American Committee for US-Russia Accord

Host and scholar Pietro Shakarian talks with Proffer Teasley about her late husband Carl Proffer, the founding of Ardis Publishers, the origin of the Ardis name, and her personal experiences with Russian literary giants Joseph Brodsky, Vladimir Nabokov, Nadezhda Mandelstam, Elena Bulgakova, and Lily Brik, among others.

Two months ago, a number of senior U.S. national-security officials insisted that the Russian Federation has reemerged as the premier existential threat to American interests. Today, as energy prices continue to tumble and China’s economy falters, a new narrative has emerged: the pending collapse of Russia itself, or at least the prospects that the government of Vladimir Putin is entering into its last days.

The continuous oscillation in views—Russia as a powerful threat, Russia as an imploding basket case—does not permit a cool, rational assessment of Russia’s actual strengths and weaknesses.

Investigative journalist Max Blumenthal explains that these sanctions punish Russia and Iran unnecessarily intensifies the conflict between the US and these countries.

Oliver Stone joined Tucker Carlson to discuss his new four-hour documentary on Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russia’s alleged meddling in the U.S. presidential election, and intelligence agencies’ “hostility” toward President Donald Trump.

The $3.6bn debt deal announced on August 27 by Ukraine’s Ministry of Finance, where private bondholders agreed to take a 20% writedown on the face value of $18bn in government debt, is very good news. Yet it’s not a done deal and the final sum that will be restructured will almost certainly be less than the headline figure.

Excellent media round up of the unrest roiling Kiev by the website NewColdWar.org which trenchantly examines “two news reports from Western media sources on the clash. The reports come with typical, misleading Western media phrasing describing as “separatists” the people of eastern Ukraine who are resisting the civil war launched by the governing regime in Kyiv in April 2014.

Yasha Levine, author of the forthcoming Surveillance Valley, talks to radio host Doug Henwood about Russia, anti-Russia hysteria, and the latest NSA leak.

While most analysts agree that the deal buys time for the authorities in Kiev, the terms of the deal seems to favor the lenders over the Ukrainian government. Goldman Sachs noted that the likelihood that bondholders would vote against the bond restructuring was small “given the attractiveness of the offer relative to market expectations.”

In return for a four-year extension on payments of the remaining debt, Ukraine agreed to a higher coupon (interest rate) of 7.75 percent, up from 7.25 percent. Further, after the four-year period expires in 2019, Ukraine will be obliged to spend 40 percent of any GDP growth over 4 percent on debt repayment.

As Ukraine’s fight against Russian-supported separatists continues, Kiev faces another threat to its long-term sovereignty: powerful right-wing ultranationalist groups.

Edmund Wilson once wrote that “it is all too easy to idealize a social upheaval which takes place in some other country than one’s own.” And this is an illusion that has plagued the mainstream narrative regarding the Ukrainian revolution from the start.

Moscow has many potential partners in the region, and no ideological constraints.

Russia’s leader may be the most vilified foreign leader in recent US history, but until now Americans have never had an opportunity to see, hear and evaluate him for themselves.

Two weeks ago, the Washington Post published an editorial saying that the governments of the NATO military alliance are being too soft on Russia over the crisis in Ukraine. The editors want even more aggressive support to the governing regime in Kyiv than what is already being given.

In particular, the newspaper objects to the ceasefire agreement that it says beleaguered Kyiv was pressured to sign in Minsk, Belarus on February 15, 2015.

In an interview with Oliver Stone, Russian President Putin explained his take on the Ukraine crisis, one that contrasts with what the U.S. mainstream media has allowed the American people to hear, writes Robert Parry