Opponents of U.S. aid to Ukraine claim the country persecutes Christians. “When American leaders frame this as a war for democracy and human rights, it would be good if the recipient of the aid was a little bit more careful of human rights, including religious liberties,” Sen. J.D. Vance said in an interview in mid-March. Ukraine “is doing some pretty bad stuff,” he adds, citing “news reports of priests being investigated, church assets being seized and priests being arrested.” Ukrainians have “invaded churches, they’ve arrested priests,” according to Sen. Rand Paul. Rep. Paul Gosar says Kyiv has “banned Ukraine’s oldest and largest denomination, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.”

Two years of full-scale war in Ukraine have reshaped the military alliance called NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization): Finland and Sweden have now joined, an unintended consequence, as afar as Vladimir Putin was concerned, of his brutal aggression against Ukraine. It is probably correct to argue that NATO is now more united than it has been since the fall of the USSR in the 1990s. NATO announced this month that two-thirds of the alliance’s members have met the goal of spending 2 percent of their gross domestic product on defense. That is a marked increase from a decade ago. But, at the same time, former President Donald J. Trump, the likely Republican candidate, said this month that he was willing to let Russia “do whatever the hell they want” against NATO allies that do not fulfill their commitments on military spending.

There is one incontrovertible fact about America: We are a nation of immigrants. It is important to remember this even about former president Trump: His mother came from Tong, a remote Scottish settlement that was once Viking territory. His grandfather came from Kallstadt, a Bavarian village. In America, everyone is from somewhere else; even Native Americans crossed the Bering Strait millennia ago.

The Alabama Supreme Court clearly opened a new phase in the legal battle over when life begins. Embryos created and stored in a medical facility must be considered children under the state’s law governing harmful death, the Court ruled. The ruling involved three couples who had sued the Center for Reproductive Medicine, a fertility clinic in Mobile, for inadvertently destroying their embryos. The plaintiffs argued that they were entitled to punitive damages under Alabama’s 1972 Wrongful Death of a Minor Act. The Court argued that the embryos fell under Alabama’s definition of minors and that the negligence lawsuits could proceed. The case now goes back to the State District Court for further litigation.

The Russian state blandly announced the death of Alexei Navalny. Navalny was Russia’s foremost dissident and opposition leader. Despite being poisoned and repeatedly punished with long bouts of isolation in remote prisons, Navalny stood unbroken. He continued to mock Putin and denounce the invasion of Ukraine. As Nicholas Kristof argues, “His wit and refusal to bow to authority made him a Kremlin nightmare.”

As I am writing this piece, continued American aid for Ukraine is in grave doubt. Tucker Carlson recently conducted a friendly interview with Vladimir Putin. There are reports from the front lines that Russia is advancing, in part because of Ukrainian ammunition shortages. In short, the war is reaching a critical stage, and Ukraine may lose because, among other factors, there is increasing evidence that many Republicans are simply turning against Ukraine. In fact, in some GOP circles, there is now outright contempt for the Ukrainian cause.

Sunday, 21 January 2024, was centenary of the death of Vladimir Lenin, the founder of Soviet communism and the leader of the bloody Bolshevik Revolution that brought communism to Russia. There were no parades or stirring speeches in Red Square. The obvious reason is that one of Lenin’s most strident critics is Vladimir Putin, “who appears far more enamored with the empire that Lenin’s revolutionaries overthrew.” “In my opinion, the 100th anniversary of Lenin’s death creates an opportunity to try to move away from the endless passionate and meaningless bickering around the dilemma: is he an angel from heaven or a monstrous antichrist, the embodiment of absolute world evil?” said Vladimir Lukin, a Russian senator who formerly served as a human rights commissioner.

As year 2024 begins, wars are raging in Africa, Israel and Gaza and Ukraine. These are indeed explosive and most troubling. In addition, the US presidential race has begun, with two diametrically opposed political parties. The isolationist tilt of some in the Republican Party is worrisome. This will be a “make-or-break year for the post-1945 world order.” The new dynamic is one of increasing instability. The Economist argues that “In the 1990s many countries aspired to a self-reinforcing cycle of freedom, market economics and rules-based globalization. Now there is an unpredictable cycle of populism, interventionist economics and transactional globalization. As a result, three threats loom in 2024.”

A new poll from YouGov/The Economist points out that young Americans appear to be remarkably ignorant about one of modern history’s greatest crimes. Some 20% of respondents aged 18-29 think that the Holocaust is a myth, compared with 8% of those aged 30-44. An additional 30% of young Americans said they do not know whether the Holocaust is a myth. “Many respondents espouse the canard that Jews wield too much power in America: young people are nearly five times more likely to think this than are those aged 65 and older.”

I have been reading Rabbi Meir Y. Soloveichik’s Providence and Power: Ten Portraits in Jewish Statesmanship. It is a remarkable read, for in it he surveys the leadership qualities of King David, Queen Esther, Benjamin Disraeli and Abraham Lincoln, among others. He makes two profound observations that are so helpful for 2024