pain on Western powers in ways that it can no longer achieve through conventional warfare alone.
Putin Visits Saint Petersburg
WASHINGTON • January 24, 2023
The Putin Super Power Myth
Putin destroyed in a year an energy business that took three generations to build. As it turns out, Russia needed Europe far more than Europe needed Russia.
Putin
WASHINGTON • January 17, 2023
The Putin Poison Pill
As the war in Ukraine grinds on, pressure is building on all sides for the Biden administration to begin negotiations with the Russians, if only to prove what everyone inside the White House, State Department, and Pentagon already knows: the Russians have absolutely zero interest in negotiating.
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