... close to Russia’s borders in Europe.
Moscow’s demand for the withdrawal of all military infrastructure deployed to NATO’s Eastern European member states is as impossible as it is largely unnecessary in terms of Russia’s security. The several thousand U.S. soldiers located on the territory in question don’t exactly pose a serious threat to Russia. NATO battalions in the Baltics are, if anything, simply there to placate the three host countries: their presence on former Soviet territory may leave a bad taste in Moscow, but is hardly cause for alarm.
There is other infrastructure, of course, which ...
If Moscow believes that the main security threat it faces is NATO military infrastructure moving closer to Russia’s western borders, it would make sense to focus on the infrastructure itself rather than the theoretical possibility of NATO expansion
Few can have been surprised by the outcome of the recent talks ...
... Donbas, like Poroshenko did in 2015, to try to solve the problem with military means and at the same time to try to involve NATO in military confrontation with Russia. This could be called a Saakashvili style of doing things.
It is unlikely that Russia ... ... approaching its own borders in proximity, for example, of 400-500 km?
Meanwhile, on the other side there are more than 100 thousand Ukrainian troops concentrated on the contact line with Donbas, and much closer to it than the distance between the Russian ...
... if, for example, the Western proposals include reciprocal reductions of weapons and deployments, but no guarantees regarding NATO’s non-expansion? Is Russia ready to consider such proposals? What will Russia do, specifically? Deputy Foreign Minister ... ... affair, and our decisions. When military assets are concentrated along the Russian borders with the Americans sending tens of thousands of their military personnel, and the UK dispatching hundreds, thousands of weapons, we must understand what they are doing ...
... national interests. A legally binding agreement that includes the U.S. and its European allies is required to prevent expanding NATO borders to the East and deployment of weapons on Russia's western borders. The presidents of Russia and the United States,... ... and European allies claim Moscow is using energy as a weapon against unfavorable Western policies. Does Russia reject these accusations and will Russia retaliate against U.S. sanctions?
It has been said many times that the gas pipeline is an exclusively ...
... Russians the status of an indigenous community and prepared to adopt another law that, in Moscow’s view, would be tantamount to Kyiv formally leaving the Minsk accords. In Donbas, the Ukrainians used a Turkish-made drone to strike pro-Russian forces; NATO significantly increased its presence and activity in the Black Sea; and U.S. strategic bombers flew missions as close as 20 kilometers from the Russian border, according to Putin. The gas price crunch in Europe provoked
bitter accusations
that Russia had caused it. Even the
migrant crisis
on Poland’s border, part of a plan by Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko to punish the EU and coerce its leaders into a dialogue with him, was blamed directly on the Kremlin. What some ...
... relations with the United States after the attempted coup. It is hard to say what kind of response Ankara expected to its accusations and demands—in particular, the extradition of Fethullah Gülen, who was accused of masterminding the attempted coup—but ... ... certainly not forthcoming, and the attempt at blackmail by purchasing S-400 prompted pure rage. It was no longer 2013, and a NATO country buying Russian weapons caused much more than a murmur of protest. Subsequently, the United States even imposed sanctions ...
... London. Here, the implication is that the post-Brexit UK is not even worth the candle. We shall explore in this article whether France is just huffing and puffing in a face-saving gesture or whether her apparent stance could have major implications for NATO and European defense. But first, a spot of history.
From Gaullism to Inconsistency
Alexander Yermakov:
Is France’s Nuclear Shield Big Enough to Cover All of Europe?
In 1966, France left NATO’s integrated military structure and expelled NATO ...
China now seems the most likely actor to take a position in the post-withdrawal Afghanistan, while it remains to be seen whether Beijing wishes to engage in a conflict that the USSR and NATO had difficulty in controlling before it
Afghanistan has been a priority area for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) since the 1950s as a result of the growing influence of the two adversaries, the Soviet Union (USSR) and the People’s Republic ...
... and asking for. Rare encouraging lines, which are mixed with hard talk and submerged in harsh rhetoric, can be found in paragraph 9 about NATO’s openness to political dialogue, its unwillingness to seek confrontation and about its commitment to the NATO-Russia Founding Act. However, the latter point is phrased in such a way that it can be interpreted as the Alliance’s refusal to discuss Russia’s concerns about the principle of rotation deployments, which in the eyes of Moscow in the past years de facto has become barely distinguishable from additional permanent stationing of substantial combat forces.
Additional concerns ...
