Yesterday a key group of world powers appeared to find middle ground on Ukraine at the conference to defuse the crisis in Geneva. Actions, however, speak louder than words. Will today see Ukraine move closer to or further away from ending this crisis? Yesterday’s liveblog can be found here. For an overview and analysis of […]
Staunton, April 1 – Aleksandr Dugin, a Eurasianist who is close to the Kremlin, has told ethnic Russians in Ukraine that they must not cooperate with Kyiv in any way, that they must be ready to “act radically,” even to the point of sparking a civil war in that country, and that Moscow will support […]
Staunton, April 1 – By his actions of omission and commission, US President Barack Obama is allowing his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to strengthen and even legitimize Moscow’s occupation of Crimea, a bow to this violation of international law with far-reaching consequences, according to Andrey Illarionov. Illarionov lays out his case in four articles. In […]
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met for four hours today to work to find a diplomatic solution to this crisis. Differences remain, but will diplomacy have any effect? Yesterday’s liveblog can be found here. For an overview and analysis of this developing story see our latest podcast. Please […]
The Geneva II conference on Syria starts this week. The Syrian National Coalition, the internationally recognized opposition group, has decided that it will attend. The SNC also indicated last week that hopes for success were slim. But those hopes have now fallen to zero. This is not my wish, nor my opinion, but the only […]
The political analyst Boris Mezhuev writes, in Izvestia, about how President Putin’s initiative influences the world political climate. Note that Mezhuev implies that it was Western powers that postponed the latest meeting of the United Nations Security Council. In fact, Russia both called for the meeting and then cancelled it in light of demands from […]
The following is a translation in Ria.Ru, one that represents a lot of editorials on the Syrian issue that can be found in the Russian media. It has a few noteworthy characteristics that are common. Curiously, despite the fact that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has specifically stated that there is no “boots on […]
Drawing on some of the material first translated and published at The Interpreter, I’ve made another attempt to explain why, in spite of the United States’ dogged efforts, the Kremlin is not abandoning its position on Syria — if anything, it’s digging in further. My column at NOW Lebanon this week: The United States pretends to […]
The New Times has gone to London, Moscow, Tel-Aviv and Damascus to learn about the new diplomatic duel between the Kremlin and the West, the Russian missile systems provided to Assad and its impact on regional dynamics. The talks between US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian President Vladimir Putin with Russian Foreign Minister […]
Within the space of the last 24 hours, the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal have shed more light on the steady and unchanged nature of the Russian-Syrian military relationship. First, the Times reported that Russia has sent advanced Yakhont anti-ship missiles to Syria “outfitted with an advanced radar that makes them more […]
