... Franks: After the conclusion of an arms deal between Russia and Venezuela, President Putin was called a “thugocrat” engaged in “dangerous alliances.
Keep in mind all of the above statements were uttered before the 2014 crisis in Ukraine even broke out. So before the U.S. Congress received what has been portrayed as undeniable and irrefutable proof of Russian aggression in Ukraine, it was already quite prepared to view Russia as a corrupt kleptocracy willfully abusing human rights ...
... (and granted it is really just token sympathy as the leadership of Ukraine has not exactly stood out and distinguished itself all summer in terms of ending or settling the crisis in the East). He desperately wants NATO to give him arms, training, and intelligence support. And while NATO clearly talks lovingly and embracingly about the need to protect Ukraine from ‘Russian aggression,’ it seems fairly obvious that in real terms that is the closest NATO is going to come to giving Poroshenko such things. In the West this is portrayed as European realism as no one supposedly wants to provoke ...
So many American politicians upset with the Israelis for the attacks on Gaza. .....Using weapons largely obtained through the United States... .....hmmmmm.....does that mean America is responsible for the Gaza deaths?
President Putin is on the phone. He would like an answer to that question.
... claim. Sometimes the claim has seemed utterly baseless. But what has been universally consistent across all of the accusations of Russian troop build-up along the border of Ukraine in 2014 has been one single thing: NO RUSSIAN TROOPS HAVE MOVED INTO UKRAINE OR LAUNCHED ANY OFFENSIVES. Given this indisputable evidence that even intelligence and diplomatic agencies in the West admit, it seems that Russia was punished today for, well, for having its soldiers hang out on its OWN sovereign territory. Sanctions based on possible mental intent let’s call it. Which leads me to ...
The interplay between Ukraine and Russia when it comes to gas geopolitics goes far beyond economic negotiations and development. It lies at the heart of what has been fairly inaccurate or uninformed media reporting in the West. This aspect of the conflict has been so poorly ...
... military forces invading into the country. It was the assumption that the only way authorities in Kyiv would take to arms and resort to violence was if the Russians made it inevitable with their own attacks. This is clearly what has NOT happened in eastern Ukraine. Russia did not invade. Whatever Russian intelligence or special operation forces happen to be in eastern Ukraine at the moment, they are decidedly and some might say surprisingly inactive. Collecting data? Reporting back to Moscow? Absolutely. But actively being the sole forces responsible ...
... communities that were down-trodden and ignored. Rather, there has been a grinding inexorable plodding progress, at best, of countries that discovered soon enough that identifying the problems was far easier than actually solving them. In that I suspect Ukraine will be no different, no matter how many elections, reforms, or ‘repositions’ the country goes through. But that is not what is most interesting from an academic perspective. Rather, it is the fairly unique set of structural circumstances ...
