NewsTrust - Russia - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Independent)

The Realist Prism: Libya Could Shift NATO Focus Southward

Sat, 02 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

World Politics Review - By Nikolas Gvosdev - Apr. 02 (Opinion) - Russia's 2010 military doctrine identified the continued expansion of NATO as a prime security threat to the country. But an Atlantic alliance that looks south instead of east would be a NATO that Russia could learn to live -- and even partner -- with. The effort to oust Moammar Gadhafi might have the unexpected consequence of allowing NATO to write a new chapter of its history not only with the Arab world, but also with Russia.

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Top US Official Murdered After Arkansas Weapons Test Causes Mass Death

Tue, 04 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

eutimes.net - Jan. 04 (Opinion) - A shocking report prepared for Prime Minister Putin by the Foreign Military Intelligence Directorate (GRU) states that one of the United States top experts in biological and chemical weapons was brutally murdered after he threatened to expose a US Military test of poison gas that killed hundreds of thousands of animals in Arkansas this past week.

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Part II: Tom Engelhardt on "The American Way of War: How Bush's Wars Became Obama's"

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Tom Engelhardt, Amy Goodman - Jun. 18 (Interview) - We discuss the latest in the ongoing US war in Afghanistan—the longest running war in American history—with Tom Engelhardt, creator and editor of the website Tomdispatch and author of "The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s." Engelhardt says the U.S. war in Afghanistan has troubling parallels with the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan of the 1980s.

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Jamal Dajani: The Russians Are Coming

Fri, 14 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - May. 14 (Opinion) - Israel expressed "deep disappointment" Thursday over a meeting the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev held this week in Syria with Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal, saying the organization must play a role in peace efforts.

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Let’s challenge these myths of Chernobyl

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0700

spiked-online.com - By Rob Lyons - Apr. 27 (Opinion) - The tragic irony of the Chernobyl accident is that it was caused by a safety test on one of the four reactors. There was concern about what would happen if external power supplies to the plant were cut. The pumps supplying the huge amounts of water that were needed to keep the reactors cool might stop, and safety officials had noted that the diesel pumps that provided backup power could not get up to speed quickly enough, leaving a dangerous one-minute gap in which the reactors would get hotter and hotter. The aim of the test was to see if another source of power could be used during that crucial minute to power the electric pumps. However, a series of delays, human errors and mechanical failures before, during and immediately after the short test led Reactor No.4 to overheat massively and explode.

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Quid Pro Quo: Cheaper Gas for Black Sea Fleet

Fri, 23 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0700

leopolis.blogspot.com - By Leopolis - Apr. 23 () - In an earlier post, I wrote about Azarov's visit to Moscow where there was speculation that Ukraine would join the Customs Union as a quid pro quo for getting a discount on Russian gas. It certainly wasn't enough of a concession. Putin suggested that a much more political arrangement would be in the works. Today's announcement that Ukraine may extend the lease on the Black Sea Fleet in exchange for a 30% discount in gas is certainly a step in that direction. It is described as a "crucial step in further development of bilateral relations."

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The Russian Economic Crisis

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Council on Foreign Relations - By Jeffrey Mankoff - Apr. 20 (Opinion) - Economic distress has weakened Russia’s principal instruments of international influence. Lower energy prices have reduced Moscow’s power in that realm, while the crisis has decreased resources for Russia’s military and for loans to its neighbors, diminishing Moscow’s influence in the former Soviet sphere [which] .... makes Russia less able to challenge the international order and U.S. leadership in particular. The economic crisis thus presents an opportunity to deepen American and European economic ties with Russia and integrate the country more firmly in the international system, something that could, over time, bring Russian and Western interests closer together

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Mikhail Gorbachev reflects on 25 years since he introduced Perestroika to the Soviet Union

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Rossiyskaya Gazeta - By Mikhail Gorbachev Mikhail Gorbachev - Apr. 20 (Opinion) - We introduced Perestroika because our people and the country’s leaders understood that we could no longer continue as we had. The Soviet system had made our country a major power with a strong industrial base. The Soviet Union was strong in emergencies, but in more normal circumstances, our system condemned us to inferiority.

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Opinion: Score one for Moscow in Kyrgyz unrest

Thu, 08 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0700

GlobalPost - By Michael Moran - Apr. 08 (Opinion) - The conspiracy mongers should be having a field day. Just a few months before the expiration of a fragile agreement granting the U.S. military access to a strategically vital airbase in the Kyrgyz city of Manas — a base that represents the

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20 Years After the Fall of the Berlin Wall: Will Another Superpower Meet Its End in Afghanistan?

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Loretta Napoleoni - Nov. 10 (Opinion) - Remarkably, the central Asian country of Afghanistan seems once again to be shaping our future. It is paradoxical that the graveyard of one superpower should become a battlefield for the other.

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Missile Defense Could Be the Silver Bullet

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

sptimes.ru - By Dmitry Trenin - Nov. 08 (Opinion) - In the eyes of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, the “resetting” of U.S.-Russian relations became a reality only six weeks ago, when U.S. President Barack Obama announced his decision to reconfigure U.S. missile defense plans for Europe. Putin called Obama’s step “courageous,” which, coming from him, is perhaps the highest form of personal approbation

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History Under Lock and Key

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

sptimes.ru - By Vladimir Rzyhkov - Jun. 14 (Opinion) - The only way to fight a real battle against the falsification of history — something that President Dmitry Medvedev has made a priority after creating a special commission to handle this issue — is to keep government archives as open as possible for historians. Unfortunately, the government is doing the exact opposite, depriving historians access to the most sensitive and important historical documents. Among other things, this is a violation of the Constitution.

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The Risk of Letting Ukraine into NATO

Thu, 21 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Consortium News - By Ivan Eland - May. 21 (Opinion) - the admission of Ukraine is not in the interests of Russia, the United States, or, surprisingly, even the Ukraine. Along with the U.S. grab for influence over Caspian Sea oil and gas pipelines and the proposed installation of missile defense facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic, the admission of the Ukraine would naturally make Russia feel encircled. Even for the United States, however, pledging to defend Ukraine under Article V of the NATO Treaty is a really bad idea.

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The St. Petersburg Times - Opinion - Islands Apart

Mon, 18 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

sptimes.ru - By Peter Rutland - May. 18 (Opinion) - Prime Minister Vladimir Putin descended on Japan last week, accompanied by a dozen governors and more than 100 Russian business leaders. Yet the visit failed to break the impasse in Russian-Japanese relations over the four islands east of Hokkaido, which Russia seized in 1945. This means that the two countries are still without a peace treaty and an agreed mutual border 64 years after the end of World War II.

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The Making of a New Global Strategy

Sun, 08 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Strategic Paradigms - By Ehsan Ahrari - Feb. 08 (Opinion) - The administration of President Barack H. Obama has started the highly intricate process of developing its own strategy with a bang in different regions of the world. Here are the ingredients of that strategy: multilateralism, looking for a fresh start—which promises to be substantially different from the preceding administration—search for common ground involving Russia, invitation of negotiations with America’s traditional adversaries like Iran and North Korea, and at least the initial hope that approaches toward Palestine, Pakistan, and Afghanistan are likely to be radically different than the one the Bush administration pursued unsuccessfully. This is a huge agenda. But Obama’s administration has the enormous characteristic of freshness, metaphorically as well as substantively, in the sense that it is not carrying any baggage that had so infamously bogged down George W. Bush in an ostensibly endless inertia.

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Cooling Down The New Cold War

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

New Republic - By Michael Idov - Dec. 10 (Opinion) - In August, Russia provided the first significant foreign-policy challenge of Barack Obama's presidential campaign.

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Image: Russia President Seeks Six-Year Term

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

allvoices.com - Nov. 13 (Cartoon) - Russia President Seeks Six-Year Term

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Moscow Stuck in Dead Sea While Kiev Evolves

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

moscowtimes.ru - By Yevgeny Kiselyov - Oct. 17 (Opinion) - One of the most interesting aspects of all of this is that the Ukrainian political drama is actively discussed and debated on every television channel. The country's independent television, with its lively political talk shows and balanced news programs, is a sharp contrast to the stale, pro-government coverage we see on Russian television.

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Can Russia use nuclear weapons? International Security after the Crisis in Caucasus.

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Open Democracy - By Alexei Arbatov - Oct. 16 (Opinion) - Alexei Arbatov considers the possibility of a military conflict in which Russia, defeated with conventional weapons, would strike back with nuclear weapons with unpredictable consequences. In his response to the former British ambassador in Moscow Sir Roderic Lyne, Alexei Arbatov also suggests how this fatal course of events might be avoided.

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The Russians Are Coming

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Chronicle of Higher Education - By Stephen Kotkin, Nina L. Khrushcheva, Edward Lucas, Ellen Carnaghan, Marshall I. Goldman, Sean Kay - Sep. 05 (Opinion) - When the Russian army invaded the former Soviet republic of Georgia last month, it was little surprise to many observers, who have noted for several years the increasingly assertive and aggressive foreign policy of Vladimir V. Putin, Russia's prime minister and former president. But is Russia as resurgent as its recent military posturing might suggest? The Chronicle asked several experts to comment on the country's likely political, social, and economic prospects over the next 10 years.

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Georgia at War: What I Saw

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Bernard-Henri Levy - Aug. 20 (Opinion) - The first thing that strikes me as soon as we are out of Tbilisi is the strange absence of military force. I had read that the Georgian army, defeated in Ossetia, then routed in Gori, had withdrawn to the capital to defend it. I reach the outskirts of the city, moving forty kilometers on the highway that slices through the country from east to west. But I see almost no trace of the army which has supposedly regrouped in order to fiercely resist the Russian invasion.

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McCain's War: Playing With Nuclear Fire

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Steve Weissman - Aug. 20 (Opinion) - If deep thinkers in Washington insist on setting up a string of client states to encircle Russia, they should never let the puppets pull their own strings, as [Georgian President] Mikheil Saakashvili appears to have done when he sent his army into rebellious South Ossetia.

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Russia's Return Bites the Neocons' Grand Energy Scheme in the Ass

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By James Howard Kunstler - Aug. 19 (Opinion) - It's one thing that US foreign policy wonks imagined that Russia would remain in a coma forever, but the idea that we could encircle Russia strategically with defensible bases in landlocked mountainous countries halfway around the world...? You have to ask what were they smoking over at the Pentagon and the CIA and the NSC?

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Robert Creamer: Crisis in Georgia Beginning to Turn Into a Big Political Liability for McCain

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - Aug. 19 (Opinion) - McCain's warmongering double talk comes back to bite him in the ass as Georgia reveals how weak the US is with all our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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Anatomy of A(nother) Fiasco

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Daily Kos - By billmon - Aug. 18 (Opinion) - I'm no foreign policy maven, but I'm also not completely oblivious to what our government has been up to in the Caucasus (unlike, say, about 99.99% of the rest of the American population). I knew the Cheney Administration had taken a shine to Michael Saakashvili, the purportedly democratic, allegedly peaceloving president of Georgia, and I knew the Cheneyites were also big supporters of his demands for a Russian withdrawal from those bits of territory that rejected Georgian authority when the old USSR broke up in 1991. I also knew the administration has been trying, both overtly and covertly, to break the Russian stranglehold on the export of oil and natural gas from the Caspian Sea basin (democratic freedom and access to petrocarbons being fairly synonymous terms in the American diplomatic dictionary). But I have to admit, even I was startled when the semi-official media (Washington Post, NY Times, AP, etc.) began referring to Georgia as a staunch US "ally". Since when, I wondered, had the United States bound itself in a collective defense pact with Stalin's birthplace? Was I out of the country, sleeping - or watching too much beach volleyball - when that particularly treaty was ratified in the US Senate?

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