After a news report alleged in October 2016 that a server in Trump Tower was communicating with the Kremlin-linked Alfa Bank, the Clinton campaign seized on the moment and claimed it was proof that then-candidate Donald Trump was colluding with Russia.
A manufactured war opposite a foreign tyrant to distract from the real resistance to tyranny at home here and elsewhere in the world?
Great article by Dana Loesch – covers a lot of ground.
They rushed to bolt the door and lock the windows of the little wooden house. It trembled from the battering of the men outside. Petro Mohalat, now aged 95, remembers the first food raids in the winter of 1932.
He was five years old when the communist “brigade” arrived in the village. His grandmother told the children to hide anywhere they could.
“It was very scary. The brigade had pitchforks and they came to every house searching for bread,” he recalls. “They used crowbars to come inside. Then they went to all the barns trying to find any buried bread.”
In his lightning trip to Beijing on February 4, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a “Strategic Partnership” treaty with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping. The event coincided with the 20th anniversary of another “Strategic Partnership” deal that he had signed in 2002, with then US President George W Bush.
So, did the Beijing signature represent a reversal of course in Russian foreign policy that, since Russia’s admission into the G7 club (later G8), had been focused on forging closer ties with the United States?
Sitting in a cafe in an upmarket Moscow suburb, the former mercenary Marat Gabidullin looked a long way from the battlefields of Syria where he fought half a decade ago.
Gripping his recently finished memoir, In the Same River Twice, the first published account of fighting for the secretive Russian mercenary outfit Wagner, Gabidullin said: “I wrote this because I realised it’s time for our country to face the truth: mercenaries exist.”
At 55, he’s an imposing figure, with his face and muscular arms covered in scars. “We, in Russia, prefer not to discuss our mercenaries,” he added. “It doesn’t fit the official narrative.”
Has the Cold War returned with a vengeance? Some expert commentators seem to think so. Russia’s mobilization of over 100,000 troops near Ukraine’s borders this winter has led the United States and some allied NATO countries to threaten economic and political sanctions, including those specifically against the Kremlin’s leadership. Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and destabilization of eastern Ukraine since then has created uncertainty as to how far President Vladimir Putin might be willing to go, either in the way of scaled-up political pressure backed by military power, or in the worst extreme, an actual large-scale invasion with ambitious objectives, including possible regime change in Kiev. Several prognosticators and some Russian officials also assume that, should Russia decide to initiate a major military operation against Ukraine, the result would be a veritable walkover, with Ukrainian forces unable to offer more than a feeble and temporary resistance against overwhelming Russian combined ground, air, and naval forces.
This week, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Foreign Minister Wobke Hoekstra (no relation) met with Ukrainian leaders in Kiev. The visit was intended to signal Dutch support to the government of Ukraine in the face of Russian build-up provocations on its border. As with other European national security moves, the meeting may be too little too late.
It was a positive step, strongly supported by the Biden Administration as a sign of NATO unity. The visit, however, recalled efforts — such as the one below — by U.S. and European ambassadors to stop Nord Stream 2, the pipeline from Russia to Germany that then connects to much of the rest of Europe. The Russian threat outlined by the Trump administration was very clear — that Russia would then be able to shut off its gas to Europe in the middle of winter, if it chose to, as a form of blackmail, at which point the US might then be expected to save Europe from its own deal — and the long-term policy and security consequences of completing the pipeline were communicated. Put very simply, building closer economic ties with Russia and Putin is an extremely bad and dangerous idea.
Germany will get its Russian gas. NATO is a paper tiger. Time the US ended Europe’s free ride but Biden won’t do it.
The “war” with Russia is as real as Russiagate.
Biden tried to be FDR and failed at that. Now he’s settling for playing a senile elderly JFK.
If you watch 5 minutes of CNN or any cable news network, you might believe that we’re on the verge of war with Russia. That’s what the same people who claimed that President Trump was working for Putin want you to believe. Their new war with Russia is as real as Russiagate.
China’s Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin of Russia have signed a joint statement calling on the west to “abandon the ideologised approaches of the cold war”, as the two leaders showcased their warming relationship amid a tense standoff with the west before the Beijing Winter Olympics.
In the joint statement released by the Kremlin, Putin and Xi called on Nato to rule out expansion in eastern Europe, denounced the formation of security blocs in the Asia Pacific region, and criticised the Aukus trilateral security pact between the US, UK and Australia.
The two leaders met for the 38th time since 2013. The two countries also pledged to step up cooperation to thwart “colour revolutions” and external interference, and vowed to further deepen “back-to-back” strategic coordination.
As the war of words between the US and Russia grows louder over Ukraine, one major player on the international stage has spoken up firmly as well: China.
In recent days, Beijing has called for calm on both sides and the end of a Cold War mentality, while also making it clear it supports Moscow’s concerns.
It would seem obvious that China would side with its longtime ally and former Communist comrade Russia. But how and why it is doing this goes deeper than their history.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. accused the Kremlin on Thursday of an elaborate plot to fabricate an attack by Ukrainian forces that Russia could use as a pretext to take military action against its neighbor.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the scheme included production of a graphic propaganda video that would show staged explosions and use corpses and actors depicting grieving mourners.
The plan for the fake attack on Russian territory or Russian-speaking people was revealed in declassified intelligence shared with Ukrainian officials and European allies in recent days. It is the latest allegation by the U.S. and Britain that Russia is plotting to use a false pretext to go to war against Ukraine.
MARVIN KALB, WHO LATER WORKED FOR CBS AND NBC, tells a story about being tailed when he first arrived in Moscow in 1956, to work at the US Embassy.
He decided to take a walk around Red Square on his first full day in the Russian capital. He soon noticed that he was being followed by a man in a black overcoat—undoubtedly a KGB agent.
The two ended up in the department store GUM, just off Red Square. As Kalb explained in his memoir The Year I Was Peter the Great, he bought two ice cream cones there. He held one out behind him, without looking. The agent took it without a word, and the two went on, one following the other.
It’s past time for the continent to step up and take charge of its own defense
While American and Russian officials are yelling at one another in the UN Security Council chamber, another international actor has found itself at the little kid’s table: Europe.
It’s possible the phrase “little kid’s table” is too harsh. To be fair, French President Emmanuel Macron is at least in direct communication with Russian President Vladimir Putin and urging his European colleagues to formulate a joint European negotiating position on the Ukraine question. France is also a chief mediator of the Normandy Format, which seeks to resolve the eight-year conflict in Ukraine’s Donbas region.
Members of Parliament exchanged their concerns and ideas about how to support Ukraine during a special debate at the House Commons that ran for more than two hours Monday evening.
The discussion was part of a “take note” debate about the situation in Ukraine, a format that allows MPs to address national issues in a more wide-ranging, detailed fashion when compared to typical debates on specific legislation.
A shock and awe campaign could overwhelm Eastern Europe
A couple of weeks ago, in a biting sleet wind, I visited the graveyard of the tiny village of Bohoniki in Poland’s far north east, home to Poland’s minuscule Tatar Muslim minority, descendents of the Mongol Golden Horde. On the graveyard hillock beneath the swaying pine trees, below gilded crescent moons and Arabic calligraphy, the names on the headstones — Miroslawa Safarewicz, Ali Bogdanowicz, Aleksander Sulkiewicz — spoke of centuries of Tatar assimilation since their arrival on horseback in Poland in the Middle Ages.
