Week after Biden-Putin meeting, crunch time is coming

Mirage-2000 over Black Sea on Dec. 8, as NATO spy planes crowd Russia’s borders. Russian Defence Ministry daily Krasnaya Zvezda said on Dec 13 radars have tracked over 40 aircraft conducting reconnaissance near Russia’s borders over past week.  Russia is reiterating its ‘red lines’ seeking long-term legal guarantees against NATO’s further advancement to the east …

Russia-China entente deepens in the shadow of the pandemic

Richard Lugar Public Health Centre in Georgia, which Russia alleges to be a Pentagon laboratory for biological weapon development. Beijing has called on the US to respond to Russian concerns.   The Russian-Chinese entente emerged as one of the most significant templates of international politics in the recent period since the hugely consequential developments in Ukraine …

Trump and Putin revisit the “Spirit of the Elbe”

Soviet officers and American soldiers met up at the Elbe River near Torgau, Germany, 25th April, 1945   Unusual for a Saturday evening, the White House and the Kremlin upgraded their websites simultaneously to feature a joint statement by the two presidents on “Commemorating the 75th Anniversary of the Meeting on the Elbe” (here and …

Israeli attack on Syria is a message for Russia

(Russian President Vladimir Putin met US President Donald Trump at Osaka on June 29, 2019) Although G20 summit in Osaka achieved nothing and there were no breakthrough decisions, a pleasant feeling had appeared momentarily that in the disjointed world situation, all the participants in the event at least reconfirmed their commitment to continue efforts to improve the global trade …

Russia throws down the gauntlet to US on Venezuela

(An airplane with the Russian flag was seen at Simon Bolivar International Airport in Caracas, Venezuela, March 24, 2019.) The Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova acknowledged in Moscow on Tuesday that Russian “specialists” are indeed in Venezuela within the ambit of a 2001 military-technical cooperation agreement with Caracas. Zakharova underscored that Russia’s bilateral military cooperation …

Trump unleashed. This is how it matters.

(Special counsel Robert Mueller walks with his wife, Ann, in Washington, D.C., on Sunday.) The big news from Washington is that special counsel Robert Mueller’s inquiry into President Donald Trump’s ‘Russia collusion’ is unfounded. Attorney General William Barr’s communication to the US Congress says, “The special counsel’s investigation did not find that the Trump campaign …