Alexander S. Vindman

Dad. Husband. Vet. NYT Best-selling
Author. Ex NSC/WH Staff. Senior Advisor
@votevets. Dr. & Senior Fellow FPI, SAIS, JHU.

@avindman.bsky.social

[Rep. Marcy Kaptur @RepMarcyKaptur]

🧵 Veterans, like everyone else, are being hurt by this reckless shutdown. VA hospitals stay open, but GI Bill payments are stalled, casework is ignored, and thousands of veteran federal workers are missing paychecks. Our heroes deserve stability and respect, not to be used as a means of leverage.
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[Aaron Parnas @AaronParnas]

This is the ad Donald Trump woke up furious about.

Would be a shame if it went viral.

[Alex Vindman 🇺🇸 @AVindman]

Join Rachel Vindman at 10:30 EST today for a conversation w/
@YVindman @RepVindman hosted by the Veterans & Military Families Council of the DNC. They will discuss the ongoing shutdown and how it is affecting veterans, military families, the federal workforce, & therefore all Americans.

ALL ARE WELCOME!

When: Oct 24, 2025 10:30 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada) Topic: VMFC Q&A with Rep Eugene Vindman
Register in advance for this webinar: https://t.co/ON0AGBSZ1r
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

[Alex Vindman 🇺🇸 @AVindman]

I don’t understand why Trump wrecking the White House isn’t a bigger story. I’ve been in the East Wing many times. Built by Teddy Roosevelt, expanded by FDR, it served a critical function for official gatherings like Medal of Honor award ceremonies and as an emergency ops center.

[Alex Vindman 🇺���� @AVindman]

Trump destroys The People’s House, MAGA says yes sir, and too many don’t even notice.

[Alex Vindman 🇺🇸 @AVindman]

Ronald Reagan on Tariffs.

[Alex Vindman 🇺🇸 @AVindman]

Clean on OPSEC, was it Pete Hegseth’s @PeteHegseth room?

[Bridget Brink @AmbBridgetBrink]

Seriously? Must have been a slow news day at the White House yesterday.

[Bridget Brink @AmbBridgetBrink]

“Take a seat”?

I was the first woman to serve as U.S. Ambassador in a war zone, living under Russia's missiles & drones for 3 years.

I won't be bullied, silenced, or back down.

I can’t wait to get to Congress & hold this Admin accountable.

Join us https://t.co/aXNqCVqhrf

[Alex Vindman 🇺🇸 @AVindman]

'Extremely weak': Former NSC Director on Trump rolling over for Putin in Alaska summit ⁦@MSNBC⁩ https://t.co/42FvNaUqZR

[Alex Vindman 🇺🇸 @AVindman]

A really interesting and excellent read on the history of summits.

[S Sebag Montefiore @simonmontefiore]

“Next time in Moscow?” said VV Putin in English.
“Oh that’s an interesting one” replied President Trump. There is a risk to summits. They are fascinating, partly in the interplay of personalities, partly the theatre and partly in the location – but there is a danger in the expectations, there is a risk in negotiations that are not based on the messy reality on the ground and there is a risk that the summit benefits one player more than other. We saw that with the first term summit with Grand Marshal Kim of N Korea. Now we see it again. Summits are fascinating to watch. They appear to be all about personalities but in fact they are all about interests and no one acts against their own interests. Here are some early thoughts and some reflections on summitry itself. VV Putin risked nothing by coming to Anchorage – he would argue he was placing Russia back in the superpower league as an equal to America like in the days Stalin Khrushchev and Brezhnev - but on the ground, he believes he is winning and no generalissimo who believes that victory is possible is going to compromise. There is no doubt that Putin is an expert after 25 years at playing US presidents: “your country is hot as a pistol now” he told Trump “I thought it was dead a year ago” and went on to pontificate about the US elections “Putin said your election was rigged….no country has mail in voting” and “if you d won millions would be alive today.” It is truly hilarious if unsettlingly sinister to take advice on the workings of democracy from a ruler who combines the style of a 19th century Autocrat and 20thC dictator. The basic lesson here is that it is impossible to negotiate a peace between Ukraine and Russia without clear recognition of how the war started with the Russian invasion, the real meaning of Putin’s terms - ‘deNazification’ for example meaning the degradation of Ukrainian democracy, the “underlying issues” referring to the demilitarisation of Ukraine and effectively the end of its independence as a state – and the real situation in the war that will decide the real peace terms. Without such reality, a summit like this is a show that plays into the hands of the player whose interest is slowwalking any negotiations while harvesting the prestige of presidential summitry. Apart from discussing the failures of American democracy, the leaders discussed the great geopolitical questions of our time – the Russian way of warfare “they are great soldiers,” said the US President but Russian history is not as he thinks a parade of victories: there are many victories and many defeats too, all at the cost of eyewatering losses in manpower spent by leaders who care little for human life. As for China and Russia, “they re natural enemies. Russia has land China has people” but this is to miss the big things they have in common: they are the powers of the Closed World that is in opposition to the Open World of America and the West and our world system. Its degradation is their common project, America their common enemy.
A couple of moments were fascinating. There was a revealing moment as the US president waited with the nervousness of a callow bridgegroom on his wedding day for the arrival of the Russian tsar. There was a striking moment of Trumpian imperial showmanship as a black arrowhead of Stealth bombers swooped over the two emperors as they walked fondly along the red carpet. There was the essence of American power and paramountcy. And there was that gliimpse of a laughing Putin and joyfull Trump as together they slid away in the gleaming Beast...
Otherwise the Summit simply displayed Putin’s experience in handling US presidents, his conviction that he could win on the ground and that a divided, erratic West may yet cede him his maximalist war aims. “It was a 10,” said Trump who is still enamoured of VVP ’s feral, drear and gangsterish menace.. “I have always had a fantastic relationship with Vladimir.” The one thing that can be said here is that Trump walked away without making a bad deal. The only thing worse than an anticlimactic summit with nothing to discuss would be a climactic summit that delivered a disastrously bad deal that made things worse. That it seems did not happen. But the falllout from this may well place further pressure on Zelensky. Putin “wants to solve the problem… Now its really up to Pres Zelensky to get it done.” Maybe but not on terms that destroy Ukraine as a state. Trump offered to sit in in the meeting with Putin and Zelensky.
The Summit was a lesson in the dangers and benefits of this species of geopolitical show. First the venue. Like football, there is seen to be advantage to the home team. It was extremely hard for Churchill to negotiate with Stalin in 42 and 44 on his own in Moscow, isolated in Stalin’s dacha. Putin wanted to meet Trump in Russia or Saudi or UAE. But Alaska was a clever compromise, American but a former Russian province. Of course leaders have always met to fix things – that’s the point of these conversations. It was Churchill who started to call them summits. But they are not new: one thinks of the famous meeting of Octavian and Antony in Nov 43BC when they divided up the Roman empire. Or the moment, Antony arrived in the east and in 41 received the two monarchs of the East: including Queen Cleopatra of Egypt and Herod the Great of Judea. Herod was given Judea to rule but Cleopatra, who arrived cavorting on a golden ship, got more. There was a summit that ended in a nexus of love power and empire – they fell in love and hoped their children would rule the East but instead it ended with defeat and the suicide of both.
When the victor Augustus received Herod after the battle, Herod expected to be executed as a support of Antony; instead he was confirmed as King of Judea. The Field of the Cloth of Gold between Francois and HenryVIII was the great meeting of another era when gold decoration was very admired – as it is today – but also chivalrous pursuits and wrestling. But the modern of a summit was invented in May 1787 when Empress Catherine the Great met Emperor Joseph II at a spectacular meeting organized by the Russian co-ruler Prince Potemkin at which the leaders watched dancing, shows, military displays, theatrical villages, conversations with what we would call influenvers. As it was new, people regarded the shows and villages as faked but actually Potemkin was a creative impresario who created the sort of shows that leaders are forced to watch on state visits.
In the next era,two emperors Napoleon of France and Alexander I of Russia met on a neutral raft between their empires at Tilsit 1807 to divide up Europe into spheres. Like Putin and Trump, the two claimed to like each other greatly!!!! Trump’s crush on Putin is not unique: “I’m happy and I think he is with me,” said Napoleon. “Were he a woman I think I d make him my lover.” But their interests and personalities were in fact opposed and the fallout when it came was titanic: 1812 the invasion of Russia that led to the French capture and burning of Moscow then their Retreat and Russian troops fighting their way to depose Napoleon in Paris.
The classic example of how a bad deal is worse than no deal was the Munich Peace in Our Time with Chamberlain and Hitler. In WW2, there was no meeting of Hitler and Stalin when they divided Europe in August 1939. Instead Ribbentrop went to Moscow to meet Stalin and a year later Molotov went to Berlin to meet Hitler –an ominous meeting that made Hitler’s invasion inevitable . Even Molotov and Hitler’s summit was not the most awkward of WW2. That title belongs to the 1940 Hendaye meeting between Hitler and Franco: “I d rather have my teeth pulled out that go through that again,” said Hitler afterwards.
The timings and locations of the Big Three meetings (The Big Three – WSC FDR and JVS is my next big book) were fraught particularly since the world war made travel esp perilous: in August 42, Churchill felt he had to fly to Moscow given the desperate state of the Eastern Front and the fact he had to inform Stalin there would be no Second Front without breaking up the alliance.
The meetings were desperate but somewhat like a three act play ; they met, they fought, they fell in love. One can only hope that Winston’s Moscow visit in 44 when he and Stalin divided up Europe in the Percentages Agreement does not turn out to be an inspiration for Trump Putin today. Stalin had never flown in a plane and was scared so he wanted to travel by train. Churchill loved flying around the world on adventurous trips; Stalin hated it. In 1943, the leaders proposed meeting in Iceland, Cairo, Bagdad, Basra, Khartoum. FDR first tried in a somewhat weasily manner to meet Stalin without Churchill and he ultimately suggested Alaska or the Russian Far East: “Africa is almost out of the question in Summer and Khartum is British territory,” FDR wrote to Stalin. “Iceland I do not like because for both you and me it involves rather difficult flights and, in addition, would make it, quite frankly, difficult not to invite Prime Minister Churchill at the same time. Therefore, I suggest that we could meet either on your side or my side of Bering Straits. Such a point would be about three days from Washington and I think about two days from Moscow if the weather is good. That means that you could always get back to Moscow in two days in an emergency. ” Instead they looked to the Middle East and Stalin favoured Teheran, Iran technically a neutral country under the young shah but actually occupied by the British and the Russians. Stalin agreed though he still had to fly for the first time getting the train to Baku where he had to catch plane. He looked at the two planes one for him and one for Beria and he swapped taking Beria’s plane, hoping to counter any conspiracy. Stalin always claimed he could not leave Russia because he commanded the Front in such detail. He was the most hands on of the Big Three warlords.
In late 1944, they started to discuss a big meeting to plan victory. Churchill proposed Jerusalem” there are first class hotels, government houses,” he wrote to his fellow warlords, “Marshal Stalin could come by train.” He secretly hoped that by luring FDR and Stalin to Palestine, he might persuade the USA at least to share responsibility for the coming war between Jews and Arab. They discussed Athens Malta Cyprus Siciliy too. Instead Stalin proposed the Tsar’s old seaside resort Yalta in Crimea: Churchill called it The Riviera of Hades but each of the leaders staying in a majestic palace . FDR stayed in the Tsar’s palace Livadia where meetings took place, Churchill in the Vorontsov Palace and Stalin in the Yusupov Palace – the home of the assassin of Rasputin. Stalin could come and go by train. There was less discussion about the third meeting in Potsdam near Berlin. Cold War summits were as minutely choreographed: Vienna seemed a compromise for JFK and Khrushchev in 1961 particularly since Austria had been divided into sectors inc a Soviet sector until five years earlier. The US advisors warned Kennedy he was under prepared and sure enough Khrushchev humiliated him in a bruising summit.
There was finally a summit in Iceland – Reagan and Gorbachev – that failed. And there was finally a Malta summit too in 89 between Bush and Gorbachev on battleships but that went very wrong when the sea got choppy and the leaders got seasick. GW Bush and Putin each did their home towns - Putin to Texas and Bush to Petersburg. When Obama wanted a reset with Putin, he went to Moscow to show willing. In our own times, Helsinki made sense for the first Trump Putin summit since Finland had a long history as a Finlandized Soviet client but now Finland has joined NATO. The Arab states would have been neutral enough but Alaska has a special history, conquered by merchants and soldiers for the Russian empire in the late 18th century known as Russian Amerika, it was sold to President Johnson and Secretary Seward in 1867 by Alexander II.
The old debate on the importance of personality versus the deeper movements of history is today in high relief given the eccentric impulsive transactional and erratic imperial decision-making of Trump and the drear grim grindingly gruesome autocratic laconic and phlegmatic style of Putin. Interests not magical thinking, flamboyant personalities and blustering rodomontades are what make summits.
When they go wrong they can achieve little like Trump and Kim or they can positively do harm like the classic example of the danger of summits – Camp David between Barak and Arafat - that can undermine trust and hope. It was unclear if there is any deal to be made between Putin’s maximalist demands of annexation of all of Donbass and Donetsk even the unconquered pieces plus of course Crimea, limits on Ukrainian army, no NATO membership and ‘deNazification’ the euphemism for the removal of Zelensky and the degradation of democracy. It is unthinkable for Ukraine to give up lands yet alone those it hasn’t yet lost in return for an effective end of its statehood. Such cessions would only be considered with great pain in return for the ability to defend itself with a major army and with Western esp US guarantees of security and European peacekeepers so it could become a open society and war democracy right next to autocratic closed Russia. There is a scenario in which Trump appeases Putin in return for ‘peace in our time’ that Ukraine backed by Europe then rejects; if that led to a fallout between Europe and US, Putin would be delighted. But Europe has given Trump its redlines.
Peace is worth fighting for – but it only sticks if both sides have given and received enough to each other. Or if one has been totally defeated. Putin still hopes to achieve victory: Russian leaders are uninhibited by massive losses but at some point the war may bite significantly, oil revenues are down, his harvest is appalling. Summits are transactional but also theatrical and the theatre can mean a lot too: the t-shirt worn by Foreign Minister Lavrov – CCCP – USSR ��� is a statement about how the Russians see Ukraine: not a real country, just what the tsars called Little Russia and the Soviets called one of the ‘republics’ mistakenly formed by Lenin to look like nations but actually to be ruled with a rod of iron from Moscow. Lavrov is stating the Soviet Union was never designed to break up into independent nations - pleasing his master who said the fall of the Soviet Union “was the great geopolitical disaster of the 20th Century.” Putin believes it is his life’s mission to reverse it, destroy Ukraine as an independent state, purge it and then suffocate it in the embrace of restored Russian empire… And as long as he thinks he can succeed, there is nothing to discuss.

[VoteVets @votevets]

NEW: Statement from VoteVets Senior Advisor LTC (Ret.) @AVindman on today’s Trump-Putin summit:

“Nothing was achieved other than giving Vladimir Putin the legitimacy he craves at the expense of Ukrainian security.”

[Alex Vindman 🇺🇸 @AVindman]

Putin even stole @realDonaldTrump PR win. Treated him like a punk.

[Alex Vindman 🇺🇸 @AVindman]

Trump looked weak and inconsequential. He’s diminished the office of President and made the United States irrelevant.

[Alex Vindman 🇺🇸 @AVindman]

Trump walked away empty handed after giving Putin a series of gifts. Putin said the underlaying conditions for the war need to be addressed to achieve peace. Those conditions are ending Ukraine’s sovereignty and movement towards Europe. I see some harsh terms being proposed to Ukraine. Trump’s a loser.

[Michael McFaul @McFaul]

Trump claims that Putin would have taken all of Ukraine if Trump weren’t President. This is complete nonsense. Ukrainian warriors, not Trump, have stopped Putin from taking Ukraine. And by not supporting new military aid to Ukraine, Trump is helping Putin take more Ukrainian land

[Alex Vindman 🇺🇸 @AVindman]

Putin will be on his A-game to manipulate @realDonaldTrump into signing on to symbolic agreements on Ukraine and other “deals.” Trump also wants “wins,” and seems to willing to sacrifice Ukraine to get them. Can Trump be the tough guy to make meaningful progress on peace? This is a high-stakes Summit. @CNN

[Alex Vindman 🇺🇸 @AVindman]

The interview @realDonaldTrump just gave on Air Force One, show a good level of preparation for the meeting with Putin. The tone suggests Trump’s willing to apply pressure on Putin to coerce a peace settlement. The Summit seems to be an effort to set conditions for Putin-Zelensky talks.

[Alex Vindman 🇺🇸 @AVindman]

Of course the proofs in the pudding.