Mainstream Western media usually cast Putin’s popularity as the result of Russians’ heavy reliance on government-controlled television, i.e. ‘brain-washing.’ But such a one-sided view may misrepresent the relationship between power and public opinion. Tellingly, only 34 percent of Russians say they trust the media.
Analysis
Anatol Lieven: What I Saw at the Valdai Club Conference
I was surprised to find that some of the Western conference participants had not modified their stance of Olympian superiority towards Russia on such issues.
James Carden: Are More NATO Members Needed?
At the end of October, NATO officials told The Wall Street Journal that the alliance will likely consider and approve the creation of two new command centers, one focusing on sea lanes in the Atlantic and Arctic oceans and one to manage cross-border logistics, at an upcoming meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels on November 8.
A New Approach to U.S.-Russia Relations Is Needed (Jeffrey Sommers)
The Syrian crisis presents an opportunity for a real “reset” with U.S.-Russia relations. Policy and opinion makers in both countries poorly understand each other. The United States presents policy objectives in the normative language of democracy, delinked from concrete interests.
Robert Parry: Sorting Out the Russia Mess
If prosecutor Mueller had direct evidence that Papadopoulos had informed the Trump campaign about the Clinton emails, you would assume that the proof would have been included in Monday’s disclosures.
Let’s deal with the Devil: we should work with Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad in Syria (Boris Johnson)
Paul Robinson: Wall of Grief
It’s interesting to see how this works. Putin unveils a monument to Stalin’s victims, but Western reporting doesn’t focus on that, nor link it to other memorials which repudiate communism (Butovo, Sretenskii, etc), but instead uses the event as what journalists call a ‘hook’ to write a story about political repression under Putin and the Russian state’s alleged rehabilitation of Stalin.
PODCAST: Stephen F. Cohen Talks to John Batchelor
ACEWA Founding Board Member and Professor Emeritus of Russian Studies Stephen F. Cohen continues his weekly talks with John Batchelor. This week
Cohen frames recent developments in the context of the now nearly month-old proposal by French President Hollande and Russian President Putin for a US-European-Russian military and political coalition against the Islamic State in Syria, Iraq, and possibly Libya.Nick Turse: US Special Operations Forces Have Quietly Moved Onto the Russian Border
For months, while Russia insisted its war game [Zapad] would involve fewer than 13,000 soldiers, the United States and its allies had warned that, in reality, up to 100,000 troops would flood into Belarus. Of those Russian troop levels, Lt. Col. Thomas Möller, a Swedish military observer who attended Zapad, said, “We reported about 12,400.”
Overview of German Press Reports on the Russian-Turkish Confrontation
The leading German print publications are today largely hostile in their reporting on Russian foreign policy, at best noncommittal. For mainstream, Russia remains a mafia state, or a country which invents foreign enemies to suit current domestic needs and changes them at will. Above all, there is a German confidence in its own superiority and bemusement at the follies of the barbarians at the outer limits of the EU.
Gordon Hahn: REPORT: Explaining the Unmet Western Expectations of Imminent Russian Regime Change
On Oct 20 we published Part I of Dr. Hahn’s report, today we bring you all 3 installments of “Explaining the Unmet Western Expectations of Imminent Russian Regime Change, Parts 1-3.”
Is It Time to Expel Turkey from NATO? (Ted Galen Carpenter)
Turkey’s rash action in shooting down a Russian plane that apparently violated Turkish airspace for no more than 17 seconds is only the latest incident that should set off alarm bells in other NATO capitals. Ankara’s reckless belligerence was exceeded only by its hypocrisy. Turkish planes violated the airspace of Greece more than 2,000 times in 2014 alone, and 2014 was a typical year for such incidents.
Lev Golinkin and John Batchelor: Kiev hate march, Ukrainian hate speech.
The UPA was founded in western Ukraine during the Nazi occupation of the country in World War II and fought against both the Nazis and the Soviet Red Army. Its fighters carried out vicious acts of ethnic cleansing in which tens of thousands of ethnic Poles in the region were killed.
Robert Parry: Guardians of the Magnitsky Myth
Exclusive: In pursuit of Russia-gate, the U.S. mainstream media embraces any attack on Russia and works to ensure that Americans don’t hear the other side of the story, as with the Magnitsky myth, reports Robert Parry.
Mountain Ambush (Andrew Cockburn)
“Looking at the detailed Russian timeline of what happened,” says defense analyst Pierre Sprey, “I’d say the evidence looks pretty strong that the Turks were setting up an ambush.”
Rich Lowry: The Facebook Farce
We are supposed to believe that it bought the American presidential election last year with $100,000 in Facebook ads and some other digital activity.
Poroshenko interview with Deutsche Welle
In light of Vice President Biden’s pledge on Monday to increase US funding to the government of Petro Poroshenko to the tune of $190 million, it might be worth watching the below interview between journalist Tim Sebastian and Poroshenko from early November. It does a great deal to shed light on the mindset of the Ukrainian President.
Dave Majumdar: This Is What a NATO vs. Russia War over the Baltics Would Look Like
How would a war between Russia and NATO in the Baltics play out? Chances of a Russian invasion of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia appear fairly remote…
Jeremy Kuzmarov: Democrats Betray Supporters Yet Again with Russia-Gate Distraction
In a front-page article on October 23rd by Nicholas Fandos “Hopes Dwindle for 3 Inquiries on Russia Ties,” The New York Times – a leading fomenter of anti-Russia hysteria – all but conceded that the Russia-Gate inquiries would amount to nothing.
The danger of Russian and Turkish competitive machismo in Syria (Charap and Shapiro)
President Vladimir Putin, not someone known for a supplicant’s pose, has repeated his openness to enhanced cooperation with the United States over Syria like a mantra for almost two months—and he continues to do so, despite being consistently spurned by the Obama administration.