American Committee for US-Russia Accord

Days before his death on February 8, 1725, Tsar Peter the Great gave his last will and testament. He exhorted his successors to fulfill Russia’s destiny and conquer the world. The keys to this great endeavor were Constantinople and India, the former for its symbolism and the latter for its wealth.

Neither the actual records nor documentation of Peter’s instructions have ever been found. It is likely that he never issued those deathbed commands. Yet, the legend has endured.

With her rise to prominence as a commentator on the Trump/Russia story, and seemingly dozens of editors and producers giving her their tacit approval, one is compelled to ask: What exactly would Louise Mensch have to say to be discredited?

As the world focuses on the “divorce” between the U.K. and E.U., another divorce court hearing for two other former partners was handed down today in London. In Ukraine vs. Russia on Wednesday, a U.K. court said Kiev still owes the Russians a cool $3 billion.

Over protests from the U.S. and other nuclear powers, more than 120 countries began work on a treaty at the United Nations this week with the aim of banishing nuclear weapons from the face and the oceans of the earth.

The desire of many Ukrainian politicians to “seal off” rebel-held territories in the Donbas may be coming to pass. The head of Poroshenko’s bloc in parliament, Yury Lutsenko, has declared that the president desires to extend the present automotive blockade of the so-called Luhansk Peoples Republic to all separatist held territories. Passage into them will be possible only by foot or compact car.

Nation contributing editor Stephen F. Cohen and John Batchelor continue their weekly discussions of the new US-Russian Cold War. (Previous installments, now in their fourth year, are at TheNation.com.) Batchelor begins by recalling the early 1950s, when President Eisenhower finally ended Senator Joseph McCarthy’s hunt for Communists in the US government.

Amid the frenzy over the Trump team’s talks with Russians, are we missing a darker story, how the Deep State’s surveillance powers control the nation’s leaders, ask U.S. intelligence veterans Ray McGovern and Bill Binney.

Renewed fighting in Ukraine has in turn renewed calls to arm Ukraine, including in the United States Congress. Yet there is an enormous and largely unacknowledged flaw in the argument to provide the Kiev government with lethal weapons

In the rancorous aftermath of the 2016 presidential election, Russia is often depicted as the greatest national-security threat facing the United States. The intense heat generated by the current scandals, however, is blinding us to the fact that cooperation with Russia on nuclear issues is still very much in America’s interests.

It could have been President Obama issuing a firm warning — measured, devoid of bellicose threats — to President Vladimir V. Putin that the West would keep the pressure on as long as Russia interfered with Ukraine’s sovereignty. Instead, it was Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor and a leading 2016 Republican presidential aspirant, speaking at a news conference in Berlin on Wednesday.