American Committee for US-Russia Accord

We post the following not to help promote perhaps the Western world’s premier self-promoter, but, rather, in a spirit of concern for Ukrainian President Poroshenko who seems to now be in thrall to the preening French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy, who has been wrong about nearly every single foreign policy issue since the end of the Cold War. -Editor

With relations between Russia and the West deteriorating and becoming more dangerous every day, former Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia, former Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, former British Defense Secretary Des Browne, and former German Ambassador to the U.S. Wolfgang Ischinger, have written a letter to Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin urging the two leaders to use the July 7-8 G20 meeting in Hamburg, Germany, to work together on areas of existential common interest.

CNN’s terrible week was just the latest example of sloppy, hysterical Russia coverage that only feeds Trump.

REAL ENEMIES ARE a threat to any country, but imagined enemies can be even more dangerous. They sap resources, provoke needless conflicts, and divert attention from true challenges. The United States has constructed such a fantasy by turning Russia into an enemy.

Our current campaign against Russia was set off by what some in Washington call its “aggression” against neighboring Ukraine. Russia’s decision to aid the Assad regime in Syria has also angered us. The true reasons for anti-Russia sentiment, though, lie deeper.

The notorious US spy agencies invented this monster, first with the Stuxnet virus against Iran—but then they lost control over it.

To help us understand what Russia wants and what strategies it will employ to get it, during this AJC Global Forum 2017 session hear from three experts: Stephen Cohen, Professor Emeritus, NYU and Princeton; Julia Ioffe, Staff Writer, The Atlantic; and Andrew Weiss, Vice President for Studies, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The peace agreement signed in Minsk in February 2015 prescribed a path towards a permanent settlement of the war in Ukraine by the end of this year. To date not one of its clauses has been fully put into effect. While the scale of the fighting is much reduced compared with the start of the year, there is still not a complete ceasefire; Kiev has not passed a law providing the promised amnesty; prisoner exchanges have taken place but are incomplete; and the Ukrainian government has not restored social and economic connections between government and rebel-held territories (indeed it has done the opposite by tightening its blockade of the latter).

Kiev had an eventful week. On Wednesday, a global cyber attack, launched from Ukraine, spread like wildfire globally. While all of this was happening the head of the Kiev regime’s counter-intelligence was blown to pieces as his car passed through an intersection in the center of the city.

Prime Minister Aleksandr Zakharchenko gave a press conference on September 12, 2015 to explain the plans of the government of the Donetsk People’s Republic to hold district and municipal elections on October 18…according to Zakharchenko “Local elections are planned in accordance with the Constitution and legislation of the Donetsk People’s Republic. These totally and completely comply with the letter and spirit of the Minsk agreements.”

A recent Harvard Harris poll found a majority of Americans want the government to concentrate on issues like healthcare and the economy, rather than the endless Russia investigations spawned from the media frenzy.

Steven Erlanger in the New York Times, asks: Are Western Values Losing Their Sway? Here’s my two cents:

The problem with our “Western values” is not the values in themselves, although some are certainly questionable. The real problem is the triumphalism that came with them after the West’s ‘victory’ at the end of the Cold War, a dangerous triumphalism that continues today. We have utterly convinced ourselves that everyone else wants what we have and we will use any methods, from the most bloody and overt, to the most quiet and covert, to pass them on.

As anyone who has ever visited Lviv can attest, events glorifying those who collaborated with the Nazis are deemed perfectly normal there. They are even widely commercialized.

A general settlement with Moscow that results in Ukrainian neutrality, but allows self-defense forces and permits Moscow to retain sovereignty over Crimea, will not necessarily result in a full “capitulation”—even if Washington must lower its sights as to what can and cannot be negotiated in Moscow’s view.

Ever since the defeat of their preferred candidate in the 2016 presidential election, Hillary Clinton, the Washington Post has been engaged in an extensive ‘hissy fit’ and disinformation campaign that greatly exaggerates and even outright manufactures the story of significant Russian influence in the campaign.