Dexter Filkins

1 month ago | archive.ph | Isaac Chotiner |David Remnick |Dexter Filkins |James Verini

That article is used as proof by most supporters of the conventional wisdom that Putin was bent on conquering Ukraine before he invaded on February 24, 2022. It is the evidence that Putin was an imperialist. Yes, in the same article, Putin also writes, “Modern Ukraine is entirely the product of the Soviet era.

2 months ago | newyorker.com | Dexter Filkins

The Munich Security Conference, a usually staid gathering of diplomatic and military leaders, offered up a startling moment last week when the chairman, Christoph Heusgen, having listened to J. D. Vance declaim on what he described as Europe’s myriad failings, broke down in tears. “After the speech of Vice-President Vance on Friday, we have to fear that our common value base is not that common anymore,’’ Heusgen told the audience.

2 months ago | newyorker.com | Dexter Filkins

At Fort Jackson, in South Carolina, the U.S. Army comes face to face with America’s youth. One recent morning, at the Future Soldiers training course, hundreds of overweight young men and women hoping to join the service lined up to run and perform calisthenics before a cordon of drill sergeants. Some were participating in organized workouts for the first time. Many heaved for breath when asked to run a half mile; others gave up and walked. A number hobbled around on crutches.

Nov 14, 2024 | newyorker.com | Dexter Filkins

In today’s newsletter, Trump’s shocking pick for Attorney General. Plus:When I met Matt Gaetz earlier this year after a Republican campaign event in Little Elm, Texas—where he’d just wowed a crowd at a beer hall, sharing his plans to save “a diminished country”—I asked him what kind of philosophy he was bringing to his work.

Oct 2, 2024 | newyorker.com | Dexter Filkins

When I heard that Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s longtime leader, had been killed last Friday in an Israeli air strike, in south Beirut, my thoughts returned to a scene that has lingered in my mind for more than a decade. In 2012, in a village called Sohmor, in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, I attended an open-air ceremony for two young Hezbollah fighters who had been killed in Syria, where the civil war was under way.