Doug Klain
Foreign Affairs on Capitol Hill | Views mine 🫡
- Friends, an update: This week I joined @repmarcykaptur.bsky.social's team as her new Legislative Assistant for Military & Foreign Affairs. I'm thrilled to join Congresswoman Kaptur's team and to serve the people of Northwest Ohio. It's a big change, but an exciting one.
- Reposted by Doug KlainThe second vid is out.
- 2000 Meters to Andriivka was snubbed by the Oscars, but it's still the absolute best documentary of modern warfare. When the soldiers who survived stood up after the film's premier in Kyiv last summer, they received a 15 minute standing ovation. Watch here 👇
- Yes, because when I think of the “Russian threat” at this exact moment I obviously think about Greenland and nowhere else!
- Great new @cepa.org report from Marianna Fakhurdinova on military assistance to Ukraine. Here's one of many findings: how have the weapons sent from the US to Ukraine impacted what systems the US still has available?
- The ultimate lesson of the Weimar Era, historians say, lies not in any particular parallel, but in a point that is both obvious and often overlooked: Democracies are imperfect institutions that need to be constantly defended, because they can be torn down from within.
- Seizing tankers in Russia’s shadow fleet is the right move. Often uninsured and aging, these vessels are floating espionage and environmental risks. Seizing them sends an important message to Moscow. Congress has legislation tee’d up to expand shadow fleet sanctions.
- If the US is smart, we'll partner with our friends in Ukraine and learn from their remarkable wins in digital governance. It's smart policy (and politics!) to take the best ideas out there and use them 📲
- 5 years ago there was consensus that January 6 was a riot to overturn American democracy. Now the Trump admin is rewriting history—it pardoned the perpetrators, deleted records of their cases, and fired the prosecutors. @npr.org is preserving a public archive of what really happened.
- What happened to “with Liberty and Justice for all?”
- The NDAA is finally passed—so what’s in it for Ukraine? I break it down for @atlanticcouncil.bsky.social. My take: While it includes most welcome support for Kyiv, the NDAA’s Ukraine provisions are largely about mitigating potential harm from the Trump administration.
- Reposted by Doug KlainNew: Zelenskyy told European leaders he feared the EU would drop a plan for a “reparations loan” to Ukraine backed by frozen Russian central bank assets, mainly over fears of upsetting Trump and losing support on Euro defence and security guarantees. w/ @henryjfoy.ft.com www.ft.com/content/ea36...
- If we are indeed at the end of this latest round of Ukraine negotiations, it's important to keep in mind that the party to blame for a collapse in talks is Russia. Russia keeps pushing for more, even demanding fortified land it cannot take by force.
- After weeks of backroom negotiations, Congress is poised to pass a defense spending bill filled with some rather good provisions to assist Ukraine and put up obstacles to the Trump admin's attempts to divert Ukraine aid or cut off intel support. Here's what's in the bill 👇🧵
- First, here's the text itself. I'll be citing some of the key sections related to Ukraine below. After the House and Senate passed their own versions, a conference committee worked over recent weeks to reconcile the differences—this is the result. docs.house.gov/billsthiswee...
- Sec. 1241: The new National Security Strategy may not view Russia as a major threat to US interests, but Congress sure does. This requires the administration to submit a formal assessment of the threat Russia poses to the United States and its allies.
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View full threadThis NDAA is also better than what either the Senate or House originally passed on their own, and hard work clearly went in to finding ways to continue supporting Ukraine despite an admin that isn't interested in doing so. Votes to pass this NDAA are expected in the coming days.
- Just read through the new National Defense Authorization Act text to see what provisions are in for Ukraine. I’ll have a thread up later with the full breakdown but TL;DR is Congress is poised to pass some rather good legislation to assist Ukraine.
- “The ghosts of corruption still haunt Ukraine’s corridors of power, but impunity is giving way to accountability,” writes Myroslava Gongadze. “This is exactly the transformation that many Ukrainians are fighting for, and one of the main reasons why Ukraine scares Putin so much.”
- Last time I was in Ukraine, a popular Telegram blogger gifted me a “Make Ukraine Nuclear Again” shirt. Since then, opinion polls have found a plurality of Ukrainians think nuclear weapons are the best security guarantee. Important piece from @cjcmichel.bsky.social.
- Read @kyivindependent.com’s coverage of Ukrainian public opinion towards security guarantees.
- Here’s your must-listen podcast for the weekend 👇 @economist.com’s deep dive into Mindich-gate and the genuine heroism of Ukraine’s anticorruption investigators is excellent. This may be Ukraine’s largest-ever corruption scandal, but it’s also a genuine triumph for accountability and anticorruption.
- “As long as Russia keeps making battlefield gains, it is unlikely to pursue meaningful negotiation to end the war,” writes @thestudyofwar.bsky.social’s George Barros. “All of the Trump administration’s diplomacy will amount to little until Russia’s advances are stopped cold.”
- What did we think was going to happen? Just two weeks ago, the United States threatened to withhold arms sales for Ukraine that were *already paid for* by European allies. After a year of policy like that, it's hard to make the case that the United States is reliable.
- Reposted by Doug KlainDepartment of Defense Law of War Manual, Sec. 18.3.2.1 states the "requirement" to refuse illegal orders. What’s its key example? Wait for it . . . It’s "orders to fire upon the shipwrecked."
- It's actually a crazy result that Canada was able to join Europe's €150 billion rearmament scheme but talks with London broke down, so the United Kingdom won't take part.
- Reposted by Doug KlainRep. Don Bacon: "We saw that WSJ article yesterday that many people around the president are hoping to make billions of dollars—these are all billionaires in their own right—from an agreement from Russia, if they get a favorable agreement with Ukraine. That alarms me tremendously."
- It’s been a remarkably busy week for Ukraine peace talks. Somehow the @kyivindependent.com fits it all in 10 paragraphs.
- Here’s a question: when Putin explicitly rejects signing a peace deal with Ukraine because he says it’s democratic government is illegitimate, why doesn’t Trump pressure Putin? Especially after today’s WSJ report, the role that Trumpworld’s business interests play here can’t be ignored.
- Read the @wsj.com report here.
- Congressional backlash to the Kremlin-designed 28-point proposal to end the war in Ukraine was significant. But unless Congress starts passing legislation to mandate—not authorize—sanctions on Russia & military assistance to Ukraine, its role in all of this will remain marginal.
- Reposted by Doug KlainNEW: The frontline in Ukraine is not facing imminent collapse despite recent Russian gains and Kremlin assertions. (1/4) Read the full Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, November 28, 2025: isw.pub/UkrWar112825 More Key Takeaways ⬇️
- The Kremlin bet that offering lucrative business deals would convince the White House to ignore its war crimes in Ukraine. The bet paid off. Also, get a look at the kicker here. Why, Witkoff asks, would Ukraine want missiles when it can get a tariff exemption?
- Andriy Yermak’s ousting is likely to find plenty of fans among Ukraine's partners—certainly here in Washington, where the Trump admin has been open about not wanting to work with him. But more importantly, it's a win for the rule of law in Ukraine. Me on BBC News 👇
- It’s a big news day for Ukraine. I’ll be joining BBC News at 1500 ET to break down the latest.
- Andriy Yermak just resigned as he faced an anticorruption investigation. It's a political earthquake in Ukraine likely to find significant approval from Kyiv's international partners, and a sign that Ukraine's anticorruption institutions remain strong.
- Reposted by Doug KlainUkraine is in Europe. And he’s attacking it every day.
- Just like that. After a week of frantic diplomacy and U.S. threats against Ukraine, Putin rejects ANY agreement. The only path forward is pressure on Russia to change this stance—sanctions and resumed US military assistance to Ukraine. Otherwise, the last 10 months were a waste.
- As we reach President Trump's Thanksgiving deadline for Ukraine to agree to a peace deal, President Zelenskyy says another "thank you" for US support after negotiators agreed to a partial framework in Geneva. I'm joining @thetimes.com Radio in 2 hours to talk about what comes next.
- New: NATO and Ukraine are launching a defense innovation competition to award tens of millions of euros to develop new counter-UAS systems, air defense solutions, and secure frontline communications that will strengthen Ukraine and NATO allies.
- My latest for @atlanticcouncil.bsky.social. After going all of 2025 without passing any legislation on Ukraine—the first time since Russia's full-scale invasion—congressional Republicans spent the last week putting remarkable pressure on the White House over its proposed Ukraine deal.
- If Russia receives amnesty for the more than 170,000 war crimes being investigated by Ukraine, it would remove the legal and financial underpinning for the €140 billion reparations loan planned by the EU, says @razomforukraine.org's Yuliya Ziskina.
