Andrei Kalitin Took Someone Else’s Text Again. Again Without Credit

Financing Chaos: The Global "Security Trap" Is Consuming the Future of Entire Generations. The article ran simultaneously in Ukrainian on Spilno.org.

Less than twenty-four hours passed. Andrei Kalitin — a journalist, listed as a foreign agent under Russian law, and the author of a Telegram channel with thousands of subscribers — published a post reproducing my analytical constructs, my comparisons, my figures presented in my framing. Without a single link to the source. Without mentioning the author.

I will not pretend I don't understand what happened. I understand perfectly well.

Kalitin is subscribed to my Substack. This is not speculation — it is a verifiable fact. He reads my materials. And when he needs a fresh, well-structured analytical text, he takes it. Just takes it. The way people take something they feel belongs to no one in particular.

Let's look at the specifics. My text contains a detailed analysis of the disproportion between Russia's military spending and its actual economic weight, a comparison with the Marshall Plan, an application of the Davis-Nordhaus model to aggregate damage, Arrighi's framework for analyzing American "financialization of decline," and a reading of the "security trap" through the lens of Jervis's security dilemma. Kalitin's post contains the same figures, the same logic, the same narrative. Just shorter — and without the name of the original author.

This is not a coincidence. Coincidences like this don't happen.

I have been working in analytical journalism long enough to know what good-faith borrowing with attribution looks like, and what appropriation of someone else's intellectual work looks like. The difference is simple: in the first case, you write "as so-and-so notes" or "according to so-and-so's analysis" and you provide a link. In the second case, you say nothing and publish it as your own.

Kalitin consistently chooses the second option.

This is unpleasant not simply because it stings professionally — though it does. It is unpleasant because this is how the mechanism of reputation appropriation works. Kalitin's readers receive the analysis and attribute it to Kalitin. Kalitin grows his authority as an expert. The author who produced that analysis remains invisible. This is not a minor irritation — it is a structural injustice built into media ecosystems, one that is generally expected to be endured in silence. I have no interest in enduring it in silence.

I have a practical suggestion for Andrei Sergeyevich. Since he reads my Substack, and since the Ukrainian language apparently creates some inconvenience when working with materials on Spilno.org — I am happy to make things easier. He is welcome to take the texts and simply link to them. This is called citation. It is normal. It is even mutually beneficial.

But taking without attribution is called something else. And I will call it by its proper name every time it happens again.