Temerty Professor of Modern European History, Munk School, University of Toronto; Permanent Fellow, IWM Vienna; Emeritus Levin Professor, Yale. Author of "On Freedom," "On Tyranny," "Our Malady," "Road to Unfreedom," "Black Earth," and "Bloodlands"
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We’re back. Join our next nationwide day of defiance on October 18. Trump’s regime is abducting immigrants, deploying troops in our streets, rigging maps to silence voters, and defying the courts, but standing up to wannabe kings is part of our DNA. Let’s get to work: www.nokings.org?SQF_SOURCE=i...
Labor Day. I thought of the lines from Shelley’s poem “Ozymandias”, as I contemplated the poster of Donald Trump that now decorate the Department of Labor in Washington, DC. I thought of labors of creation, and of destruction. snyder.substack.com/p/look-on-my...
US foreign policy update: friends alienated, enemies united, armed forces spreading mulch in DC. MAGA
I wrote this last November, but it is all too relevant now. "it will be more useful to think of oligarchs on an island, starting in apparent unity, dreaming an impossible Russian dream, wreaking bloody havoc, and then coming apart." snyder.substack.com/p/oligarchs-...
Some of the names have changed since I wrote this last November, but the central reality is, sadly, upon us. snyder.substack.com/p/decapitati...
A friend in need…
Talk to Putin, then fire your Russia expert. www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...
Much good sense here, as usual. @ngumenyuk.bsky.social www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/real...
Some of the names have changed since I wrote this last November, but the central reality is, sadly, upon us. snyder.substack.com/p/decapitati...
"If it were true that Ukraine belongs to Russia in the 2020s because a Russian dictator knows a legend about a Viking in the 860s... millions of people who actually live there would have no voice in their own identity: no choice but to accept the executions, the torture, the kidnapping of children."
Trump is firing the competent people in the national security apparatus because they are competent. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/20/u...
It’s Putinism — no one anywhere can be free because my people might get ideas
"The seduction of Kyiv is this intensity of life, intellectual and otherwise—a luminousness born of desperation." @marcishore.bsky.social www.nybooks.com/online/2025/...
Protecting the Russian aggressor makes the war bloodier and longer. And that is just what we are doing. Good reporting by WSJ here but poor choice of photo. www.wsj.com/politics/nat...
He’s wrong about everything, and thinks he’s right about everything. Hard to tell which is worse. The war will end when Russia decides no longer to fight. The US could make that happen with a few simple policies. Instead the Trump administration offers ridiculous analysis and pathetic excuses.
Today is UA Independence Day. Z dnem nezalezhnosti!
"If it were true that Ukraine belongs to Russia in the 2020s because a Russian dictator knows a legend about a Viking in the 860s... millions of people who actually live there would have no voice in their own identity: no choice but to accept the executions, the torture, the kidnapping of children."
"Nothing that happened in medieval eastern Europe bound future states to make war against each other a thousand years later" My latest essay: "The myths that made Putin’s war" www.ft.com/content/9731...
"Nothing that happened in medieval eastern Europe bound future states to make war against each other a thousand years later" My latest essay: "The myths that made Putin’s war" www.ft.com/content/9731...
Everyone who was wrong about Trump — please say so openly to those who trust you and follow you. You have influence and thus bear responsibility.
This is horrible. Attacks on the humanities are another way to destroy our future. Now is when we need the humanities the most.
One of the most terrible crimes of Russia’s terrible war. www.newsweek.com/president-pu...
As usual, making the important points. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...
Russia does this for many reasons, but one of them is to show that Putin owns Trump. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/18/u...
Current US policy is making this Russian atrocity worse. People in Zaporizhzhia take in refugees from occupied zones and build new underground schools to keep kids safe. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/18/u...
As Ukrainian and European leaders travel to Washington for discussions in the White House this Monday about ending Russia’s illegal war of aggression, Americans would do well to remember these ten principles of negotiation. snyder.substack.com/p/common-sen...
As Ukrainian and European leaders travel to Washington for discussions in the White House this Monday about ending Russia’s illegal war of aggression, Americans would do well to remember ten principles of negotiation. snyder.substack.com/p/common-sen...
We need to be able to say what protests are for. Serbs are protesting for the rule of law and have been doing so in large numbers for a long time. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...
2/2. Everyone using the phrase "land swap" should please specify which Russian territory Ukraine would be getting. So far it’s a euphemism for forcing Ukraine to give things up to Russia.
1/2. The phrase "land swap" is being used to mean "Ukraine concedes land illegally occupied by Russia and also concedes territory that is not even occupied." That is not a swap.
Excellent proposals. Trump will have to summon the energy to climb out of Putin’s pocket, though. time.com/7310116/trum...
A good summary of the Alaska fiasco. www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder...
A guess about a point Putin and Trump agreed on: that Putin won’t release the files about Russia’s campaigns to support Trump in 2016 and 2020 so long as Trump continues to aid Russia’s war.
@timothysnyder.bsky.social: Trump has made Ukraine war 'longer and worse' youtu.be/KpbMmcSWz-Y?...
Putin has to keep Trump on side to have a chance of winning the war. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/a...
"In the ancient world, people spoke of 'Ultima Thule,' a mythical land in the extreme north, the end of the earth. By venturing north to Alaska to meet Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump reaches his own Ultima Thule, the arctic endpoint of a foreign policy dreamworld." snyder.substack.com/p/ultima-thule
"Were Putin to follow his own logic, he would not be invading Ukraine, but handing over European Russia to Finland or Sweden."
"Putin is in love with a legend. Historically speaking, this is very familiar: new regimes, such as Putin's, seek compensation in myths of ancient origin."
As Putin heads to Alaska with his maps and narratives, here's an essay I wrote last year about one of his spurious justifications for Russia's illegal war of aggression—his ideological story that Russia is an ancient state, and Ukraine is historically Russian land snyder.substack.com/p/putins-leg...
"In the ancient world, people spoke of 'Ultima Thule,' a mythical land in the extreme north, the end of the earth. By venturing north to Alaska to meet Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump reaches his own Ultima Thule, the arctic endpoint of a foreign policy dreamworld." snyder.substack.com/p/ultima-thule
"In the ancient world, people spoke of 'Ultima Thule,' a mythical land in the extreme north, the end of the earth. By venturing north to Alaska to meet Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump reaches his own Ultima Thule, the arctic endpoint of a foreign policy dreamworld." snyder.substack.com/p/ultima-thule
"In the ancient world, people spoke of 'Ultima Thule,' a mythical land in the extreme north, the end of the earth. By venturing north to Alaska to meet Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump reaches his own Ultima Thule, the arctic endpoint of a foreign policy dreamworld." snyder.substack.com/p/ultima-thule
The claim to Alaska — Russia has been doing this for years — I was meaning to predict they would exploit this but waited because I thought that the Russians would wait until the day itself to use it to deride Trump. But he’s using it against himself and ahead of schedule. youtu.be/9uF6wlwGo3U?...
It's good that Mr. Brooks is speaking out and doing something positive by talking about the problem. “AI” can’t do that. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/08/t...
For decades I have swum and boated in this lake. You don’t have to get the government to raise its water level to kayak. You get in, push off, and paddle. Decadent empire stuff. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
There are historical cases, going back hundreds or thousands of years, of humans reacting quickly to climate change. And then there is the current case of humans both causing the climate change and refusing to react to it. www.wired.com/story/kerr-c...
The sad and fundamental truth is that neither the Obama administration nor the Clinton campaign took Russian electoral interference seriously, meaning that now, a decade on, Russia’s man keeps trying to prove that he’s not. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/31/u...
A shadow falls across The Shire www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...
Help Ukraine protect its skies from nightly Russian terror. DONATE 👇 u24.gov.ua/sky-sentinel...
In a recent lecture in Vienna, @timothysnyder.bsky.social, IWM Lesya Ukrainka Fellow, showed how authoritarianism erases a nation's distinctiveness, as seen in Belarus under Russian sway. Yet still, Belarus' vivid past suggests other possible futures. Watch here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ab5...
🚨 🚨 As if the recent obsession with “Alligator Alcatraz”—and the images and memes popping up all over social media in celebration of it—isn’t grotesque enough as it is. A 🧵 Just look at the images our own government is putting out: 1/
Trump and Miller are intent on building an unaccountable domestic secret police force that would be the world's third-biggest security force by funding levels, after the US and China's *militaries*. That kind of funding dwarfs its stated purpose, which tells you what its real purpose will be.
Once again, this is a massive public jobs program for fascists. This bill was never just about tax cuts and gutting social services. It's about investing our collective resources in violence and using state power to spread fear and destroy solidarity. We need to resist this with all we've got.
Worth a careful read. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/03/o...
On the relationship between the manufacture of statelessness and mass atrocities see my book "Black Earth" www.thebulwark.com/p/can-trump-...
"It is too easy, more than three years into this terrible war, to call to mind dinner parties, academic conferences, weddings, where memory folds and unfolds to admit a shadow, because someone who was there, and who should still be with us, has been killed." snyder.substack.com/p/guest-host...
Bolsonaro using Trump to target his own country with tariffs makes both men political poison in Brazil. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...
We found hacked data that revealed dozens of people on deportation flights to El Salvador are missing. 🔗 www.404media.co/flight-manif...
This is interesting because, as everyone knows, “hoax” is Trump jargon for “wholly true” www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
In my research on complicity one thing is clear: It is VERY hard for people to backtrack on rationalizations and self justifications, i.e., to admit they were wrong. People coming to a realization that they were scammed is a big deal; no one likes to admit they were fooled 1/
Instead of reading the recent piece in @theatlantic.com that misrepresents the history of public health, read this thoughtful and well-researched older piece from the same publication. www.theatlantic.com/health/archi...
We don't need Trump or Bondi to sift through the stack and tell America what they think is “credible” in the Epstein files. Thanks, but no thanks—we’ll decide ourselves. The president should stop playing us for fools and suckers. Release everything—now.
One of the first things Vladimir Putin did on becoming president was take over NTV, the TV channel that hosted a satirical puppet show because he didn't like the Putin doll and how he was portrayed. He arrested NTV's owner and only released him when he signed the channel over. #Colbert
This, tragically, is the right away to report on Trump’s moves on Monday which were supposed to be great for Ukraine. Russia now has 50 days impunity to hammer Ukrainian civilians. And there is no guarantee Trump will do anything after that as well.
To all of those think-tankers writing solemn papers about how to get to a ceasefire: The war will not end until Ukraine wins
Incredible how much Trump policies help Chinese communists.
Two people worth listening to!
Just sent out my free weekend update. As part of reality weekend i compare what Biden did for Ukraine and what Trump has actually done. Look, I was more critical of Biden than most, but compared to Trump, he was a Ukrainian lion. Trump has made Russia stronger. open.substack.com/pub/phillips...
🔴 Russian forces used a drone to attack a one-year-old child and an elderly woman in the village of Pravdyne, Kherson region. The child was killed on the spot. According to regional authorities, the victims were in their yard when the strike hit.
"It is too easy, more than three years into this terrible war, to call to mind dinner parties, academic conferences, weddings, where memory folds and unfolds to admit a shadow, because someone who was there, and who should still be with us, has been killed." snyder.substack.com/p/guest-host...
Very good work. Read it and act. www.notesfromthecircus.com/p/the-secret...
Mamdani is not allowed to get very high SAT scores. And Rufo is allowed to either publicly lie or publicly misunderstand how SAT scoring works.
DEI hire
Two great people to follow and from whom to learn. @ngumenyuk.bsky.social and Volodymyr Yermolenko
Save some lives and help people who have had far too many sleepless nights these last 3.5 years. u24.gov.ua/sky-sentinel...
Prof Popova is right. Russia demands the end of Ukrainian sovereignty. That should be stated clearly.
Prof Skocpol making a crucial point here. The centralized police. And then the lawless quasipolice who guard the camps. Trump’s death bill moves the US towards those two thresholds, well known from Germany in the 1930s. talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/criti...
As these political and personal purges continue, important agencies will become unable to perform their basic functions, and at some point will only be able to spread the purges into the larger society. www.lawfaremedia.org/article/good...
"With the passage of Trump's death bill, we face the prospect of many great harms, including an archipelago of concentration camps across the United States." snyder.substack.com/p/concentrat...
Thanks to quieter decisions by members of Donald Trump’s administration, “the American realignment with Russia and against Ukraine and Europe is gathering pace—not merely in rhetoric but in reality,” @anneapplebaum.bsky.social writes:
"With the passage of Trump's death bill, we face the prospect of many great harms, including an archipelago of concentration camps across the United States." snyder.substack.com/p/concentrat...
"On Tyranny" free resources to use and to share, now or any time snyder.substack.com/p/on-tyranny...
Trump spoke of “shylocks,” which is one of the most recognizable antisemitic terms in modern English. Watch who tries to explain this away.
Ukrainian FM Andriy Sybiha called last night’s Russian strike on Kyiv one of the worst and said Putin deliberately launched it after Trump’s call.
Over 330 Shaheds in 1 night. russia has launched a record number of drones at once. Each one of them was an attack drone, designed to kill and destroy. You can help by donating towards an air defense unit, designed to protect and save people: u24.gov.ua/nafo-dark-ni...
Vance votes to kill Appalachia. Which is what he always promised to do. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/01/b...
This bill if passed by the House will shorten the lives of millions of Americans and bring the republic to the point of collapse. It’s a gift to oligarchs at home and enemies abroad. edition.cnn.com/2025/07/01/p...
Noting that “beautiful” is Trump’s standard term for the conscious abuse of large numbers of people, as in the promise to deport Gazans to some “beautiful” place. This language has to be treated as a subject in itself and not repeated.
Ann Telnaes revisited a cartoon from 2003 @anntelnaes.bsky.social substack.com/@anntelnaes/...
5. Wars are easy to start and hard to stop
4. Wars are unpredictable
3. The rationale given for a war will change over time, such that actual success or failure in achieving a named objective is less relevant than one might think
2. Whatever they say, the people who start wars are often thinking chiefly about domestic politics
1. Many things reported with confidence in the first hours and days will turn out not to be true
Five things to remember about war:
5. Wars are easy to start and hard to stop
4. Wars are unpredictable
3. The rationale given for a war will change over time, such that actual success or failure in achieving a named objective is less relevant than one might think
2. Whatever they say, the people who start wars are often thinking chiefly about domestic politics
1. Many things reported with confidence in the first hours and days will turn out not to be true