As brutal crackdowns have failed to put an end to popular unrest in Belarus and mass protests have broken out in the Siberian city of Khabarovsk, dissatisfaction with the status quo in Lebanon is at its height. Anna Borshchevskaya argues that all three pose problems for Vladimir Putin, who is invested not only in maintaining his rule over Russia, but also in propping up the current regimes in Minsk and Beirut. To Putin, the present situation in Belarus is an ucomfortable reminder of the “color revolutions” that swept through former Soviet republics in the 2000s, and removed pro-Kremlin dictators:

Putin’s fear of [democratic] revolutions always encompassed the Middle East, even though it has received less attention. Indeed, the color revolutions swept the post-Soviet space in early-to-mid 2000s also touched the Middle East, with Lebanon’s Cedar revolution.

Current events in Lebanon may seem remote compared to protests closer to Russia. But Lebanon also matters directly to Russia’s policy in Syria, where Putin’s intervention in 2015 both saved the dictator Bashar al-Assad from losing power and elevated Russia’s status—in the eyes of many Western and regional officials—of an indispensable player.

It is not just that that Moscow never labelled Hizballah as a terrorist organization (unlike Western countries), and that overall Moscow leans closer to the Iran-Hizballah-Syria axis in the Middle East. That in and of itself is enough for Moscow to support [the current] Hizballah-backed government in Beirut. But some Russian experts [have also] observed that Lebanese banks could serve as Syria’s connection to the outside world, facilitating reconstruction in a manner that keeps Assad in power.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.