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“The road of life”: how the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh live under the blockade

LeftEast Editors’ Note: These are days of heightened possibility for another war between Armenia and Azerbaijan, or more accurately, the latter attacking the former to capitalize on its victory in the 2020 war. There are reports of military build-ups along the border and some frantic diplomatic efforts. Zhanna Ohanesian’s article, originally published in the Ukrainian leftist […]

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Wagnerization: How Putin Degraded the Russian State

Founded in 2014 as a private military company owned by the Russian businessman and Putin confidante Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner Group first saw action in Donbas, where it helped separatist forces against the Ukrainian army. Subsequently, it had been deployed in Syria, Libya, and a number of other African countries, usually offering Russia a plausible […]

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Time to Leave the Shadows: #NoToWar Statement On the Prigozhin Coup

Below we share an English translation of a statement on the Prigozhin coup attempt by our comrades at #Невойна. Although events on the ground seem to have concluded rapidly, #NoToWar’s message continues to be relevant and urgent. You can find the Russian original at: https://shorturl.at/dzK45 TIME TO LEAVE THE SHADOWS Friends and comrades! The ruling […]

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The Insult

The night’s last cigarette dies on the asphalt. Here, at a monument memorializing a Marine Corps triumph over my ancestors, I trek to a thicket of trees, retreat to the folds of darkness, and see the nightlights of Washington DC dance to my solitude in the distance. A vista unlike that monotonous cityscape of Baghdad: […]

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Corbyn in Budapest: “We Have to Be Organized on an International Basis”

Note from LeftEast editors: The following interview with Jeremy Corbyn was conducted by Levente Szadai and Csaba Tóth for Mérce on May 7, 2023, in Budapest, and published in Hungarian translation on May 9. We republish the lightly edited transcript as part of a collaboration within ELMO – The Eastern European Left Media Outlet. When […]

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The class conflict behind Russia’s war

Note from LeftEast editors: In this mini-series we reprint two essays first published in Alameda Institute’s Dossier, The War in Ukraine and the Question of Internationalism. We provide the table of contents for reference and further reading. Since Russian forces invaded Ukraine earlier this year, analysts across the political spectrum have struggled to identify exactly […]

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Russian capitalism is both political and normal: On expropriation and social reproduction

Note from LeftEast editors: In this mini-series we reprint two essays first published in Alameda Institute’s Dossier, The War in Ukraine and the Question of Internationalism. We provide the table of contents for reference and further reading. In 2006, in his book The Development of Capitalism in Russia, the late sociologist Simon Clarke wrote that, “a […]

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The US military has used illegal spy balloons for decades

On Feb. 4th the United States shot down a Chinese high-altitude balloon after it sailed over the United States over the course of several days. The Biden administration claimed it was a surveillance balloon, while the Chinese government called it an “unmanned civilian airship used mainly for meteorological research purposes” that had strayed off course […]

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Ransacking Iraq

Four men lie dead before me tonight. Their faces are pixelated on my screen. There is blood on their garments, on their skin, on the parched soil where their corpses are dumped. Their mouths open in a moment of silence, and there are boots in a corner. Twenty years ago in March 2003, our cries […]

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Seeing Soldiers Work: Ukrainian Cinema and the Future of Labor

The Ukrainian premier of Reflection, the latest film from director Valentyn Vasyanovych, was held at Kyiv Critics’ Week in October 2022, more than a year after its theatrical premiere at the 78th Venice International Film Festival. The war in Ukraine has limited the film’s domestic distribution, though Vasyanovych has indicated his primary audience is an […]