... newfound presence in the region as a threat to the West.
1
Russia, in turn, has expressed concern about the growing U.S. and NATO military activity in Europe’s North and the adjacent seas.
There is a sense of new Sino-American bipolarity in the air.... ... staked a claim to an enormous chunk of the Arctic: 6.8 million square kilometers of sea, declaring it the polar territory of the USSR. As a result, the territory of the Soviet Union grew from the furthermost continental points on the Kola and Chukotka peninsulas ...
... dismissed), and then expanding it eastward. U.S. diplomat George Kennan assessed it as the most fatal mistake in the post-war history of the United States.
Still, there was, for a time, a lingering chance for a better future, compared to how it eventually ... ...
There were also appropriate instruments to start building European security on the new basis of agreements between 35 states-signatories in the 1975 Helsinki Accords and the 1990 Paris Charter for a New Europe.
In 1991, while serving as USSR ambassador to Italy, I was involved in serious discussions with Italian Foreign Minister Gianni De Michelis about the possibility ...
... confirmed in treaties signed by Moscow. The main irritant in Estonia and Latvia’s relations with Russia since the end of the USSR has been the status of sizeable local ethnic Russian populations who did not automatically receive citizenship rights when ... ... republics were granted independence.
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Current Baltic and Polish fears of a Russian invasion and occupation reflect their troubled history rather than existing realities, but “Russian aggression against the Baltic States” has become a popular narrative and a rallying cry within NATO.
Belarus, which is closest to Russia ethnically and culturally, and since 1999 has formed a “union state” with it, has ...