“As a consequence of its invasion of Ukraine, Russia has become isolated.”

“At NATO and the European Union, and at the State Department, the Pentagon and allied ministries, blueprints are being drawn up to enshrine new policies across virtually every aspect of the West’s posture toward Moscow, from defense and finance to trade and international diplomacy.”

“Efforts to ostracize Moscow have faced resistance from a reluctant section of the international community.”

“That attitude of risk tolerance rests on a perception that Russia and the current regime do not face any imminent existential threats, despite fevered statements from top officials about the dangers posed by NATO enlargement and Ukraine’s cooperation with Euro-Atlantic partners.”

“Despite all the criticism and the various policy defeats that Kennan suffered in the early 1950s, containment in the more general sense of blocking the expansion of Soviet influence remained the basic strategy of the United States throughout the cold war.”

"Two founding members of the Soviet Union – Russia and Ukraine are once again in conflict.”

“At a minimum, Western policy should ensure that Russia gains no new Ukrainian territory and continues to face severe sanctions until it fundamentally changes its policy toward Ukraine.”

“The key to putting more pressure on Russia is to ban or phase out buying Russian oil with EU member states expected next week to reach an agreement on the issue even if it remains at this stage opposed by Hungary.”

“This unprovoked military incursion against Ukraine, unprecedented in Europe since the Second World War, needs a strong, coordinated response from the free world. And just sanctions, unfortunately, aren’t going to work.”

“In short, the development of a digital currency could present the most dramatic expansion of federal power in history, depending on its design.”

“There are a myriad of moral reasons why Russia should be ghettoized as a geopolitical Chernobyl. But treating Russia as a collective Putin will be a strategic blunder.”

“Those advanced economies are experiencing their worst inflation in 40 years as well as growing unemployment, he said, adding that logistics chains were breaking, and global crises were intensifying in such areas as food.”

“Friday marks the 100th day since Russia launched the invasion of Ukraine intent on taking over the country quickly and overthrowing democratically elected President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for a puppet government loyal to Russian President Vladimir Putin.”

“The United States is focused primarily on raising the costs to Russia with punishing sanctions and reassuring North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies neighboring Russia of its commitment to collective defense. Less attention has been given to containing the war to Ukraine and preventing its escalation into a broader European conflict.”

“Vladimir Putin unleashed the biggest war in Europe since World War Two with the justification that modern, Western-leaning Ukraine was a constant threat and Russia could not feel ‘safe, develop and exist.’”

“Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine – and the West’s collective and sweeping response to the invasion – has brought us to an existential moment.”

“While I expect some erosion as people grasp how much this war is driving up global energy and food prices, I’m still hopeful that a majority of Americans will hang in there until Ukraine can recover its sovereignty militarily or strike a decent peace deal with Putin.”

“While Russia’s significant losses in this war will clearly degrade its ability to conduct large scale offensive operations against NATO in the short term, it is too soon to write off the medium to long-term threat posed by Russia.”

“After an initial two months in which Ukraine heroically beat back a much larger Russian army, defending the capital Kyiv and the second city Kharkiv from Putin’s assault, things have moved into a new, more inconclusive period of fighting.”

“Western allies must be creative – and aggressive – about curing their addiction to Russian fossil fuels, which developed over decades and looms in hindsight as one of history’s great geopolitical miscalculations.”

“Will the sanctions imposed by the Group of 7 nations truly isolate Russia? No.”

“Although Russia bears the brunt of Western high-tech sanctions, the European Union will face challenges in sectors where it relies on Russian and Ukrainian commodities and technologies.”

“However, this aggressive decoupling comes at a price for the European economy, driving up already high inflation to record levels and threatening to undermine the manufacturing recovery that began last year as economies attempted to re-emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic.”

“The EU has promised to cut Russian gas imports by two-thirds by the end of the year and has also proposed banning all oil imports from Russia.”

“However, such a partial and gradual wind-down of volumes from Russia is ineffective. There is a risk that this strategy will drive up prices even further, over-compensating Russia for the loss of volume. The current sanction strategy is therefore not effective enough to meaningfully change the calculations of Russian leadership.”

“European governments are preparing to quickly stop burning large quantities of a particular fossil fuel for reasons of national interest and indeed national security–a large-scale, state-driven fossil fuel phase-down. And that’s an exceedingly rare thing.”

“…we also do not know what made Putin eventually decide against the diplomatic path. For now, only one thing is clear: Putin prioritized his personal obsession above Russia’s interests. And he likely did so almost singlehandedly…”

“Russian President Vladimir Putin warned the West on Tuesday that his country cannot be isolated or held back – no matter what punishment it receives – as he doubled down on his decision to invade Ukraine.”

“Russian nationalism has always been a double-edged sword for Putin: He likes the raw passion of its patriotism, but he appears wary of its sometimes uncontrollable ethnic extremism, which might threaten his authoritarian rule over a disparate nation.”

“First of all, I would like to emphasize that the wall that has emerged in recent years between Russia and Ukraine, between the parts of what is essentially the same historical and spiritual space, to my mind is our great common misfortune and tragedy.”

“The Kremlin still maintains that the Russian offensive is going according to plan. But on Monday night, studio guest Mikhail Khodarenok, a military analyst and retired colonel, painted a very different picture.”

“Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the space for investigative and critical journalism in traditional media has largely vanished. The regime has either banned or driven out all major critical outlets.”

“However, some difficult internal moral work is under way in society: despite the increasing routineness of the conflict and the resulting decline in attention to it, Russians are beginning to think about their own responsibility for what is happening.”

“Those in power in Russia are demanding unflinching support from the Russian people: for the direction in which the Kremlin is taking Russia, away from Europe; for the anti-Western rhetoric emanating from Moscow; and for Russia’s military offensive in Ukraine – no matter what the consequences here at home.”

“The two aspirants to be the arbiters of Europe’s fate in the 21st century, Russia and Germany, are on the wane–the former repelled by the Ukrainians and the latter opposed and shamed by most other Europeans.”

“That attitude of risk tolerance rests on a perception that Russia and the current regime do not face any imminent existential threats, despite fevered statements from top officials about the dangers posed by NATO enlargement and Ukraine’s cooperation with Euro-Atlantic partners.”

“If Russia’s financial system was more integrated with those of the allies, they might have been more hesitant to take measures that could provoke a financial crisis.”

“With Putin’s military offensive now into its 14th week, officials in Beijing have successfully resisted calls to openly condemn Russia and distance themselves from Moscow’s actions against its neighbor.”

“On the other side of the equation, Russia is also trying to reduce its dependence on its traditional European energy customers. And the natural alternative is China, the world’s biggest energy consumer.”

“But amid Moscow’s deepening international isolation, there are growing signs that Beijing’s willingness to throw its strategic partner an economic lifeline may only go so far.”

“This shared mistrust of the United States and its allies has deepened economic links, making China by far Russia’s largest single trading partner.”

“As Russia has dramatically shown in the last two weeks, supposedly unthinkable breaks with the rest of the world can happen very fast when geopolitics comes into play. And it becomes even more likely when domestic politics reward fervent nationalism instead of long-term thinking.”

“The question of who breaks first may shape Ukraine’s fate as much as any weapons transfer or tank assault.”

“But the map of sanctions suggests that the true rift is not between left and right, nor even between east and west. On the contrary, the map reveals a rift between north and south, between nations that we call developed and those we call developing.”

“The West’s messaging on Ukraine has taken its tone-deafness to a whole new level, and it is unlikely to win over the support of countries that have often experienced the worse sides of the international order.”

“If the United States supports these countries in weathering the economic shocks emanating from Russia, efforts to politically isolate Moscow from the rest of the world could take on a new significance.”