1/20. Democracy is precious and exceptional.

This is the first of ten video meditations I recorded at night in Kharkiv, a frontline city in northeastern Ukraine. They concern matters that came to mind in the general setting of a long and terrible war. snyder.substack.com/p/coward…

Useful reporting but would be worth more firmly stressing Hegseth’s achievement in overseeing a calamitous decline in US power and prestige, which was absolutely predictable and was presumably always the point. nytimes.com/2026/09/14/us/po…

It’s been 6 months since I sold all of my individual stocks and a week since I called on my opponent to do the same, but he has refused. I am in this race to lower costs and improve the lives of all Ohioans. Meanwhile, Vivek Ramaswamy has been cashing in on data centers, making millions off those investments while he campaigns. As governor, I’ll put money back into your pockets. Vivek Ramaswamy is busy lining his.

A propos the effort of David Sachs to kill us all with totally unregulated AI, I repost this from two years ago. snyder.substack.com/p/oligar…

"One thing I see on this train is that Ukrainians choose to keep going. I don’t want to romanticize; the suffering and the grief are under the eyes, and in the public memorials, and everywhere. Every attack by the enemy hurts, as does every betrayal by an ally." snyder.substack.com/p/a-medi…

“The kind of 'hallucination' that the tool used by the analyst in this case conjured has not been an isolated incident across the intelligence community since these tools began proliferating across government, according to one of the sources.” edition.cnn.com/2026/09/18/p…

Driving east from Kyiv to Kharkiv, there was no place to get gas from Poltava eastwards, because all of the stations had been destroyed by distant Russian drone operators. The Russians send drones at the pumps, causing explosions, killing attendants and customers. snyder.substack.com/p/a-medi…

Dad can’t pay for wedding but Dad’s Daddy can

It is not humiliating for him, since he has no sense of dignity, but it is humiliating for the rest of us that the president of the United States serves as a subordinate press officer of the Kremlin, saying things that are not only false and cruel but which only Russians could have instructed him to say, since there is no way he could have thought of them himself, and since they depend on knowledge that he does not have.

Publiczna rozmowa z Sławkiem Sierakowskim o Ukrainie i Polsce, 17’ego września, 18:00, Plac Konstitucji 6, Warszawa.

Tomorrow's the big day. Celebrate democracy by helping us get your eligible friends and neighbors registered for their next trip to the ballot box! Go to vote.org and visit handsoffourvote.net to learn more about how to make sure the will of the people prevails in November. #handsoffourvote

“Kyiv has essentially become a frontline city.” @TimothyDSnyder once again visited Ukraine, joining Run for Freedom, a race for the release of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians held in russian captivity. Our ambassador pointed out the new harsh reality of living in the capital.

Commemoration is a singular chance to reflect. Americans in power will try to use this anniversary to say that everything happened exactly as it had to, and that we should bow our heads rather than use them. We went along twenty-five years ago. We should not do so again. My reflections on a quarter century after 9/11: snyder.substack.com/p/helpin…

Kicked off Labor Day Weekend by honoring Ohio’s workers at the Akron RubberDucks’ Celebration of Labor Night! Looking forward to a weekend dedicated to our brothers and sisters in the Ohio labor movement.

Thanks to @JimSwiftDC for joining Dayton-area reporters in covering this terrible news from Springfield. "The Cruelty Comes to Springfield" thebulwark.com/p/the-cruelty… I wrote about the fascist backdrop here: "Ethnic Cleansing in Ohio" snyder.substack.com/p/ethnic…

Yes, they were. We were. In the Orwellian way — the courage to see the absolutely obvious. But the most important way they were right was in the insistence on speaking out, on showing up, on organizing. To be right doesn’t mean debating down to the finest point and feeling righteous — it means working together and winning the future. It can be done.

The embarrassing decision to call Lake Ontario “Lake America” is an admission of defeat. If we can’t understand basics of economics and politics, if we must lose a trade war to Canada while we are losing a shooting war to Iran, let us paste our name somewhere. snyder.substack.com/p/our-tr…

Putin enjoys humiliating Americans in Iran but wants Trump in power. We tend to start our coverage from our own people and what they say rather than from the actual strategic and political position. It is helpful to read @PhillipsPOBrien phillipspobrien.substack.com…

Lecture 7 of "Hitler and Stalin Today." "How was Mass Killing Possible?" These crimes were committed by human beings, so they raise questions about the political conditions necessary for mass atrocity, and how people did and can react to those conditions. snyder.substack.com/p/how-wa…