he Russian and Ukrainian governments traded allegations Monday over an uptick in violence in eastern Ukraine, as Russian President Vladimir Putin paid a visit to the Black Sea peninsula that Moscow annexed from its neighbor last year.
This is why presidents want back channels and how it can go wrong (Richard A. Moss)
The use of back channels, such as special emissaries and personal intermediaries, is almost as old as diplomacy itself.
Nobody loves Russia: how western media have perpetuated the myth of Putin’s ‘neo-Soviet autocracy’
Advocates of Western-style democracy frequently assert that Russia has built a neo-Soviet ‘autocratic’ political system with elements of totalitarianism. Struggling to understand the country’s transition from the USSR, Western media commonly describe Russia in terms of its fitting with the old pattern
Rep. Jamie Raskin On The Latest Russia Allegations
Max Blumenthal talks to Congressman Jamie Raskin, who has suddenly become a champion of regime-change.
Undelivered Goods: How $1.8 billion in aid to Ukraine was stolen
Arriving home from a recent trip to Ukraine, former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle reported his joy at witnessing “the Ukrainian people . . . coming together to rebuild their country from scratch.” Ukrainians had, he wrote, moved him with their dreams of joining the European Union, fighting corruption, and rebuilding their shattered economy, inspiring Daschle, now a highly paid lobbyist, to endorse the ominously strengthening Washington consensus on escalating the fighting with “$3 billion in lethal and nonlethal military assistance.”
The Latest: France says no trace of Russian hacking Macron (AP)
The head of the French government’s cyber security agency, which investigated leaks from President Emmanuel Macron’s election campaign, says they found no trace of a notorious Russian hacking group behind the attack.
Russia and Ukraine: Back on the Brink of War?
The Iran deal is taking up most of the energy and attention of the U.S. foreign-policy establishment. But Washington—along with America’s European allies—must be prepared for the likelihood that there could be a full-scale resumption of hostilities. If fighting resumes, there is no excuse for the West to be taken by surprise.
WSJ’s Kim Strassel: Russia-Kushner Hysteria “Completely Divorced From Reality”
Strassel: Back channels are completely normal. They happen all the time. Reagan did them. Obama did them. Everyone did. So I’m not quite sure why supposedly having, at least the president’s now elected, setting up a back channel with the Russians is somehow out of bounds.
Russia Steps Up Calls to Dismantle European Antimissile System
Russia stepped up its calls Friday to dismantle the missile defense system being built in Europe by the U.S. and its allies, saying that the recent nuclear deal with Iran undercuts Washington’s chief argument for the system.
What the House Subpoenas of Rice, Brennan, and Power in the ‘Unmasking’ Probe Mean (Andrew McCarthy)
It’s not all about Russia…
The U.S.-Russia “phony war”: How Washington could bring us from stalemate to catastrophe
The Ukraine crisis and the attendant confrontation with Russia assume a “phony war” feel these days. As in the perversely calm months between the German invasion of Poland in September 1939 and the Blitzkrieg into the Low Countries the following spring, nothing much seems to be happening.
No one took comfort then—a fog of anxiety suffused everything—and no one should now
The Unpredictable Triangle: U.S.-China-Russia Relations in the Trump Era (Elizabeth Wishnick)
The election of Donald Trump as President of the United States at first seemed likely to rearrange the U.S.-Russia-China strategic triangle.
Russia and Nato war games increase risk of real clash, report says
Russia and Nato have been conducting increasingly large-scale military exercises to prepare for a possible conflict with each other, but the war games themselves are making a clash more likely, a new report warns.
The report by the European Leadership Network (ELN) thinktank calls on both sides to communicate more and to improve the transparency of their military activities
Comprehending Today’s Russia (Rick Sterling)
The U.S. government and mainstream media present Russia as a dangerous aggressor that must be resisted and punished, but American citizens who toured Russia in May found a very different reality, reports Rick Sterling.
Top Army leader: Russia is “most dangerous” threat facing U.S.
In what is coming to look like an almost weekly occurrence, yet another top US military official has declared Russia to be a top threat to the US in spite of (or perhaps because of) the successful conclusion to the P5 + 1 talks in Vienna and recent reports of US-Russian diplomacy regarding Syria.
PODCAST: Terrorism and the Perils of ‘Russiagate’ (Stephen F. Cohen)
As Trump and Putin strive for an essential US-Russia alliance against international terrorism, American media frenzy, fueled by anonymous leaks, continues to thwart it.
Beware Ukraine’s Rising Right Sector
Since the Maidan Revolution, Right Sector has maintained only marginal public support. Currently, the party holds just one seat in the parliament of 422. Recently, however, as the group has become more outspoken against the current Petro Poroshenko administration, its numbers have risen.
Ukraine’s Government Is Failing to Unite Ukrainians (Nicolai Petro, Josh Cohen)
The current course of denigrating those deemed insufficiently Ukrainian will only lead to a fracturing of the country.
Why are US Officials Blasting Russia After the Iran Deal?
Nation contributing editor and ACEWA Founding Board Member Stephen F. Cohen and John Batchelor continue their weekly discussion of the renewed US-Russian Cold War.
This week, the subjects include, among other things, why, after President Obama praised Russian President Vladimir Putin for his role in the agreement with Iran, is his administration escalating its rhetorical and military offensive against Russia?
Security Breach (Michael J. Glennon)
A de facto directorate of several hundred managers sitting atop dozens of military, diplomatic, intelligence, and law enforcement agencies, from the Department of Homeland Security to the National Reconnaissance Office, has come to dominate national security policy, displacing the authority not only of Congress but of the courts and the presidency as well.