The Donetsk People’s Republic is opposed to plans by political leaders in Kyiv to invite to the Donbass region in eastern Ukraine representatives of the United Nations to discuss a possible ‘peacekeeping’ mission to the region, says Denis Pushilin, the representative of the DPR to the all-party Contact Group of the Minsk-2 ceasefire process.
Analysis
Pepe Escobar: Syria war, Sochi peace
Diplomatic sources confirmed to Asia Times much of the discussions in Sochi involved Russian President Vladimir Putin laying out to Iran President Hassan Rouhani and Turkey President Recep Erdogan how a new configuration may play out in a constantly evolving chessboard.
Ted Galen Carpenter: The Duplicitous Superpower
How Washington’s chronic deceit-especially towards Russia-has sabotaged U.S. foreign policy.
What Would a Realist World Have Looked Like? (Stephen Walt)
Here’s a puzzle for all you students of U.S. foreign policy: Why is a distinguished and well-known approach to foreign policy confined to the margins of public discourse, especially in the pages of our leading newspapers, when its recent track record is arguably superior to the main alternatives?
I refer, of course, to realism.
Reality Peeks Through in Ukraine (Robert Parry)
With corruption rampant and living standards falling, Ukraine may become the next failed state that “benefited” from a neoconservative-driven “regime change,” though the blame will always be placed elsewhere – in this case, on the demonized Russian President Putin, writes Robert Parry.
Stephen F. Cohen: Russia Is Not the ‘No. 1 Threat’—or Even Among the Top 5
By declaring Putin’s Russia to be the greatest danger to America, the political-media establishment itself is endangering US national security.
Poland’s Plans to Stick Washington With a Bigger NATO Bill (Doug Bandow)
Of course, the “Russian threat” is not so great as the Poles would have others believe. For all of Warsaw’s concern for “central and eastern Europe,” there have been no real Russian threats against those states. Nor has Vladimir Putin done anything to suggest his interest in an aggressive war to conquer the region. No one imagines a revived Red Army heading toward Montenegro, recently invited to join NATO.
Alexander Baunov and Thomas De Waal: Red Scares, Then and Now
By treating Russian President Vladimir Putin and his cronies as an existential threat, Western leaders are playing directly into the Kremlin’s hands, and validating its false narrative about Russia’s place in the world.
Andrew Higgins: Why Putin’s Foes Deplore U.S. Fixation on Election Meddling
American liberals are so upset about Trump that they cannot believe he is a real product of American life,” Mr. Kurilla said. “They try to portray him as something created by Russia. This whole thing is about America, not Russia.”
Military to Military: Seymour M. Hersh on US intelligence sharing in the Syrian war
When it comes to tackling Islamic State, Russia and the US have much to offer each other. Many in the IS leadership and rank and file fought for more than a decade against Russia in the two Chechen wars that began in 1994, and the Putin government is heavily invested in combating Islamist terrorism.
Lev Golinkin: Europe’s White Supremacists Have Powerful Allies
After a massive neo-fascist march in Poland and new reports of neo-Nazi influence in Ukraine, Lev Golinkin, an author who fled then-Soviet Ukraine as a child, says both the US and Russia have troubling ties to Europe’s far-right
Paul Robinson: The hunters become the hunted
In an ironic twist of fate, those shouting loudest about Russian ‘fake news’ and demanding that the West take action against RT and other Russian media outlets, are now finding themselves accused of being Russian agents… I can’t help thinking that what goes around comes around, and that Legatum and co. have only themselves to blame for their predicament.
World Disorder in the New Year (Stephen F. Cohen)
Nation contributing editor Stephen F. Cohen and John Batchelor continue their weekly discussion of the new US-Russian Cold War. Cohen points out that the Cold War that erupted two years ago has now spread from Ukraine and Europe to Syria and Turkey. The old order is dying, but a new one is not yet clear.
Daniel Larison: Trump Would Be a Fool to Arm Ukraine
Trump’s advisers think that the president will agree to arming Ukraine if they can persuade him that it will lead to “peace” and the Ukrainian government will pay for the weapons. It’s possible that they might sucker Trump into believing this, but he would be a fool to listen to them.
Nikolas Gvosdev: How the Middle East Became Russia’s Game, Not America’s
Russia’s efforts may yet fail, the naysayers in the United States are not wrong to point out the many challenges, but Russia still gains from having tried. More importantly, the Sochi summit is confirmation that a new alignment is shaping up in the region.
William Hartung: How To Wield Influence And Sell Weaponry In Washington
Until recently, few of us woke up worrying about the threat of nuclear war. Such dangers seemed like Cold War relics, associated with outmoded practices like building fallout shelters and “duck and cover” drills.
Brian Doherty: Did The Atlantic Prove WikiLeaks Considered Itself Pro-Trump, Pro-Russia?
Julia Ioffe of The Atlantic seems to have succeeded in convincing the world that WikiLeaks was, and admitted to being, pro-Trump, pro-Russia.
Leon Hadar: The Real Winner in America’s Russia Crisis Is China
We are supposed to buy into the notion that white blue-collar workers in deindustrializing areas of the Rust Belts of the United States and the UK spent the last days of the 2016 Brexit campaign and the American presidential race getting their news from RT and Sputnik while exchanging tweets with Russia-friendly trolls.
A Review of ‘World Order’ Part 2
This second review, by the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Taylor notes that World Order “gives another clue about how the world looks from Russia. For Russians, to a degree unthinkable in the United States, foreign policy is also domestic policy, not least because their Near Abroad includes Ukraine, with which their ties of blood, history, and culture remain intimate.”
Robert Parry: Russia-gate Spreads to Europe
The Russia-gate hysteria has jumped the Atlantic with Europeans blaming Russia for Brexit and Catalonian discontent. But what about Israeli influence operations or, for that matter, American ones, asks Robert Parry.