By holding a tete-a-tete with Vladimir Putin just after the G7 summit in Cornwall, US President Joe Biden may signal a move towards a G7 and a half arrangement in which Russia, once a full member of the club, secures a side chair in its ante-chamber. The arrangement suits Putin just fine. For his strategy has always aimed at taking the Western democracies one by one and not as a bloc such as NATO, the European Union or the G7.
But what does Putin want?
The Russian foreign ministry has banned a number of Canadian officials — including Justice Minister David Lametti — from travelling to that country, citing what it claims are “anti-Russian” activities.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the ministry said Lametti, RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki, Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc and a number of government officials — including the top bureaucrat at the Department of National Defence, Jody Thomas — will be barred from travelling to Russia because they have shown “inappropriate and counterproductive activity in support of the ultra-nationalist regime” in Ukraine and other “Russophobic forces” in the Baltic states.
The Russian foreign ministry has banned a number of Canadian officials — including Justice Minister David Lametti — from travelling to that country, citing what it claims are “anti-Russian” activities.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the ministry said Lametti, RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki, Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc and a number of government officials — including the top bureaucrat at the Department of National Defence, Jodi Thomas — will be barred from travelling to Russia because they have shown “inappropriate and counterproductive activity in support of the ultra-nationalist regime” in Ukraine and other “Russophobic forces” in the Baltic states.
Marc Polymeropoulos was a senior CIA case officer on a routine visit to Moscow in 2017 when he awoke in his hotel room with a severe case of vertigo.
His first inclination was that he had food poisoning and that the symptoms would soon wear off. Instead, it was the beginning of a brain-rattling affliction that would last for years and eventually force him out of the CIA.
The comments came a day after U.S. President Joe Biden said he would press Russian President Vladimir Putin to respect human rights when the two leaders meet in Geneva on June 16. Relations between the two powers are at post-Cold War lows.
President Joe Biden received a sizable campaign contribution from a Russia lobbyist just months before declining to enforce sanctions on a Russian firm building the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, according to a report.
President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet face to face in Geneva, Switzerland in June. Although the two leaders have reportedly spoken twice since Biden took office, this will be their first in-person meeting since then, and it comes on the heels of Biden being criticized domestically for waiving sanctions on a Russian-German pipeline.
Scores of top U.S. officials have been attacked by what officials believe is a “directed energy microwave weapon” that can leave victims with permanent debilitating neurological symptoms.
The first half opens with footage of a Russian soldier – shaven headed, muscular – parachuting from a plane, before staring down the scope of his rifle in arctic conditions.
Then it cuts to the animated story of a ‘little girl, raised by two moms’ who describes how she defended freedom by attending LGBTQ marches and grew up to join the U.S. Army.
While the American military said its recruitment video was designed to highlight the diversity of the men and women in uniform, Sen. Ted Cruz saw it differently when he shared a TikTok clip that spliced it with the Russian footage.
The Russian pessimist says things are so bad they can’t possibly get worse; the Russian optimist says, “Don’t worry, they will!”
If Western leaders think that Russia and China are aggressive now, the Russian-Chinese alliance now emerging will be a nastier combination than most Western observers can imagine.
It doesn’t have to happen, but probably will, given the West’s toxic combination of aggressive posturing and inherent weakness. The former tempts China to use force, and the latter causes China to think that it can get away with using force.
The golden-colored bust was erected on April 29 in Dagestanskiye Ogni, a city of 30,000 in the multiethnic Dagestan region in Russia’s northern Caucasus. The small monument stood near a bus stop on a rural street that bears Stalin’s name.
One of the lessons of European history is that corridors are bloody dangerous. When we heard Vladimir Putin accusing the west of staging a military coup in Belarus to topple Lukashenko, we listened up because European land grabs are usually preceded by fake allegations and staged incidents. Hitler’s invasion of Poland was preceded by the so-called Gleiwitz incident, an attack on a German radio transmitter – allegedly perpetrated by Polish soldiers, but actually carried out by the Nazis themselves.
This announcement came at a meeting of the Interparliamentary Assembly of the Commonwealth by the deputy head of the department, Alexander Gorovoy. “These people will be punished by expulsion and closure of borders” if they don’t leave by the June 15 deadline, stated Deputy Interior Gorovoy.
h/t Marvin
Tension is building on the border as a new generation prepares to stand up to Russia
Winter shivers. Snow smothers the ground. A collection of tents, slowly collapsing, forms an army camp distinguished only by several sagging Ukrainian flags: splashes of blue and yellow amid a canvas of almost unrelenting white. It’s winter 2014, on the battlefields of eastern Ukraine, and I am in the forests outside the occupied cities with the Ukrainian army as it faces off against “separatists” backed by Russian forces.
