New evidence that Washington broke its promise not to expand NATO “one inch eastward” – a fateful decision with ongoing ramifications – has not been reported by ‘The New York Times’ or other agenda-setting media outlets.
Analysis
The media are misleading the public on Syria (Stephen Kinzer)
Americans are being told that the virtuous course in Syria is to fight the Assad regime and its Russian and Iranian partners. We are supposed to hope that a righteous coalition of Americans, Turks, Saudis, Kurds, and the “moderate opposition” will win.
This is convoluted nonsense, but Americans cannot be blamed for believing it.
Brian Milakovsky: Cut Off: What Does the Economic Blockade of the Separatist Territories Mean for Ukraine?
Ten months have passed since Ukraine imposed a full economic blockade of the part of the Donbas under Russian and separatist control. What has it meant for Ukraine’s economy and for the prospects of the territories’ economic and social reintegration?
Syria: The winners and losers are becoming clear in this war (Patrick Cockburn)
It was a convenient myth for the Syrian opposition and its outside backers to claim that neither the Syrian army nor the Russians were fighting Isis. “The Russians say they want to destroy Daesh [Isis] but they are not bombing Daesh: they are bombing the moderate opposition,” said the Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, who retains a touching belief in the existence of a powerful moderate faction.
Robert Legvold: US-Russia Relations in 2017: Extreme Disappointment
Disappointment—extreme disappointment—marks what the year 2017 has been in US-Russian relations. The relationship is stuck. The hole in which it is stuck is deep and dark—and growing more so. Each side had hoped for better.
Hal Freeman: A Critique of Joe Biden’s New Article on Russia in Foreign Affairs
For Biden and other westerners, the 1990s was simply a decade we need not mention or remember. For Russians, it can’t be forgotten.
The Heartbreaking Irony of ‘Winter on Fire’ (Lev Golinkin)
he Oscar-nominated Netflix documentary Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom presents viewers with a story of everyday citizens facing down brutal riot police controlled by Ukraine’s then-President Viktor Yanukovych, backed by Russian President Vladimir Putin. The colorful array of activists, artists, scarf-wrapped babushki, bearded priests and fresh-faced students makes it appear as if Ukraine’s people from all walks of life in participated in the Maidan uprising. But some are missing—neo-Nazis, who were edited out.
John Hudson: Trump Administration Set for Broad Engagement with Russia in Early 2018
Ending an Obama policy of isolating Moscow, the top military leaders of NATO and Russia are planning to meet in Azerbaijan later this month.
The Pope and the Russian Patriarch Have Ended Their 1,000-Year Cold War (Stephen F. Cohen)
TheNation.com.) Cohen points out that Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev confirms what Cohen has been arguing for nearly a decade: Washington and Moscow are in a New Cold War more dangerous than the preceding one.
Nation Contributing Editor Stephen F. Cohen and John Batchelor continued their weekly discussions of the New Cold War. (Previous installments are atCohen asks why, if Pope Francis can establish a detente with his counterpart in Moscow after a 1,000-year schism, President Obama cannot do the same with Putin. Instead, US-Russian political relations are growing worse and more militarized. In Ukraine’s civil and proxy war, the political crisis of the US-backed Kiev government, fueled by Ukraine’s rapacious oligarchs, has deepened. In Syria, Putin’s successful strategy of militarily bolstering Assad’s army in order to defeat ISIS and its affiliate (“moderate”) terrorist movements, while evidently acknowledged by Secretary of State Kerry and many European officials, is the target of fierce defamation by Washington’s powerful war party which opposes Kerry’s diplomatic approach both to the Syrian and Ukrainian crises.
Still worse, two American allies, Saudi Arabia and NATO member Turkey, are considering sending their troops (illegally) into Syria to fight Assad’s ascendant army, thereby risking military confrontations both with Russian and US “special-ops” boots on the ground. (This axis of Washington hardliners, Turkey and the Gulf Sheikdoms, Cohen observes again, appears to regard Putin and Assad as a greater foe than Middle East terrorist armies Turkey and Saudi Arabia have abetted for years.) The conversation ends with Cohen pointing out that among Republican presidential candidates, only Donald Trump has proposed a kind of detente with Moscow, while the others advocate, in their bellicose bumper-sticker pronouncements, escalating the military confrontation with Russia on all fronts, from Europe to the Middle East. Meanwhile, debate moderators continue to fail to press them on these perilous international issues.
Washington Post Editorial: Russia and the United States are wrecking a landmark treaty
The United States and Russia seem to be returning to an arms race they halted a generation ago.
Tom Switzer: Alexander Downer meeting doesn’t prove the Trump campaign colluded with Russia
The key question at the heart of this investigation is not whether the Russians had dirt on Clinton, including damaging emails. The issue is whether the Trump campaign was working with Russian officials to acquire and disseminate information about her that could be used to tilt the 2016 election.
Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate: ‘Fire and Fury’, Clinton Probe, and Russiagate
The book ‘Fire and Fury’ sparks a rift between Trump and Bannon, the FBI revives scrutiny of the Clinton Foundation, and GOP Senators target the author of the Steele dossier. Best-selling author Max Blumenthal breaks down the growing intra-elite clashes and the key developments that are being overlooked
NATO’s Provocative Anti-Russian Moves (Jonathan Marshall)
Twenty-seven years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, NATO is back flexing its muscles as if nothing had changed since the days of the Soviet Union. Defense ministers from the enlarged, 28-member organization agreed recently to strengthen the alliance’s “forward presence” in Eastern Europe. If their new policy is endorsed at a summit in Poland this summer, NATO will begin deploying thousands of troops in Poland and the Baltic states, right up against Russia’s borders.
Kimberly Strassel: The Democrats’ ‘Russian Descent’
The running joke in today’s Washington is that one risks a subpoena merely for ordering a salad with Russian dressing.
Report on Donbass (Paul Robinson)
Given the poor quality of much commentary about Russia’s role in the war in Donbass, it was good this week to read something which was actually quite informative, even if I disagreed with some of its assumptions and policy recommendations.
Patrick Armstrong: Russian Federation Sitrep
LOST OPPORTUNITY….Once the USA was extremely popular in Russia. In the early 90s a high of 80% felt good about the USA. 35% then thought the US was friendly and 3% thought it hostile: today it’s 3% and 59% respectively.
Lawrence J. Korb: The Vatican tries to reduce the revived global threat of nuclear
With the demise of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, many experts felt that the threat of nuclear war had receded.
Paul Saunders: Where Are U.S.-Russia Relations Headed?
Paul Saunders, executive director of the Center for the National Interest, interviews Andranik Migranyan, a professor at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (an academic institution run by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia) about the future of U.S.-Russia relations.
Stephen F. Cohen and John Batchelor: Four Years of Ukraine and the Myths of Maidan
The history of the Ukrainian crisis, which has made everything it affected worse, is distorted by political myths and American media malpractice.
Rajan Menon and William Ruger: Arming Ukraine provokes Russia
Ukraine matters more to Russia than it does to the United States. This hard reality makes the Trump administration’s recent decision to approve selling lethal weapons to Ukraine, including anti-tank missiles, counterproductive and dangerous.