Guns are a Symptom By David K. Shipler The United States of America is now without any sacred places. Churches, mosques, temples, and synagogues are not sacred. Worshippers have been shot to death in Iowa, Texas, California, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Kansas, Colorado, New York, Ohio, Georgia, Wisconsin, and elsewhere…

Yes, Maybe. By David K. Shipler Hindsight is 20/20, so looking back, the warning signs seem crystal clear: the online postings, the violent drawings, the fascination with guns, the peculiar conduct, the disquiet of his peers, even the overt threats, which were missed or minimized by educators, police, and parents. The FBI…

By David K. Shipler Since President Vladimir Putin of Russia announced a heightened nuclear alert level and threatened Western nations with “consequences greater than any you have faced in history,” much of the world has worried that he might go nuclear in his war against Ukraine. But even if he…

“Sacred Hatred of the Enemy” By David K. Shipler As the Red Army swept westward into Germany toward the end of World War II, Russian soldiers wantonly burned villages; looted homes, committed rape, and murdered elderly women and other civilians in cold blood. Soviet Major Lev Kopelev, a German-speaking scholar…

By David K. Shipler To the extent that we think we know the fears and expectations of Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, they seem fraught with contradictions. On the one hand, Putin labeled Ukraine as an incipient NATO base with malicious designs on Russia itself. On the other, he…

By David K. Shipler The great guessing game today is about Russian President Vladimir V. Putin’s inner thinking. He is “surprised,” and “shocked,” we are told by numerous commentators in the West: He “expected,” he “believed,” he “thought” that his war against Ukraine would be swifter, easier, and — yes…

Young Voices from Ukraine By David K. Shipler Warfare confines its victims in the present. The moments of risk and survival overpower memory and prediction, leaving the past and the future to hover like wraiths, outside the crisis. …

Recollections of Kyiv By David K. Shipler An event that now seems sadly remarkable occurred in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, in 1975, when it was part of the Soviet Union. At the time, Kyiv enjoyed such a pleasant ambiance of broad boulevards and relative prosperity that Communist rulers made it…

A Russian Tragedy By David K. Shipler As terrible as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will be for Ukrainians, it also spells suffering for Russians, who cannot shake their own society’s paranoid, authoritarian traditions. Long gone is the modicum of pluralistic politics attempted briefly under Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin. Vanished…