Just because Trump says something doesn’t mean it is false.
Amnesty International To Ukraine: Authorities must commit to a thorough investigation of secret detention facilities
Fresh details of secret detention by the Ukrainian authorities have emerged following the release of 13 people from a Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) compound in Kharkiv, said Amnesty InternationaI and Human Rights Watch today.
HBO/ViceNews: American Scholars Say The Real Threat To The U.S. Is Russophobia
President Trump set off a roar of outrage when he concluded that the U.S. and Russia are both to blame for the deteriorated US-Russia relationship. American foreign policy experts, Stephen F. Cohen and John Mearsheimer both say they agree with Trump on that point, and they’re both afraid anti-Russia sentiment in the U.S. will tank Trump’s efforts.
The Senate’s Dereliction of Duty on NATO Expansion (Nikolas K. Gvosdev)
It was not immediately obvious after the collapse of the USSR that a strategy of democratic enlargement would require the expansion of the NATO alliance to encompass new members from the states of the former Soviet bloc…
VIDEO: Aaron Mate and Michael Isikoff: Has Mueller Caught the Hackers?
Special Counsel Robert Mueller has indicted 12 officials with the GRU, Russia’s main foreign intelligence agency, for allegedly meddling in the 2016 election, including hacking Democratic Party emails. Case closed?
Germany, Poland and France call for more efforts to end Ukraine crisis (Reuters)
The foreign ministers of Germany, France and Poland agreed on Sunday there should be greater international efforts to end the fighting in eastern Ukraine, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told reporters.
Osita Nwanevu: Clueless: Liberals playing detective are missing an opportunity
New York magazine published an essay by Jonathan Chait that outlines a “plausible theory of mind-boggling collusion” between Donald Trump and his circle and the Russian government during the 2016 campaign…an essay Chait probably didn’t imagine himself writing back when he urged liberals to “earnestly and patriotically“ support Trump’s seemingly doomed nomination…
One year on, Russia’s war in Syria is hardly the predicted ‘quagmire’ (Christian Science Monitor)
When Russian President Vladimir Putin sent his forces to the rescue of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad a year ago, President Obama predicted that the Russians would end up trapped in a “quagmire.” Today, Russia hardly appears to be bogged down and instead has reestablished itself as a power in the Middle East.
VIDEO: Stephen F. Cohen on the Media’s Shameful Overreaction to Helsinki
“I’ve never seen anything like it in my life,” NYU and Princeton Professor Emeritus Stephen F. Cohen tells Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
Belarus and The Rebirth of European Civilization (Peter S. Rieth)
Westerners have a hard time understanding the former Soviet Union. One point of confusion is the omnipresence of communist era monuments and paraphernalia littering the former Soviet republics. Westerners like to see them as holdovers or relics of Soviet times which persist due to unenlightened attitudes or illiberal propaganda. Belarus is a good place to begin to understand their true meaning. [Read more…] about Belarus and The Rebirth of European Civilization (Peter S. Rieth)
Sen. Rand Paul: Trump Is Right to Meet Putin
America needs fewer enemies. What’s wrong with reducing tensions?
U.S. pursues Syria cooperation with Russia amid new volatility (Matt Lee)
The Obama administration is launching a fresh bid to enlist Russia as a partner in Syria despite more than a month of dashed hopes as the situation on the ground becomes more volatile and uncertain with the introduction of Turkish ground forces.
Ernest Monitz and Sam Nunn: Trump-Putin summit an essential step to reducing nuclear danger
Former U.S. Secretary of Energy Ernest J. Moniz and former Georgia Sen. Sam Nunn, co-chairmen of the Nuclear Threat Initiative write “There’s much to be done, but it must begin with the two presidents creating a climate for dialogue across our governments, one that will provide a stable foundation for managing our differences and addressing common existential threats.”
Biden’s Baltic Bombast (Ted Galen Carpenter)
In his just-completed trip to the Baltic republics, Vice President Joe Biden reassured his hosts that the U.S. commitment to their security through NATO was rock solid. And any worries they might have because of comments that Donald Trump had made during the ongoing presidential campaign Biden dismissed as completely unwarranted.
VIDEO: Democracy Now! Debate: Is Trump-Putin Summit a “Danger to America”?
Joe Cirincione, president of Ploughshares Fund, a global security foundation debates Glenn Greenwald, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and one of the founding editors of The Intercept. Greenwald calls the Trump-Putin meeting “excellent” while Cirincione calls the summit “a danger to America and to the West.”
PODCAST: More Alarming News from the Fronts of the New Cold War (Stephen F. Cohen)
Professor Stephen F. Cohen observes that Kiev will not or cannot negotiate an end to the Ukrainian civil/proxy war and thus seems determined to provoke a larger war with Russia to regain Western support, but its repeated claims that Putin is preparing a “new invasion” lack logic and no longer seem credible to Kiev’s former unconditional Western supporters. Cohen asks, “Can this tail again wag the dog, with dire consequences?
Robert Roth: Trump’s summit with Putin could reduce risk of nuclear war
I disagree with President Donald Trump about practically everything. With two exceptions.
The Russians Did It!…Well, Maybe Not. (James Bamford/Reuters)
Today, amateur burglars have been replaced by cyberspies, who penetrated the DNC armed with computers and sophisticated hacking tools. Now, in the latest twist, hacking tools themselves, likely stolen from the National Security Agency, are on the digital auction block. Once again, the usual suspects start with Russia – though there seems little evidence backing up the accusation.
Andrew Cockburn: How to Start a Nuclear War
The increasingly direct road to ruin.
A ‘Russia-Iran Condominium’ That Doesn’t Exist (Daniel Larison)
To refer to a “Russia-Iran condominium” in the region is to distort and misrepresent the facts beyond recognition, and to say that it is “dictating events” credits them with far more control and influence than they have.