Poet, writer, translator, professor, and former director of the International Writing Program. My views ≠ The University of Iowa.
Iowa City/Santa Fe
Joined April 2011
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On the Road to Lviv, my book-length poetic meditation on Adam Zagajewski, cultural diplomacy, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, is now available @arrowsmithpress.
Word.
So many people seem genuinely astonished by this local ceasefire in Oleshky, where Russian occupation and the fighting have driven the city into a full-blown humanitarian catastrophe.
Turns out, all it takes is an order from the Kremlin, and Russians and Ukrainians stop shooting at each other. They can calmly and civilly arrange the evacuation of innocent civilians facing starvation, even allow Ukrainian and American journalists to be present on the ground, and so on.
Well, duh.
There is not, and never has been, a single adequate, rational, even remotely sane reason to wage a war aimed at destroying Ukraine. This is the stupidest, most brainless, absurd, pointless, contrived, and deceitful war in human history.
The Kremlin wanted to give Donald Trump a little gift ahead of the elections, so the Kremlin gave an order to put the bloodbath on hold for a few dozen hours.
All it would take is a single order from the Kremlin, and not only would a local ceasefire become possible, but the entire war would end. Just like that. Instantly.
And 95% of Russians wouldn't give a single damn. They would happily accept absolutely anything as yet another "great victory of Russian arms," provided that's how state television explained it to them.
And with a snap of the fingers, all those insane fairy tales about "NATO expansion," "Nazi Satanists," the "multipolar world," "historical Russian lands," and all the rest of that bullshit would simply vanish into thin air.
The problem is that, in this insane, upside-down looking-glass world, absolutely everything is being done to encourage a megalomaniacal maniac, driven mad by impunity and boredom, to never, ever, under any circumstances stop the war, but to keep it going indefinitely.
Instead, he is constantly appeased and rewarded for it.
Christopher Merrill retweeted
If only we had a Secretary of State like Marco Rubio, a man who wanted Joe Biden to rescue even more of our Afghan allies in 2021!
Surely, someone like that would not let those Afghans who made it to America be delivered right back to the Taliban.
This morning @potus should inform the Taliban that we will be in #Afghanistan until everyone we & our allies plan to evacuate is accounted for & out of the country
If they cooperate it should be swift & orderly
If they get in the way they will be killed
Christopher Merrill retweeted
“By sending them to Pakistan — which would then send them to Afghanistan — the Trump administration has found a way around the hurdles that have so far prevented vulnerable Afghans from being sent back to face repression or retaliation by the Taliban.” nytimes.com/2026/10/30/world…
Christopher Merrill retweeted
This spits on the service of every GWOT veteran that served alongside our brave Afghan allies. The Trump administration has destroyed our global reputation.
It will take at least a generation to earn any bit of trust back from the free world but it starts on Tuesday by voting out MAGA in a landslide.
“By sending them to Pakistan — which would then send them to Afghanistan — the Trump administration has found a way around the hurdles that have so far prevented vulnerable Afghans from being sent back to face repression or retaliation by the Taliban.” nytimes.com/2026/10/30/world…
Christopher Merrill retweeted
Oregon’s Secretary of State responding with this letter, which says at the end: “… my name is spelled R-E-A-D, as in ‘read the Constitution’… thank you for your attention to this matter”
Christopher Merrill retweeted
While he hopes nobody is watching, Trump greenlit the expulsion of more than 150 Afghans back to Taliban rule, where they will face almost certain persecution, torture, or worse.
Accountability for Trump’s cruel immigration agenda cannot come soon enough.
Breaking News: The Trump administration has detained dozens of Afghan immigrants in Louisiana — including relatives of those who helped the U.S. military — and plans to deport them to Afghanistan, according to U.S. officials. nyti.ms/4jPVvrw
Christopher Merrill retweeted
We made a promise to our Afghan allies—that after aiding & protecting our troops during the conflict in Afghanistan, America would not abandon them. This Administration is betraying that promise, deporting them to potential torture & death. nytimes.com/2026/10/30/world…
Christopher Merrill retweeted
We have a loved one scheduled to be on this flight. He will be killed if he’s returned to the Taliban. He supported the US mission in Afghanistan. He has broken no laws. He came here legally. Seeking asylum should not be a death sentence.
Breaking News: The Trump administration has detained dozens of Afghan immigrants in Louisiana — including relatives of those who helped the U.S. military — and plans to deport them to Afghanistan, according to U.S. officials. nyti.ms/4jPVvrw
Christopher Merrill retweeted
This is monstrous.
Breaking News: The Trump administration has detained dozens of Afghan immigrants in Louisiana — including relatives of those who helped the U.S. military — and plans to deport them to Afghanistan, according to U.S. officials. nyti.ms/4jPVvrw
Christopher Merrill retweeted
The message to Russia should be simple: Negotiations start when Russia agrees to withdraw its forces from all of Ukraine, including Crimea. Until then, we continue to ramp up support for Ukraine. Anything else risks prolonging the conflict and bloodshed and, worse, enabling a Russian victory.
The West's dithering and repeated offers of concessions to Russia fundamentally misread the situation. Putin has shown little interest in a peace that respects Ukrainian sovereignty. His ambitions are rooted in an imperial conception of Russian history, in which Ukraine is considered an inseparable part of a broader Russian civilization. He invokes the medieval state of Kyivan Rus' to justify these ambitions, ignoring the fact that Kyivan Rus' existed centuries before the Russian Empire and that Ukraine became an internationally recognized sovereign state in 1991.
Crimea, moreover, was transferred from the Russian Soviet republic to the Ukrainian Soviet republic in 1954. Russia subsequently recognized Ukraine's existing borders following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, including through the 1994 Budapest Memorandum and the 1997 Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation, and Partnership.
Agreements with Russia mean little. Only a battlefield success (meaning Russia withdraws its forces) that makes clear the cost of renewing its adventurism will convince Russia.
Christopher Merrill retweeted
Yesterday, russia killed 21 innocent civilians, including children.
Today, the Pentagon is calling on people to “cool their rhetoric on russia.”
So the problem isn’t russia killing children.
The problem is people speaking too loudly about it?
Christopher Merrill retweeted
LOL.
BREAKING: The U.S. cancels plans for a photo with top G20 diplomats after Europeans objected to standing beside Russia, AP sources say. apnews.com/article/g20-rubio…
Christopher Merrill retweeted
CBS found Trump’s clemency wiped out at least $119 million in restitution owed to crime victims — small businesses, community banks, everyday people who got defrauded.
Pardon power shouldn’t erase what courts ordered victims to be paid back.
Congress needs to rein this in.
cbsnews.com/projects/2026/tr…
Christopher Merrill retweeted
"New records obtained by KARE 11 show the company that owned a vacant private prison in Appleton, Minnesota offered to sell it to the state in 2025 for $75 million.
One year later, the Trump administration agreed to use taxpayer funds to buy the same abandoned prison from CoreCivic, Inc., for $495.6 million.
The price difference, $420 million, is more than taxpayers are estimated to have lost in Minnesota’s much-publicized Feeding Our Future fraud scandal." kare11.com/article/news/inve…
Christopher Merrill retweeted
“Either the Trump administration ordered the restrictions as part of its disgraceful Putin appeasement campaign, or the commander-in-chief and his “War” Secretary have delegated control over battlefield operations to a private tech executive — thus contradicting the strident position they’ve taken in the Anthropic controversy…
Either possibility reflects badly on the administration, so it is no surprise that Pentagon IG Moring (a Defense Department lawyer in the first Trump administration) is dodging the question.”
Pentagon IG Refuses to Investigate Starshield Restrictions That Enabled Russian Attacks on Ukraine nationalreview.com/corner/pe…
Christopher Merrill retweeted
The US response to my UN report fails to refute any of my legal findings that the US has murdered 244 civilians at sea. Instead it resorts to childish name-calling. I’m obviously not a terrorist sympathizer - but the US is committing extrajudicial killings ohchr.org/sites/default/file…
Christopher Merrill retweeted
Scoop from @nancyayoussef
This means the Joint Staff that serves the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Dan Caine is without its chief planner on the eve of possible resumption of strikes against Iran. It is the 2nd General serving in the Pentagon’s top planning role (J-5) that has been fired/forced out by Hegseth.
Breaking news from me: Hegseth pushes out another Top General on the Joint Staff, this time the J-5 theatlantic.com/national-sec…
Christopher Merrill retweeted
How predictable.
According to BILD, Russian forces are using the ceasefire in Oleshky to reinforce their positions, move troops and military equipment, strengthen fortifications and prepare for further military operations.
And by the way, this is a small preview of what a ceasefire could look like on a much larger scale.
Of course, we all want this war to end. We want the killing to stop. We want peace. But without strong security guarantees, a ceasefire could simply give Russia time to regroup, rearm and prepare for another war.
And that’s exactly why security guarantees for Ukraine aren’t some optional extra we can figure out later. Because the last thing we need is a ceasefire that gives Putin a few years to prepare for his next invasion.
Surprise, surprise.
Russian forces have begun taking civilians from occupied Oleshky to Russia, apparently disregarding previously announced agreements governing the operation.
The operations are being conducted by the Russian military, without American representatives or teams from either side’s ombudsman office present. Russia’s state news agency TASS is openly filming the operation.
There is no indication that civilians are being given a choice of where they wish to go. No buses or other vehicles designated to transport evacuees to Ukrainian-controlled territory are visible.
The operation raises serious concerns that Russia is once again exploiting a humanitarian evacuation to forcibly transfer Ukrainian civilians.
The parallels with the evacuation of Mariupol’s Azovstal steel plant are disturbing. Once again, Moscow appears to be disregarding agreed procedures while controlling the fate of Ukrainian civilians.