© Alex Kent/The New York Times
In a major milestone, the U.S. Navy’s Nimitz-class aircraft carrier remotely controlled an MQ-25 Stingray unmanned aerial refueller from more than 2,100 miles away, a capability that could eventually boost F/A-18 Super Hornets.
“In a historic U.S. naval aviation event, an aircraft carrier connected to and controlled an unmanned aerial refueler, the MQ-25A Stingray, more than 2,100 miles away,” the US Navy said in an official release.
The MQ-25 Stingray is designed primarily as an unmanned aerial tanker, though it could also be used for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) missions.
During what the Navy described as a preliminary sea trial, the ship’s Unmanned Air Warfare Center (UAWC), used by Air Vehicle Pilots (AVPs) for controlling future MQ-25 Stingray airborne operations, employed its MD-5C Ground Control Station to establish a Beyond Line-of-Sight connection with an MQ-25A test aircraft through a Proliferated Low Earth Orbit (pLEO) satellite network, the service stated.
While the carrier was in the Pacific Ocean, Boeing kept the MQ-25 at its Illinois facility for the trial.
To provide command and control of the MQ-25A, the MD-5C GCS combined Lockheed Martin’s MDCX hardware and software with other government-made equipment and the Navy’s Command, Control, Communications, Computers, and Intelligence (C4I) network. The Navy also noted that this system will command and control the Navy’s future unmanned carrier aircraft and the Air Wing of the Future.
“This first-ever underway connection between a carrier-based UAWC and an MQ-25A aircraft proves that the Carrier Air Wing of tomorrow is a reality today,” said Capt. Daniel Fucito, program manager for the Navy’s Unmanned Carrier Aviation Program Office.
This marks a momentous step toward integrating unmanned systems into carrier air wings and preparing the Navy’s first carrier-based unmanned tanker for operational use. The trial was part of a series of build-up exercises intended to verify protocols, networks, and interfaces.
Before this, the MQ-25 Integrated Test Team, including Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and the US Navy, conducted pier-side and at-sea tests with the Unmanned Carrier Aviation Program Office’s (PMA-268) Unmanned Carrier Aviation Mission Control System team.
Although the test showed remote connectivity and control over a significant distance, the Navy did not record an autonomous flight, aerial refueling operation, or carrier landing.
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Nonetheless, the Acting Secretary of the Navy, Hung Cao, said, “The MQ-25A Stingray’s carrier-based refueling capabilities enable F/A-18 Super Hornets to fly farther and longer. The integration of this unmanned aerial refueler demonstrates the transformational change our manned and unmanned asset integration provides the Fleet.”
This latest demonstration matters because it validated critical enabling technologies for unmanned carrier operations.
Notably, the earth’s curvature and the vast operating areas of carrier strike groups, such as the Pacific Ocean, limit traditional radio links. Routing commands and data through a resilient satellite constellation removes that constraint.
Against that backdrop, the latest trial confirms that the Navy’s MD-5C Ground Control Station architecture can operate in a realistic operational environment, not just in controlled shore-based or pier-side tests.
Furthermore, the successful use of a proliferated LEO satellite constellation from a moving warship proves that reliable beyond-line-of-sight command and control is achievable in a realistic at-sea environment.
Three U.S. Navy aircraft carriers feature Unmanned Air Warfare Center (UAWC) infrastructure using Lockheed Martin Skunk Works-powered MD-5 ground-control systems. The USS George H.W. Bush served as the fleet’s initial developmental testbed, while the USS Theodore Roosevelt and USS Ronald Reagan are officially designated as the Navy’s first and second fully operational, deployable drone-capable carriers.
Demonstrating that a carrier can continuously control an unmanned aircraft over intercontinental distances from its own Unmanned Air Warfare Center proves the viability of the shipboard control infrastructure already installed on these carriers.
This infrastructure is purportedly intended to support tankers and future uncrewed platforms performing intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, or other roles, enabling deeper manned-unmanned teaming between crewed and uncrewed platforms.
This capability counts because the MQ-25A is designed to serve as the Navy’s carrier-based unmanned tanker, taking over aerial-refueling duties that currently take time away from the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet.
By validating long-range control from the carrier, the Navy has shown that operators aboard the aircraft carrier can direct the Stingray to deliver fuel to fighters hundreds of miles from the deck.
Stingray refueling will extend the carrier air wing’s combat radius and time on station while keeping more Super Hornets available for strike, air superiority, or other primary missions instead of diverting them into “buddy” tanker roles during crucial deployments.
This would be a critical enhancement to the carrier wing’s capability in theatres like the volatile Indo-Pacific region, where distances are long and adversaries like China field sophisticated anti-access/area-denial systems.
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In a potential conflict with China, American carriers may need to operate farther from contested shorelines to reduce vulnerability to long-range missiles and other threats. In that scenario, a reliably controllable unmanned tanker that can be controlled from the ship will allow the air wing to project power over long distances without staying close to the carrier or relying on land-based or allied tanker support that may be hard to obtain.
That said, a proliferated satellite network also adds resilience, particularly because such constellations are harder to disrupt completely than single high-value satellites or line-of-sight links. This will improve the survivability of the command-and-control chain under contested conditions, and in a conflict with a near-peer adversary like Beijing.
Operationally, this will also help the Navy achieve its manned-unmanned teaming objective. The MQ-25 Stingray, for one, has been positioned as a trailblazer for the “Air Wing of the Future,” and is expected to help establish procedures, networks, and infrastructure that will support not only tankers but also future uncrewed systems for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and potentially even strike roles.
Earlier this month, for instance, Boeing announced a successful trial of the Stingray’s Link 16 datalink-based Manned-Unmanned Teaming (MUM-T) command-and-control software during the Emerald Flag exercise at Eglin AFB, Florida.
The software was installed on a Beechcraft 1900D and a King Air E90 to demonstrate command and control between the two aircraft. This capability will eventually move into the MQ-25A and Super Hornet.
The latest trial is an important step before Stingray starts operating from carrier decks. The Boeing MQ-25 T1 test asset previously refueled three carrier-based aircraft—an F/A-18 Super Hornet, E-2D Hawkeye, and F-35C Lightning II —but it has yet to fly from a carrier. The first production-representative MQ-25 flew for the first time in April 2026, and the service plans its first carrier launch next year.
The post F/A-18 Super Hornets Move Closer to Full Strike Role as USS Ronald Reagan Controls MQ-25 Stingray from 2,100 Miles Away appeared first on EURASIAN TIMES.
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Oct. 21, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
Democratic US congressional candidate Brad Lander said Wednesday that he was released by Israeli forces with a “warning” after he and dozens of others were detained while helping Palestinians harvest olives in the illegally occupied West Bank.
“Several dozen rabbis and participants harvesting olives with me are still in detention,” Lander, who is Jewish, wrote on social media. “They should all be released immediately. To be clear: Palestinians face far worse consequences every day. These detentions by the IDF are one more attempt to undermine Palestinians’ right to harvest their olive groves, travel on their roads, and live in their homes.”
Prior to his release, Lander posted a video from a bus that he said was “taking us away for processing” after settler security called the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on the group harvesting olives.
“Let’s be clear: Occupation is a crime under international law,” said Lander, who is running to represent New York’s 10th Congressional District in the US House of Representatives. “Harvesting olives is not a crime under any law.”
I’ve been released from IDF custody with a “warning,” apparently because of my public profile (I told them I wasn’t even a congressmember yet, just a nominee).But several dozen rabbis & participants harvesting olives with me are still in detention.
— Brad Lander (@bradlander.bsky.social) 2026-10-21T13:34:39.826Z
Lander was part of a group of around 80 American and Israeli rabbis and activists who were detained by the IDF on Wednesday as they helped Palestinians harvest olives from a grove near an Israeli settlement in the West Bank. Israeli lawyers told NPR that the incident marked “the largest mass detention of activists in the occupied West Bank in at least a decade.”
Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of the US-based advocacy group J Street, said in response to the detentions that “when the government of Israel and its military and law enforcement are arresting rabbis and volunteers who have journeyed 6000 miles to protect Palestinian farmers harvesting olives and not the violent terrorists harassing and attacking the farmers—it tells you all you need to know about this government’s moral compass.”
“This illegal and immoral occupation must end,” he added.
The mass detention came after several recent instances of horrific Israeli settler violence against Palestinian olive harvesters, European diplomats, and an American journalist.
Heba Morayef, Amnesty International’s regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, said in a statement earlier this week that “Israel’s apartheid system is turning the olive harvest into a season of horror for Palestinian families across the occupied West Bank.”
“States must recognize that settler attacks are not isolated acts, but a central policy of the Israeli state,” said Morayef, calling on nations to “take concrete measures to respect their obligations under international law and to avoid complicity in Israeli violations and crimes against Palestinians by halting all trade, investment, and cooperation that contribute to maintaining the unlawful occupation, apartheid, and the ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing.”
“Hiding behind empty rhetoric is not only cowardly, it is enabling further abuses,” she added. “For Palestinians, it continues to be deadly.”
In October, BreakThrough News received a letter from Rep. Jason Smith of the House Ways and Means Committee, threatening to personally subpoena seven members of our journalistic, editorial and administrative staff — including Rania Khalek, Zoe Alexandra and Amanda Yee — unless we handed over our financial records and internal communications.
Through its attorneys, BreakThrough News has now issued an official response, which you can read below. Once again, we expressed that we would not surrender our First Amendment rights in the face of a blatantly unconstitutional abuse of power, and that no legitimate legislative basis has been established for this inquiry. In his own statements, Rep. Smith has made no attempt to disguise the fact that his Committee subpoenas are fueled by opposition to BreakThrough’s editorial stances and viewpoints, which he calls “anti-American.”
We have been overwhelmed by support from our community, who have raised their voices in defense of our constitutionally protected right to free speech under the First Amendment. We ask all readers to continue showing their support by signing the petition below and making a donation to help defend the organization.
Our attorneys’ response explains:
“Threatening compulsory depositions of journalists and newsroom staff to compel document production operates as coercive retaliation by explicitly targeting the core editorial leadership and journalistic staff of BreakThrough News. Allowing a congressional committee to haul journalists into deposition rooms to grill them on domestic and foreign policy reporting sets a dangerous precedent of state-sponsored press intimidation that chills independent journalism nationwide and infringes on core First Amendment protections.”
On October 19, a coalition of ten major civil liberties and press freedom organizations, led by the Freedom of the Press Foundation, issued a joint letter to Rep. Smith demanding an end to the persecution of BreakThrough.
The letter noted: “Serially subpoenaing employees of a small left-wing news outlet to compel them to personally appear before you, for no reason other than to further a vindictive political stunt, is beyond the pale and reminiscent of some of the darkest chapters in our nation’s history.”
We are deeply appreciative of organizations that have spoken out: Freedom of the Press Foundation, American Society of Journalists and Authors, Defending Rights & Dissent, First Amendment Foundation, National Coalition Against Censorship, National Press Photographers Association (NPPA), PEN America, Society of Environmental Journalists, Society of Professional Journalists, and The Media and Democracy Project.
We would like to express our gratitude for the hard work of our legal counsel — the Law Office of Andrew D. Herman and Mara Verheyden-Hilliard of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund — in responding to this outrageous attack.
Finally, we extend our solidarity and appreciation to all the members of our team, who continue to work tirelessly to produce meaningful journalism in the face of federal threats.
Read our full response below issued by BreakThrough’s attorneys.
Since Russia launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Starlink, and later Starshield, have become vital for Ukraine’s defense and even offensive capabilities.
Amid ongoing tussle over Starshield restrictions, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced on October 20, 2026, that he had positive talks with the United States to resolve the issues.
“I spoke with Marco Rubio, and it was a substantive conversation – focused on the issues that matter. I am grateful for his readiness to help and his clear position. First, ballistic missile interceptors, which are needed to protect lives. Second, early warning of Russian ballistic missile attacks, which is vital.
Third, we need to restore the Starlink/Starshield situation. Of course, all of this comes against the backdrop of our diplomatic efforts to end this horrific war and the constant killing of people. We agreed to get in touch again soon for an update.
Thank you, Marco, for the constructive discussion! Thank you to everyone in America who supports fair approaches!” Zelenskyy said in a post on X.
However, the restrictions have highlighted Ukraine’s heavy military dependence on US-linked satellite systems amid political friction with the Trump administration, including mounting pressure over Ukrainian strikes on Russian energy infrastructure and related disputes over intelligence sharing and sanctions policy, even as Moscow intensifies attacks.
To understand Starshield and its utility for Ukraine, one must understand Starlink.
Starlink is a satellite internet service developed and operated by SpaceX. It operates a constellation of thousands of smaller satellites at around 550 kilometers above Earth.
Notably, traditional terrestrial and satellite communication (SATCOM) networks cannot match Starlink’s bandwidth. Most conventional SATCOM systems also rely on geostationary (geostationary orbit) satellites, which introduce higher latency and limit the effectiveness of real-time applications such as remote piloting of UAVs, as the EurAsian Times explained earlier.
However, Starlink’s low-earth orbit (LEO) satellite architecture makes it more resilient to jamming and provides a more secure communication channel.
Starshield is SpaceX’s satellite program focused on government and national security. While Starlink is built for consumers, businesses, and general connectivity, delivering high-speed internet via a massive constellation of low-Earth-orbit satellites, Starshield is purpose-built for government customers—primarily the US Department of Defense, intelligence agencies, the US Space Force, and allied countries and their military, like Ukraine.
Ukraine has used both: commercial Starlink terminals widely for communications and logistics, and Starshield for higher-security military needs where available.
When Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, it systematically targeted fiber-optic cables, cell towers, and power grids, destroying all traditional internet and jamming military radios. This is when Starlink stepped in.
Ukraine wanted Starlink terminals because they don’t rely on ground infrastructure and operate in blacked-out or contested areas. Starlink and Starshield provide connectivity even when the enemy damages or destroys traditional telecommunications infrastructure.
Ukrainian troops currently rely on Starshield for long-distance video transmission for military operations, information gathering, and communication. It serves as the backbone for encrypted voice, messaging, and data links between units, headquarters, and isolated positions. This includes real-time situational awareness systems.
Satellite internet connectivity is especially important for drone operations, which are central to Ukraine’s offensive and defensive strategies. These unmanned Ukrainian systems rely on satellite connectivity because current operations frequently require constant contact between controllers and aircraft.
Starshield enables long-range control and live video feeds from reconnaissance and attack drones far beyond the reach of normal radio links. It also supports interceptor drones that pursue fast Russian jet-powered drones, including the notorious Shahed class.
Ukrainian officials recently alleged that Starshield receptors stopped working in Ukraine when mounted on fast-moving objects, impairing drones that depend on them for onboard guidance over Ukrainian territory.
In fact, a Ukrainian Defense Ministry official said the sensors worked when moving, but only up to 100 miles per hour (160 kph), meaning drones had to slow down significantly. Some units reported disruptions at even lower speeds.
When connectivity is sketchy or slows, missions slow, lose accuracy, and sometimes become impossible. In fact, military officers quoted in media reports alleged that connections were lost during operations and missions were canceled when connectivity failed. These constraints may have been especially painful because Ukraine increasingly uses drones for long-range strikes, as well as air defense and interception.
Ukraine also uses Starshield to launch strikes from ground-based systems. It allows targeting data to flow quickly from sensors and drones to guns and HIMARS, closing the sensor-to-shooter loop and improving precision.
Additionally, Starlink/Starshield are crucial to Ukrainian forces receiving intelligence from allies. Western partners provide Ukraine with surveillance data regarding Russian air strikes, missile launches, troop movements, anti-aircraft positions, and escape routes.
Put succinctly, Ukrainian forces rely heavily on Starlink for battlefield management, Secure communications, Drone operations, artillery coordination and precision strikes, cybersecurity and intelligence sharing, and logistics and command networks.
At the same time, Starlink has significant civilian applications. It has also been crucial for hospitals, emergency services, local administrations, journalists, and ordinary citizens in frontline or occupied areas, who use it to stay connected when conventional networks fail.
By 2025, roughly 50,000 Starlink/Starshield terminals were operating in Ukraine, according to analysis from the Center for Security Studies at ETH Zurich. As of now, Ukraine has no equivalent resilient, high-bandwidth LEO alternative available at comparable scale and speed of deployment.
Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine, Ukraine’s former Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, asked SpaceX owner Elon Musk on X to activate SpaceX’s Starlink satellites.
Musk complied almost immediately and shipped user terminals to Ukraine.
SpaceX’s satellite internet service has since provided resilient communications when ground networks were jammed or destroyed, supported drone operations, logistics, and reconnaissance, and helped maintain connectivity for civilians and the military. In fact, it has become the cornerstone of Ukraine’s offensive and defensive operations throughout the grinding war.
Earlier this month, Ukrainian forces were jolted by connectivity problems with Starshield terminals. The Ukrainian government alleged that the Trump administration and SpaceX had unilaterally restricted its access.
Serhiy Beskrestnov, a presidential adviser on defense technologies and well-known military blogger, stated: “Our armed forces did not receive a warning about these restrictions, and this led to the failure of a number of missions… It’s clear that this action cannot be a coincidence and is connected to the current political situation.”
President Zelenskyy said Russian forces appeared to exploit the disruption, noting that interceptor drones hunting jet-powered Shahed-type munitions depend on the connection.
“It is clear that the Russians are trying to take advantage of the problems with Starlink in Ukraine, as our interceptor drones depend on this connection among other things,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy posted to X.
Responding to the claims, Musk wrote on X that the US government owns and controls the Starshield systems, and that the US military and president control any limits on its speed or use. Starlink “cannot be used for offensive military action, as doing so would be inappropriate for a commercial company,” Musk highlighted in his post.
Citing sources, Reuters reported that the White House had ordered the Department of Defense to slow down Starshield services for Ukraine.
This sparked speculation that the crucial communications system was briefly restricted to add more pressure on Ukraine to stop its strikes on Russian refineries, which US President Donald Trump has repeatedly blamed for skyrocketing fuel costs that are hurting his Republican Party’s chances in the upcoming November midterm elections.
The Trump administration did not confirm these allegations.
However, the sudden Starshield outage coincided with massive Russian ballistic missile attacks for which Ukraine did not receive any warning from the US, just days after the Trump administration warned Kyiv to stop its attacks on Russian refineries or face suspension of intelligence sharing.
Another twist in this grueling tale came when The Telegraph reported that Musk approached Trump about slowing down Starshield in Ukraine.
However, Trump later said he did not believe that either he or Musk was responsible for Ukraine losing access to Starshield.
Over the weekend, Marco Rubio went on record saying Starshield is currently unavailable to Ukraine, adding that a request from Kyiv to use the system for attacks deep inside Russia was “under discussion.”
“Starlink is a commercial product, okay? And so it’s regulated and handled as a commercial product. Starshield is a defense product, a military product,” said Rubio in comments published by the Pentagon. “They’ve asked for access to it in order to conduct deep strikes inside of Russia. They don’t have access to it at the moment. That’s under discussion,” he added.
Ukrainian officials say the restrictions affected Starshield terminals they use for military operations. Secretary Rubio has stated that Starshield itself is not currently available to Ukraine and that Ukraine’s drone operations have relied on commercial Starlink. The two sides do not agree on which system was restricted.
The post Starshield vs. Starlink: The Satellite Fight Complicating the Ukraine-Russia War and Kyiv’s Ties with the U.S. appeared first on EURASIAN TIMES.
China’s J-20 stealth fighter fleet is estimated to have reached 500 aircraft, according to open-source assessments by analysts tracking serial numbers and unit deployments. However, its ambitious H-20 stealth bomber, touted as a challenge to the US B-21 Raider, remains conspicuously absent.
The J-20 Mighty Dragon first flew in 2011 and entered service with the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) in 2017. China has rapidly increased its inventory; Chengdu Aircraft Corporation facilities produce about 100-120 airframes a year.
China unveiled the tandem-seat J-20S at the 2025 Victory Day Parade as the EurAsian Times reported at the time. If production continues at pace, reports suggest the total number of J-20 aircraft, including the two-seat variant, could reach or exceed 1,000 by 2030.
Alongside the J-20, China is scaling production of the J-35 family, its second fifth-generation aircraft. Some estimates suggest China could have 200 to 300 J-35s operational by 2030.
This makes China the only nation besides the US to field two fifth-generation aircraft.
Beijing has also begun flight testing two different sixth-generation prototypes: the larger, three-engine Chengdu J-36 and the smaller twin-engine Shenyang J-50. They are seen as a counter to the Boeing F-47 6th-gen aircraft.
China has hinted about the debut of the H-20 stealth bomber for several years.
China first publicly acknowledged a next-generation stealth bomber, later identified as the H-20, around 2016. At the time, officials described it as a flying-wing design intended to provide true intercontinental penetrating strike capability.
In January 2021, a clip from the PLAAF’s recruitment video showed off the supposed flying-wing design to the public.
The following year, images of a metallic wind-tunnel test model of a bomber linked to the final H-20 prototype surfaced on Chinese social media (subsequently posted to X), sparking speculation that the bomber technology may be maturing at pace, as the EurAsian Times noted in a detailed report at the time.
In March 2024, then-PLAAF deputy commander Wang Wei told reporters the H-20’s development had no “technological bottlenecks” and hinted that the bomber’s public unveiling was imminent. He assured reporters that manufacturing and commissioning would follow the aircraft’s test flights and take place shortly after its official public debut.
Later that year, Beijing was widely expected to showcase the H-20 at the Zhuhai Air Show in November 2024. However, that did not happen at China’s biggest air show.
Meanwhile, the US B-21 ‘Raider’ next-generation bomber has moved at breakneck speed, going from the official public unveiling in December 2022 to the maiden flight in record time in November 2023. The program is currently in low-rate initial production, meaning Northrop Grumman is building a small number of aircraft to test and refine the production process before full-rate production begins.
By contrast, the Chinese H-20 has had no confirmed test flight, no publicly verified prototype imagery of a finished airframe, and no visible production line as of October 2026.
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In fact, United States officials and intelligence assessments have grown increasingly cautious and skeptical in recent years about an impending unveiling.
The Pentagon’s December 2024 assessment of China’s military stated the H-20 is unlikely to appear before the end of the decade.
“The PLAAF is developing new medium- and long-range stealth bombers to strike regional and global targets. PLAAF leaders publicly announced the program in 2016; however, it may take more than a decade to develop this type of advanced bomber,” the report emphasized.
The Pentagon’s 2025 China report did not mention the H-20 at all, directly or indirectly. However, the head of US Air Force Global Strike Command (AFGSC) was quoted saying: “I can certainly understand their [the Chinese] desire to have a long-range strike capability like the United States, and I know that they’re pursuing it aggressively.”
“What I can tell you is they’re just not there yet. I think our adversaries look at our long-range strike capabilities, and … want to mimic them, but they can’t,” he continued. “There’s no other country in the world [besides the United States] that can take and deliver a long-range strike platform pretty much on any day, at any time and place that they’re choosing, right?” AFGSC commander Gen. Stephen Davis added.
Notably, China’s only operational bombers are variants of the Xi’an H-6 family, the Chinese-built version of the 1950s Soviet Tupolev Tu-16. China currently operates the H-6K, its primary modern conventional bomber; the H-6N, a nuclear-capable variant; and the H-6J, the naval maritime-strike version optimized for anti-ship missiles.
Unlike the United States, which fields the formidable B-2 Spirit, China does not yet have a dedicated long-range stealth bomber.
Currently, widespread speculation suggests China may have faced technical hurdles in developing the next-generation stealth bomber.
China does not yet have a ready, purpose-built, fuel-efficient jet engine designed specifically for a large, long-range flying-wing bomber. Engines currently used on its transport planes (like the Y-20) or fighters (such as the WS-15) are not well-suited for the efficiency, range, and low heat signature needed. In addition, creating a smooth, seamless stealth surface on a large aircraft is much harder than on smaller fighter jets.
Another challenge China may face is building large composite structures, precision tooling, and manufacturing. Typically, building a smooth, tailless flying wing requires specialized production tooling and controlled environments that China has been developing.
Tailless designs are also inherently unstable and require advanced fly-by-wire systems, thermal management, and overall system integration.
Interestingly, the US intelligence and military leaders have described the program as facing “significant engineering design challenges” and being “nowhere near as good as US low-observable platforms.”
Even if prototypes exist or limited testing has occurred, China may have strong reasons to withhold a public unveiling. For one, strategic bombers are part of the nuclear triad and long-range conventional strike, and premature disclosure could reveal design details of a highly classified program, something Beijing officials have been outspoken about.
The aircraft would add a flying leg to China’s nuclear triad. The Pentagon’s 2018 and 2019 “China Military Power Report” predicted that China’s new H-20 long-range stealth bomber would have an operational range of 8,500 kilometers. It will be a “flying-wing” design with a payload capacity of around 10 tons.
The H-20 could project power beyond the first chain of islands, threatening infrastructure, ships, and bases from farther away. Furthermore, China would be able to threaten regional rivals like Japan and India and attack extremely critical peripheral places, such as the US island territories of Guam and Hawaii, with an increased long-range strike aviation force.
Analysts predict the aircraft would have serrated air intakes, cranked-kite wings, and foldable twin-tail surfaces that can switch between horizontal tailplanes and V-tails.
The H-20 is likely to feature internal armament bays that can accommodate conventional weapons, long-range cruise missiles, and maybe nuclear weapons, much like previous stealth systems. However, the H-20 is probably not intended for carpet bombing or deep-penetration missions, but rather for stand-off and limited penetration.
While China’s next fighter jets are gaining momentum, the H-20 seems far from reality.
The post China’s J-20 Fleet Hits 500 While H-20 Stealth Bomber, Billed as Rival to B-21 Raider, Goes Missing From Spotlight appeared first on EURASIAN TIMES.
Students, teachers and civil servants have shown up in Athens, with demonstrations also in Thessaloniki and other cities
Meanwhile, back to Witkoff’s meeting with Putin in St Petersburg, the US president, Donald Trump, has just welcomed the release of Stephen Hubbard, a US citizen held by Moscow on allegations of fighting as a mercenary for Ukraine (11:24).
In a post on Truth Social, he said:
“Stephen Hubbard, taken four years ago by Russia during the Biden Administration, was just released from prison, at the request of President Donald J. Trump, made directly to President Vladimir Putin in a telephone conversation last week.
Stephen is on his way back home and will soon be with his family. The United States, out of respect for President Trump, was not required to give anything in return - an unprecedented situation for Russia. There was no “swap” necessary for this release.
Continue reading...
© Photograph: Costas Baltas/Anadolu/Getty Images
© Photograph: Costas Baltas/Anadolu/Getty Images
© Photograph: Costas Baltas/Anadolu/Getty Images
What restrictions now govern the teaching of the humanities at Russian universities? How are they enforced in practice? And how do faculty and students try to get around them? The list of forbidden topics and actions is broadly known and fairly predictable. How these bans actually work, however, only becomes clear through the kind of in-depth conversations with faculty members that T-invariant conducted. Seventeen interviews point to a preliminary conclusion: despite regional, institutional, and disciplinary differences, most of the work of enforcing the new bans is done not by inspectors but by the instructors themselves. In other words, under the new conditions self-censorship has become the main regulatory mechanism, and each instructor monitors and reflects on it in considerable detail.
T-invariant interviewed faculty members in philology, history, philosophy, and cultural studies (as well as a sociologist who described the situation in the history and psychology departments at their university). This article therefore deals only with the humanities. Things work differently in the social sciences, natural sciences, and engineering, as my interviewees themselves pointed out more than once. The interviews cover Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Perm, Chelyabinsk, Samara, Tyumen, Voronezh, Irkutsk, and Novosibirsk. The institutions represented include classical research universities in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and the regions, teacher-training universities, and large former polytechnics that have recently become full-fledged comprehensive universities.
Top news on scientists’ work and experiences during the war, along with videos and infographics — subscribe to the T-invariant Telegram channel to stay updated.
All the conversations took place in August 2026, before the start of the academic year. The sample makes no claim to be representative. Instructors who agreed to discuss such a subject, even anonymously, were taking a certain risk. Their very willingness to talk suggests that they see and acknowledge problems with academic freedom in the classroom and want to discuss them. Disagreements between respondents’ assessments have deliberately not been smoothed over. Still, the interviews turned out to have far more in common than not.
T-invariant is grateful to all the respondents for candidly sharing their observations and reflections.
Turning Points
When did instructors first run into restrictions on course content or rules governing their public behavior at their universities? In several interviews, the first major turning point was late 2011 and early 2012, a period of mass street protests in Russia’s big cities between the 2011 parliamentary election and the 2012 presidential election. “I’d say that until around 2011–2012 we had practically nothing to do with the administration… Then, from what I personally saw, a very strong top-down hierarchy started to take shape, a bureaucratic one. And it had an effect; it put a lot of pressure on us… Division directors became mere relays for whatever came down from above, stripped of almost all initiative and all authority. Department chairs also lost any ability to influence anything except general workplace discipline. So it seems to me that the whole ‘special military operation’ business just flowed into this ready-made, very convenient bureaucratic structure. The two processes somehow met and got layered on top of each other, so now it’s hard even to tell which string you’re supposed to pull.”
An instructor at a large regional university (formerly a polytechnic institute) links the same period to tighter rules for attending conferences and making other work trips abroad, even when the trips were not funded by the Russian side. “…You had to bring the text of your paper to the relevant office, and it had to be in Russian. Apparently this was mostly about physicists, chemists, and others who had access to some kind of secrets, but we humanities people, historians included, were required to do it too… We grumbled and fumed, of course, but at some point we were told: you have to. And we started taking our papers in.” According to the same instructor, after returning, faculty had to fill out a report form: “It was a small, really tiny slip of paper, like a form or a questionnaire, maybe half a sheet of A4. And it had strange questions… whom did you have contact with, what information did you get from them, what information did you pass on… I read it once and never brought them that form again, and we got away with it, since we had nothing to do with state secrets.”
An instructor from Siberia dated the start of irreversible changes at her university to 2012–2014:
“For me, the critical moments before 2022 weren’t events in university life but the Pussy Riot trial and the whole saga of theater bans. In both cases, what I see as crucial is that censorship, and even repression and the trials, were supported, directly or indirectly, by part of the intelligentsia, including scholars and teachers. I think that changed the overall atmosphere fatally and destroyed any illusions of solidarity.”
In several interviews, the second turning point was early 2021. A Russian literature instructor who has taught for many years at a teacher-training university recalls taking a short trip to a conference abroad on days when she had no classes. She had notified the vice-rector for research in advance and gotten permission. Even so, she was sharply reprimanded “at the level of the rector, the head of HR, and the legal counsel” for not taking unpaid leave. At some universities, the same period saw dissertation councils [committees authorized to award advanced degrees — T-invariant] shut down and administrations reshuffled, with people “far removed from teaching” now playing the leading role.
An instructor at a Moscow university mentions the pandemic as a time when “everyone got more careful.” During that period, he says, a series of scandals erupted after compromising information about some instructors’ relationships with students was made public. These scandals showed that “a lot can be secretly recorded and posted on social media… and this was before any wartime censorship.”
None of the instructors interviewed specifically mentioned the articles on spreading “fakes” about the armed forces and “discrediting the army” that were added to the Criminal Code in March 2022. Only one respondent alluded to legal restrictions, and only indirectly: “We were told there are certain laws now. Please don’t do anything that breaks them.”
The common thread in these accounts is that the changes in how instructors talk to one another and work with students have been gradual and cumulative. “You can’t say there was some kind of watershed, some date after which everyone suddenly started speaking with one voice. It’s this long process, and from the inside it’s hard to get any perspective on it…”
There are rules, but nobody knows what they are
New bans are rarely handed down through official orders and directives from university leadership. More often they arrive as verbal recommendations from department and unit heads. The instructors interviewed describe this situation unanimously, and in almost identical terms, as one of blurry rules in which responsibility for the content of a course, an article, or a student paper is shifted entirely onto the instructor. “No one in the department checks the content of students’ work. That’s the supervisor’s responsibility. However, the requirement to upload research papers to the university website, both student and faculty work, leaves them open to being monitored for banned topics, words, and names. Instructors understand that.” Because the rules are, by design, never spelled out, people feel uncertain and disoriented: “The clear, obvious mechanisms have disappeared. I used to understand who was asking me for what, what they wanted from me, who the client was, who was supervising me, whom I answered to. All of that started to disappear.” Another interviewee was even blunter: “We’re playing a game with no rules. Nobody forbids you anything, but you’re supposed to know on your own what’s allowed and what isn’t. It’s on you, and that drives me nuts. We’re supposed to figure out for ourselves that what was allowed yesterday won’t be allowed tomorrow, or the other way around.”
The bans are never put in writing, and the people who could clarify them avoid saying anything explicit. At one Moscow university, mid-level administrators simply left the faculty group chats so they wouldn’t have to answer awkward questions. “None of this is communicated in writing. People are afraid of anything written, afraid it’ll get forwarded and spread around. So the phone is back in fashion, phone calls: ‘give me a call.’ I think it’s simply fear that the wording might get accidentally forwarded, copied, documented.” Where there are no chats at all, what’s left is “either email, and email is badly compromised, or endless hallway talk, endless gossip. So it’s very hard to tell what is, let’s say, an instruction actually stated at a general meeting… and what’s everything else.” A ban is often presented as concern for your well-being and couched in fairly gentle phrases like “just so you’re aware” or “who needs trouble?”
Ideological bans are constantly being updated, and at different speeds, which makes people feel even more disoriented:
“You don’t know what to expect, and your immediate bosses don’t know either. Everyone plays it safe, looking over their shoulder and ahead at the same time”; “we live with this feeling of murky partnerships, murky arrangements. I’m talking about the administration. I mean, there’s no way to predict how they’ll react.”
Some respondents think that accusations of breaking the bans may also be used in internal university conflicts, for example when the administration changes or someone brings in their own “team”: “I think these things are indirectly connected: your political mistakes, or going too far in freely voicing your point of view, and your being unwanted. Being unwanted can have other causes too. A new team comes in and puts its own people in place, or it’s just an arbitrary decision: someone clears a spot for someone else for their own reasons. In other words, I don’t know how the mechanism works. It’s unclear, opaque, and there’s nobody to ask. There’s just no such thing as democratic procedure here.”
Older interviewees stressed that today’s situation is far harder to make sense of than the late Soviet one and, in a way, more threatening. “Back then there were rules. Now there are no rules. It’s an absurd free-for-all.” Another instructor made a point of explaining how far things today have drifted from Soviet times: “…everyone says the Soviet era is back, but I think the analogy is useful only as an analytical tool. The situation really is very different.”
What makes things even more complicated is that the rules vary from university to university and from department to department: “…there’s no unified system of bans yet; each university builds its own.” Even within a single city, “the situation is very, very different when it comes to internal instructions and directives.” Information-sharing between units, where people don’t trust each other much, is often limited: “…[in our department] we’re pretty open with each other, we share and so on. But in the other departments, and this is telling too, colleagues don’t really share information about what’s allowed, what isn’t, how students react to things.”
Vigilance Checks
The biggest change in course content, requirements for student papers, and research has to do with mentioning, or not mentioning, people and organizations that Russia has designated as “foreign agents,” “undesirable,” terrorist, or extremist. It also extends to any content that could be deemed “LGBT propaganda” or pornography.
According to respondents, Moscow State University has been screening papers for mentions of foreign agents since at least 2024, and some other universities started even earlier. One interviewee said that some time ago the Higher Attestation Commission (VAK), the federal agency that confirms academic degrees, refused to approve a dissertation council’s decision to award a candidate of sciences degree [the Russian equivalent of a PhD — T-invariant]. This happened “because the dissertation … didn’t flag the ‘foreign agents’ it cited. It was a really strong dissertation… I read the extended abstract and heard from people who were at the defense…” At some universities, the requirement to label mentions of foreign agents is the only restriction of this kind that has been officially communicated to faculty.
According to the interviewees, being suspected of “LGBT propaganda” is punished far more harshly than failing to mention someone’s foreign-agent status. “We just find out after the fact that some of the girls put on an exhibition and their contracts weren’t renewed. Or, say, one guy gave a lecture on homosexual relationships in the Soviet Army, and he got fired.”
Local bans on mentioning certain scholars or writers existed at universities long before 2022. One instructor recalls that back in the 2000s, philologists at one university were advised not to cite the works of Evgeny Dobrenko and Zeev Bar-Sella: “But restrictions like that were always passed on to authors verbally, and through intermediaries.”
Today, alongside such local practices, there are bans that apply everywhere. Yet how strictly they are enforced, and in what form people and organizations designated as foreign agents, undesirable, or extremist may be mentioned, vary not only from university to university but even from department to department and from program to program. In two interviews, faculty members from the same university described the rules there differently. One considered it acceptable to mention such people and organizations in syllabi and student papers as long as they came with an “asterisk,” meaning their status was noted in parentheses or a footnote. The other said that, under a directive his unit’s leadership received in 2025, any mention at all is forbidden, even a labeled one. According to him, this was attributed to amendments to the Law on Control over the Activities of Persons under Foreign Influence that took effect on September 1, 2025 (Article 11).
Several interviewees had made a point of tracking and comparing the restrictions in place at different institutions. They concluded that blanket bans on mentioning, citing, or drawing on such work in research often come from the heads of specific organizations, such as universities, journals, and libraries. People respond to these demands in different ways: “It’s shameful, of course, but you’re not going to get a publisher or a journal in trouble either”; “When you’re looking through journals to decide where to send an article (they want us in Web of Science and Scopus — ironic, right?), you often run into a clearly stated rule: no mentions of foreign agents! I leave that page right away.”
Serious disputes break out when the key works on the topic of a term paper, thesis, or dissertation were written by “foreign agents.” Members of councils and committees may be just as outraged when a foreign agent’s work is included in the bibliography as when it is left out. “I ran into this many times when the subject was, say, nationalism in the late USSR. Whenever [Nikolay] Mitrokhin’s The Russian Party came up, it was all ‘can you, can’t you, should you, shouldn’t you?’ For a lot of people, that’s a real hot-button issue.”
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In such cases, supervisors and administrators come up with workarounds for students: “…works by ‘foreign agents’ are cited not as [individual] articles but through the edited volumes they appeared in. The names of foreign-agent editors, or of undesirable organizations that sponsored the research, are stripped from the bibliographic entries… It’s playing with fire, of course, but everyone hopes the screening is done by keyword search, so those keywords get removed from the papers or replaced with euphemisms.”
One respondent described a workaround of this kind that failed. Her article, submitted to a journal, cited a work co-written by an “innocent” author and a foreign-agent author, and she added the required foreign-agent label for the latter. “The editors told me that to get published I had to remove it. So what did I do? I removed [the foreign-agent author] and left just the one name… Didn’t fly.”
Another problem is how fast the registry gets updated: an author can be given a new status after a book or journal issue has already gone to press. In such cases, editors and administrators hope the publication date will explain why the label is missing. For editors, compilers, and library staff, the constant updates to the registries of foreign agents and undesirable organizations are a source of intense stress. “The end of every week is stressful, because there could be a book at the printer that mentions, without an asterisk, someone who was declared a foreign agent this Friday [Russia’s Justice Ministry usually adds new names to its foreign agents registry on Fridays — T-invariant] … and then there could be problems, fines, and so on. That’s the first thing they’re required to keep track of. I haven’t run into this at universities, but I have at the library, especially with students who work part-time there and are horrified that something gets pulled from public access every week. They’re the ones who have to keep track of it.”
Expansive Interpretations
Many respondents noted that university administrators and some faculty members read existing restrictions far more broadly than the law actually requires. At some universities, the ban on mentioning authors whose work could be classified as “LGBT propaganda” has grown to cover gender and feminist studies in general. Faculty can no longer do such research themselves or discuss other people’s.
“One by one, they tracked down every program we had that had anything to do with gender studies, queer studies, or intersectionality in literature”; “…the further it went, the clearer it became that certain aspects of gender issues were better left untouched altogether.”
Historians and philologists who work with psychologists and sociologists described similar restrictions in those fields (psychologists were not interviewed for this article): “…in the themes of conferences, summer schools, and online courses at the leading universities and research institutes… there’s now a heavy emphasis on traditional values. Domestic violence has been dropped from course curricula. The gender psychology course… was dropped even before the war… the resource on this subject in the electronic source database was closed, and access is granted to individual students on request. But those requests come not so much from psychology students as from, say, philologists, who also take general psychology and are genuinely interested in gender issues.” Any depiction of sexuality is a “gray zone”: “there are no instructions; everyone (self-)censors at random.” That is exactly why “instructors try not to put students at risk and sign off only on the safest possible topics in the current climate. Especially since topics have to be approved by the unit’s leadership and can be sent back for revision.”
In some majors and departments, the requirements even extend to terminology: editors and department heads demand that words of foreign origin be removed. And here we see a major difference between what gets censored among philosophers, cultural studies scholars, and philologists and what gets censored among historians. People in literary studies and philosophy departments admit that their disciplines are “…so detached from reality, purely about art, about contemplation. And as long as we stay in that space, it seems we really don’t get that kind of attention, not the way historians do.” So their bosses mostly care about terms and proper names: “methodology, analytical lens, content — nobody’s interested in any of that.”
Historians describe a different kind of restriction. The scrutiny can extend beyond names and terminology to how particular historical episodes are interpreted: “…any kind of cooperation with the West, in all its forms… the fight against the famine of ’22, the American Relief Administration. It isn’t mentioned, or only in passing. And now it’s also tied to [Alexander] Arkhangelsky’s name, to his film about the famine… And then, naturally, there’s everything around the Great Patriotic War [the Soviet and Russian name for the war against Nazi Germany in 1941–1945 — T-invariant]. [20]14 already took care of that. There, it’s everything: step a little out of line and it’s ‘falsification.’ The Gulag gets a somewhat lighter touch than the Great Patriotic War, but the trend is there too, and it’s an old one by now.” Topics related to Stalin’s ethnic deportations face growing censorship. So far this is happening in book publishing, but the trend will most likely reach education soon.
Historians of Soviet literature run into the same restrictions when they speak at public events. A graduate student supervised by one of the respondents was scheduled to speak at a memorial evening for a writer from one of the peoples repressed (deported) under Stalin. “The student was asked to talk only about the writer’s work and not mention the repressions, so he pulled out.” Instructors fear that the widening bans will soon leave them no room to maneuver at all: “…the range of options keeps shrinking, because now it’s not just individuals but entire universities that are declared hostile, entire countries ‘unfriendly,’ organizations banned. Pity the poor teachers of foreign literature…”
Prohibition of Certain Actions
That is the name of one of the pretrial restrictions that can be imposed on a suspect or defendant under Russia’s current Code of Criminal Procedure. Typically, it requires the person to appear whenever summoned by an investigator, to stay away from witnesses in the case, and to stay off mobile phones and the internet. In recent years, many employees of Russian state institutions have found themselves under a prohibition of certain actions of their own, if not quite the same one that applies to people under investigation, and university faculty are no exception.
“It turns out we’re required to be physically present at work, and on weekends we have to clear any trips [out of town] with our bosses,” says an instructor at a Moscow university. Professors at universities in the Urals and Siberia also talked about tightened workplace discipline.
Their colleagues in other Russian regions mentioned constant monitoring and video recording of classes. Among the relatively new restrictions are a ban on social media accounts for faculty in administrative positions and a requirement to get the unit head’s approval for articles that may later be submitted for academic bonus competitions. Every guest lecturer now needs the unit head’s approval too. Some universities also keep “blacklists” of unwanted guest speakers.
But the most serious restrictions concern international collaboration and travel abroad. Many respondents spoke bitterly about how both have dwindled and disappeared: “I saw with my own eyes how the forms for annual individual and section reports changed. How a new field appeared requiring us to report contacts with foreign scholars and trips abroad. Now at our university you can’t go on a work trip abroad at all without first having a little talk with the special department [the office in charge of secrecy and security clearances — T-invariant]”; “…there are literally a handful of personal contacts left, and they’re strictly personal, like ‘stay healthy, Happy New Year.’ Joint projects and grants are long gone…”
Red Lines: War and Occupation
Besides the bans, university leadership is also imposing new requirements. When it comes to course content, so far this is happening at individual institutions. Psychology courses, for example, now “include sections on working with combatants and their families and on traditional values.”
Many interviewees said that strict control over content applies above all to the new course Foundations of Russian Statehood, which has been made mandatory for every university major. “It was rolled out with a lot of fanfare, with countless meetings and discussions, and with some kind of hired guns brought in from outside, which had never happened at the university before. They delivered the lectures, and the people assigned to teach the course had to take down what they said word for word and then repeat it. And the people teaching these courses can’t give exams however they like or come up with their own formats. You can only ask the questions you’ve been assigned, and grading is regulated too.” “They were told: one step to the right, one step to the left, and you’ll be shot [a Gulag convoy guards’ warning to prisoners — T-invariant]. You teach only what’s written in your textbook.”
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Even here, though, there are workarounds and “evasion tactics.” “In good departments, smart chairs spare their faculty from teaching this course. There are all sorts of tricks: some of the hours can be moved to independent study, some to the regional component. Basically, it works like this: they ask either junior lecturers or grad students and explain, ‘we have to, what can you do.’”
Still, instructors’ expectations are fairly pessimistic, especially at regional universities. Some of them “dread the day when the single philosophy course and textbook [for teacher-training universities] announced by [Education Minister Sergey] Kravtsov is introduced. If that happens, they’ll have to give up teaching.”
Today, the most painful and “triggering” issues for faculty are trips to the occupied territories and pressure to recruit students into signing military contracts. “They’re demanding that faculty to go, but fortunately they decided it was better not to send people from the department after all. Instead they’ll find volunteers in another program or hire an outside contractor.” One respondent said his colleagues are prepared to quit if they are told to urge students to sign military contracts: “That’s the red line you can’t cross.” Even so, interviewees say these quotas have not yet affected them or their closest colleagues personally. “We can still ignore these strange letters we don’t like. We just pretend they never happened.”
Self-Censorship as Common Sense
Any discussion of current education policy, bans, and dangerous topics inevitably turns to self-censorship. Most respondents admitted they practice it to protect themselves, their students, and their department or school: “…any sensitive moment, any show of defiance, any mistake could cost all of us our lives. It’s like we’re all on the hook for each other…” Another interviewee summed it up by saying self-censorship is inevitable “in a situation where anyone can inform on you, your dear colleague and your esteemed student alike… there’s no point saying what you think in the classroom, because the audience is completely unreliable.” At the same time, some instructors said they have not yet felt any outside pressure and teach their subject just as they always have. They attributed this either to the special standing of their university and department or to the nature of their discipline and the period they study: “…I work on nineteenth-century Russian literature, so we don’t really have any problems with that, as such…”; “For example, I teach a course on [withheld], and it has more than enough difficult topics. Could they ask for my teaching materials after someone complains, call me in for a talk, refuse to approve the course for next year? Probably, yes. Should you cut a sensitive topic from the course preemptively in cases like that? It depends on the topic and on the instructor. Everyone decides for themselves.”
The interviews also show a noticeable shift in the very vocabulary people use to talk about teaching. Words like “monitor,” “avoid,” and “be more careful” now come up regularly. Students’ parents, who rarely figured in accounts of university teaching before, are adding to the strain now that the information environment has changed. “I recommended a film to my students (recommended, not assigned). At the next class, one of my top students tells me the film is on YouTube, YouTube is banned, and she can’t install a VPN because her parents won’t let her: her dad has the kind of job where the whole family’s phones get checked all the time. So now you have to be careful even with recommendations like that. The parents are being vigilant too.”
None of the instructors interviewed could recall a student being barred from defending a term paper or senior thesis, getting a lower grade, or being caught up in a public scandal because of an undesirable topic or an ideologically unacceptable interpretation. Such cases did come up, however, in connection with dissertation defenses. Anything “triggering” or dangerous is “scrubbed” from topics and texts in advance, and many describe this as a natural safety mechanism: instructors protect students, students protect instructors, and administrators protect their staff.
Attitudes toward self-censorship vary. Some speak of it with regret and bitterness, others see it as an unavoidable and sensible choice, and still others find it extremely irritating: “…you’re supposed to know on your own what’s allowed and what isn’t. It’s on you, and that drives me nuts.”
Despite their different assessments, all the interviewees reflect on how their behavior in the classroom is changing. They also reflect on moments when they regret being more open or candid than today’s conditions allow: “…I keep getting carried away, and at the end of office hours I periodically catch myself and think: did I say something I shouldn’t have? I don’t say things directly, but there’s a whole lot of stuff that has to do with methodology, with applying various Western theories, with critical analysis, a critical approach. A whole lot of things we’re used to treating as simply professional. So afterward I catch myself and go back over it: did I say anything like that, anything out of line? But I haven’t run into anything, either in how the students reacted or in terms of consequences.” Another respondent uses a similar expression: “…in class, my mouth ‘runs away with me.’ I’m ‘working on myself,’ but sometimes it’s an uncontrollable process.”
Many instructors describe self-censorship as all-pervasive:
“…I have the distinct sense that self-censorship is in full swing, even with colleagues, fairly close ones, in departments where people have normal conversations… Every now and then I have to bite my tongue. I keep seeing this caution, like, why bring that up, let’s not. It’s not even said out loud, ‘let’s not.’ The other person just, bam, jumps to another topic, or, bam, there’s a pause, and then things move on. There’s a lot of that. What’s emerged isn’t even specific points but whole zones that could lead to tension, to conflicts, even mild ones, or just to arguments, and all of it gets cleared away in advance.”
Instructors who teach at several universities at once, in different programs, say that how careful they are depends both on the particular university and on the students. “How can I teach a course on coming to terms with the past without touching on NN’s work? [Here the respondent names a researcher designated a ‘foreign agent’ — T-invariant] So he’s in my course, with an asterisk. But at the university where I know there’s a tradition of informing, I don’t have a course on memory. I just don’t offer it.” Another interviewee describes the situation in similar terms: “The atmosphere in the classroom is very different from place to place, and so is how students react to events. Working at University N (especially with master’s students), I felt I was among my own people. At University NN, half and half. At University NNN, what jumps out at you is that all the students hold the ‘correct’ position. I live with the constant feeling that tomorrow I’ll be in for it.”
Intense reflection on their own changing behavior has even led some to develop theories of contemporary intellectual self-censorship: “From a sociological standpoint, I think two things are worth pointing out. The first is anticipatory self-restraint (‘once bitten, twice shy’). Is it worth writing a dissertation chapter on poet N if, given his views, there’s a chance he’ll end up on the Justice Ministry’s lists [of foreign agents — T-invariant]? Is it worth putting Telegram in the title of a master’s thesis, or is it better to call it ‘social media’? The second is retrospective correction. That’s when papers on ‘questionable’ issues or about ‘questionable’ authors written over the past ten years or so get hidden away to protect one’s reputation among colleagues, and every mention of them is deleted.” How much freedom remains between anticipatory self-restraint and retrospective correction depends both on one’s field and on personal courage. The only thing that’s clear is that this freedom shrinks steadily with every new restrictive measure.
Students: They don’t argue, but they do complain
Another topic that came up in conversations with instructors working in Russia was student complaints and denunciations. The respondents themselves had never faced denunciations by students, but they fear them, pointing to cases in neighboring departments and programs: “When I start preaching about something, I figure that in a lecture hall with 100–120 people, there are bound to be a couple who hold diametrically opposite views. So as for denunciations, we haven’t had that in our program. In ours specifically. But colleagues have told me students complain to the academic affairs office, about the instructor personally.”
According to some interviewees, the way students file complaints has changed as well.
“They used to go to the department chair as a group and say they weren’t happy with this or that instructor for such-and-such reasons… And everything got settled on the spot. Now they write straight to the rector. Or practically to the president. I don’t even know where they write.”
Still, the respondents observe that purely ideological complaints are rare. When students do point to an instructor’s ideological unreliability, it comes only bundled with complaints about excessive demands or unfair grading.
Almost all the instructors have noticed how much student psychology and students’ sense of themselves as a group have evolved. “Students have kind of stopped arguing altogether,” one says. Another notes that students “easily pick up on the obvious parallels when the conversation turns to wars, inequality, state violence, censorship,” yet “they express it cautiously compared with previous generations.” As a result, in these accounts the students come across as even more guarded and prone to self-censorship than their teachers: “This generation has already been through social studies questions in school about recent events. And they know how to answer with their fingers crossed behind their backs. Basically, they know how to do it all… They don’t laugh. I mean, they’re ironic, but with a very sad face.”
Uninhabitable Habitat
Assessing the situation at their own universities and in Russian humanities education as a whole, almost all respondents spoke of stagnation or decline. Typical phrases included “everything’s stalling,” “there’s no development,” “provincialization,” “complete deprofessionalization,” “the level is falling… not just falling, it’s crumbling, like the walls of Mordor,” “if you passed off today’s papers as work from twenty years ago, nobody would notice,” and “a strong specialist left, and [his place] was taken by opportunists who just started ticking the formal boxes of the qualification requirements.”
Respondents describe their own state of mind as depressed and say the situation is taking a heavy toll on their mental health. Their accounts are full of complaints about loneliness and about how their circle of professional and personal contacts, and their social world in general, is shrinking: “Every piece of news, this got banned, that got pulled, scandals over there, really makes it feel like the walls are closing in…” Many say it is impossible to discuss painful political issues with colleagues: “…Among my colleagues, [nobody] talks about these things. If a bomb went off outside the university window, they’d act as if nothing had happened.”
Most can talk openly only within a small circle of trusted friends, and they count themselves lucky if that circle includes colleagues from the university: “…The only people I still talk to candidly are the ones I’ve been friends with all my life. That’s four or five people…”
No Future
Looking back on how their mood and psychological state have changed, younger instructors talk about adapting to the new situation and about things becoming routine: “…the acute, extreme experiences of 2022 have worn off… there’s no emotional energy left to live in a permanent state of drama.” Mid-career faculty see no future for themselves either in Russia or in the West: “…a lot of instructors already understand that moving to Europe or America is pointless too, because nobody’s waiting for anybody there anymore. The mood is largely apathetic.” Nor do they see a good future for their younger colleagues: “I feel really sorry for those who are just starting to teach. At least we got to work under normal conditions.” Older faculty, while still horrified by what is happening, hold on to the chance to engage with students and help them grow, intellectually and personally. But overall, the emotional trajectory is seen as a downward one: “When it all started, after the shock (the feeling that it had all been for nothing: the conversations about art, literature, history’s twists and turns), I came to believe that I’d at least keep doing my work, even under these conditions, that constant dripping wears away the stone. Today I can’t shake the feeling that it’s all for nothing and completely useless.”
The past four and a half years of living with ever-tightening censorship and control have been “hard, but still bearable.” Looking ahead to the new academic year, however, several instructors voiced a persistent anxiety. “If it stays the way it’s been up to now, that’s hard. Hard, because everything around us keeps getting darker. Well, you carry it somehow. You work with faculty, with students, you talk with colleagues, and things seem more or less okay. But if things go seriously haywire, it’ll be a catastrophe. Then you’ll just have to quit. And a lot of people have no idea what they’d do then, because there’s nothing else left for them to do. In a sense it’s, as they used to say in Soviet times, a moment of truth.”
In late September, news came from HSE University that starting September 29, 2026, logging into the system that hosts students’ electronic gradebooks and other key services “requires downloading the national messenger Max [a state-backed messaging app the authorities are promoting as an alternative to WhatsApp and Telegram — T-invariant] and connecting to the HSE bot. This is now the only way to access one of the university’s most important digital services.”
The academic community has already adapted to keep risks as low as possible. Within this system, there are still departments that remain free, uncensored courses, room to uphold professional standards, and solidarity among students. But having to constantly work out what is still allowed today and what might bring reprimands and reprisals tomorrow is in itself reshaping the humanities at Russian universities: their language, their subjects, the relationships between people, and how instructors see their own professional freedom.
The post Red Lines That Aren’t on Any Map: What can and can’t be said at Russian universities appeared first on Т-инвариант / T-invariant.
In “The Muqaddimah”, the 14th-century historian Ibn Khaldun wrote that “great dynasties often decline after three generations because they fail to produce capable successors.” Under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia now asks this question precisely: Has he weakened the very dynasty he was meant to strengthen and secure? The kingdom is under mounting […]
The post Is time running out for Mohammed bin Salman? appeared first on Asia Times.
A coalition of press freedom and civil liberties organizations is calling on the House Ways and Means Committee to abandon its threat to subpoena staffers at BreakThrough News. The House committee has demanded that BreakThrough employees testify before Congress unless the outlet withdraws its First Amendment and other objections to the committee’s earlier subpoenas and document requests by October 20.
The committee says its inquiry is part of a tax-related investigation into one of BreakThrough’s donors. But the committee and its chairman, Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., have also accused the outlet of “anti-American rhetoric” and “messaging that mirrors hostile government propaganda,” pointing to its criticism of immigration enforcement and of US and Israeli foreign policy. The letter outlines that such statements make clear the investigation is targeting BreakThrough for its viewpoints. The coalition warns that letting Congress interrogate a newsroom over its editorial positions sets a dangerous precedent for journalists of every political persuasion.
Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) Chief of Advocacy Seth Stern stated: “Rep. Smith’s shameless targeting of BreakThrough News for editorial viewpoints that he dislikes shows a complete disregard of the First Amendment. Congress has many more important things to do than interrogate an entire nonprofit newsroom because lawmakers speculate that disagreement with their opinions must evidence a conspiracy. The committee has not identified any alleged unlawful conduct by BreakThrough or any legitimate legislative purpose for its investigation. People who themselves hold controversial political views should understand the risk of normalizing fishing expeditions targeting dissent.”
Read the full letter below:
Dear Chairman Smith,
We are a coalition of press freedom and civil liberties organizations. We are alarmed by your recent correspondence threatening to issue subpoenas to BreakThrough News, a nonprofit organization that publishes news reporting and commentary. Your letter indicates that you plan to demand that virtually every individual associated with BreakThrough’s newsroom, from its editor-in-chief to its social media manager, appear before Congress unless BreakThrough rescinds its well-founded First Amendment and other objections to your prior invasive demands.
The Committee first demanded records from BreakThrough in February, claiming to be pursuing a tax-related probe into donations from Neville Roy Singham, a U.S. citizen based in Shanghai. Those demands and subsequent ones were outrageous in and of themselves, but serially subpoenaing employees of a small left-wing news outlet to compel them to personally appear before you, for no reason other than to further a vindictive political stunt, is beyond the pale and reminiscent of some of the darkest chapters in our nation’s history.
Although your justifications have repeatedly shifted in your various letters and subpoenas to date, you have admitted the true impetus for the inquiry is the groups’ viewpoints, stating they have “amplified anti-American, foreign-aligned narratives on social media, and pushed messaging that mirrors hostile government propaganda.” You further stated, “I will absolutely not stand by and allow our tax code to be abused to push anti-American rhetoric on our home soil.”
The First Amendment protects those who voice even controversial opinions shared by hostile governments abroad, but your primary examples of BreakThrough’s “anti-American” views are criticism of ICE’s tactics and Israel’s U.S.-funded wars – policies that many millions of Americans who have never received funding from or even heard of Mr. Singham also dislike.The fact that foreigners also dislike those policies might underscore their unpopularity, but it does not diminish BreakThrough’s right to share similar views.
Your letter also raises BreakThrough’s alleged connections to a lawfully organized domestic political party, the Party for Socialism and Liberation. Such connections are not illegal and, like receiving donations from a U.S. citizen living abroad, cannot come close to supporting broad subpoenas seeking a news entity’s internal documents or depositions from its entire staff.
Beyond the blatant unconstitutionality of targeting news outlets for their political views, House subpoenas must serve a legislative purpose. Fishing expeditions do not suffice.
BreakThrough News’s reporting and commentary, no matter how distasteful you may find it, is protected by the First Amendment, just as your own views are protected no matter how distasteful others may find them. As the Supreme Court wrote over 80 years ago, “if there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.”
The First Amendment exists to protect people with politically disfavored views from people like you. Speech that politicians approve of is not in need of constitutional protection.
The threatened subpoenas are clearly designed to target BreakThrough for reporting and editorial viewpoints with which the Committee disagrees. Subpoenas of journalists and newsrooms obstruct First Amendment activity by forcing cash-strapped news outlets to spend time and money defending their rights, and by intimidating not only reporters but also sources, donors, and readers.
We demand that you refrain from issuing further unlawful and retaliatory subpoenas, and drop your entire unconstitutional inquiry into BreakThrough News.
Sincerely,
Freedom of the Press Foundation
American Society of Journalists and Authors
Defending Rights & Dissent
First Amendment Foundation
National Coalition Against Censorship
National Press Photographers Association (NPPA)
PEN America
Society of Environmental Journalists
Society of Professional Journalists
The Media and Democracy Project
On Monday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced it would "make $8 billion available for one-time payments to American farmers this harvest season to provide relief during temporary market disruptions and increased input costs."
Using a formula derived from the USDA's production, yield, and price estimates, the Harvest Fuel Relief program will "provide simple, proportional support to producers." It will only cover a "portion of modeled losses during the 2026 crop year." The Farm Service Agency—an office within the USDA that administers credit and loan programs—will administer the $8 billion in one-time payments using funds from the Commodity Credit Corporation, a federal entity authorized to draw up to $30 billion from the U.S. Treasury to fund agricultural initiatives. Payment rates won't be released until November, and the USDA's notice leaves open the possibility of additional payments for "non-Title I commodities, including specialty crop growers and fishermen."
A fiscally questionable decision, the program comes at a time when farmers are feeling a significant price pinch. The dyed diesel American farmers and ranchers use is exempt from state and federal highway taxes, but that has done little to offset skyrocketing fuel prices. In September, the American Farm Bureau Federation projected that fuel expenses would reach $22 billion this year, up 29 percent from 2025. The Farm Bureau estimates that total production expenses will reach nearly $500 billion in 2026. According to its own predictions, the USDA doesn't expect the situation to improve anytime soon.
In its latest Commodity Costs and Returns report, released in June, the USDA projects farmers and ranchers will face record production costs in 2027—higher than during the COVID-19 supply chain disruptions—driven by higher prices for necessary inputs such as fuel, fertilizer, seeds, machinery, and labor.
While the USDA has blamed "temporary market disruptions" for these cost hikes, the blame more accurately falls to President Donald Trump, thanks to his illegal war in Iran. As of Tuesday, Trump's war—and the subsequent shocks it has caused to the global diesel supply—have pushed the national average price in the U.S. up $2.70 per gallon from a year ago, a 74.6 percent increase, according to AAA data.
Unfortunately, the war in Iran is just one of several Trump administration policies making life more expensive for everyone, including the nation's farmers and ranchers. Tariffs on imported fertilizer, which began in 2020 during the first Trump administration, have made it difficult for American farmers to afford what they need. By the Farm Bureau's estimates, fertilizer costs for 2026 are projected to reach a record $40 billion, up 15 percent from the previous year.
The $8 billion program is part of a windfall of taxpayer money the Trump administration has sent to farmers as relief for harms caused by the president's actions. Last December, the USDA sent $11 billion in one-time bridge payments to more than half a million farmers nationwide. Earlier this month, the USDA announced it would provide a record $13.8 billion in gross payments to agricultural producers to cover revenue losses.
In a speech in Kansas touting the program, Trump claimed that the state's residents would see a "plunge" in prices once the war ends. That's likely an exaggeration, given the host of questionable economic policies he seems hell-bent on implementing.
Still, that shouldn't discredit the president's suggestion. Ending the war would benefit farmers, ranchers, and consumers, without doling out billions in another government bailout for a favored industry.
The post Trump's $8 Billion Diesel Bailout Pays Farmers for a Problem He Created appeared first on Reason Magazine.
On October 14, tens of thousands of Colombians took to the streets to protest against the government of far-right leader Abelardo de la Espriella, who has been in office for just two months.
The protests demonstrated the opposition’s clear ability to mobilize its base and fill the streets of several Colombian cities, even though the new government is still in its early days.
Protesters – including members of labor unions, Indigenous organizations, opposition parties, and students – marched through the streets of the capital, Bogotá, as well as other major cities across the country, such as Cali, Medellín, Bucaramanga, Riohacha, and Pereira.
In an address to the nation, De la Espriella stated that 98% of the protests were peaceful, though he also warned the demonstrators: “From the very first day of my administration, I have issued a directive that leaves no room for interpretation: peaceful protest is respected, protected, and guaranteed. But violence, vandalism, and any attempt to violate the rights of others will have no place under my administration.”
He also added: “Here there is a state, here there is authority, and here there is a government that respects freedoms, enforces the law, and protects the millions of Colombians who get up early every day to work and build our nation.”
The main criticisms leveled against the government focused on the executive branch’s neoliberal agenda and its security policy. According to the protesters, De la Espriella is failing to address the difficult labor, educational, economic, and territorial conditions faced by Colombians; on the contrary, his political agenda is making these circumstances worse.
Specifically, the protesters complained about cuts and adjustments to the budgets of public institutions, the lack of greater public investment in education, and the fear among several indigenous organizations that the government’s new measures will prevent them from freely exercising their right to protest.
In fact, one of the main catalysts for the protests has been the signing of a presidential decree that empowers state agents to intervene more directly against protesters – a move that has been criticized, according to the protesters, for its anti-democratic intent.
On this point, social organizations, such as the Cauca Regional Indigenous Council assert that, fearing a popular backlash like the one Iván Duque faced (which turned into what some called a “rebellion” by young people that lasted several weeks in 2021), De la Espriella signed Decree 1525, which modifies law enforcement protocols to give state forces greater leeway when dealing with protesters.
Among other measures, law enforcement can now take direct action in response to protests without the need for exhaustive dialogue, as previously required by the regulation. Several human rights organizations have expressed concern about the decree, stating that it could increase the risk of abuses and reduce mediation as the primary course of action, which already was barely used. During the 2021 national strike in Colombia, 46 people were killed in the context of the heavy police repression of the strike.
One of the people attending the demonstrations last week was former President Gustavo Petro, who optimistically stated that the protests reflect a popular response to the executive branch’s decisions: “The people can organize themselves, and two months into the start of a tyrannical and imposed government, this is the best wake-up call. The time has come for a Latin American day of popular mobilization.”
Petro, who has just resumed leadership of the Pacto Histórico – a coalition of movements that supported his political project – also said: “This is how we respond to adversity with dignity, with the determination to win again, without fear. Life is our companion, not death. The people won’t give up, damn it.”
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