By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – President Obama’s sanctions on Russia are small potatoes and will have almost no effect on the Russian Federation. The high officials sanctioned are unlikely to have assets in the US that Washington can attach. When you hear that the US is sanctioning the FSB (the Russian […]
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Eastern Europe
Russia Vows Response to ‘Aggressive’ Obama Sanctions
TeleSur | – – The Russian diplomats will have 72 hours to leave the United States. The United States’ new sanctions against Russia prove the foreign policy of the Obama administration is “aggressive,” Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin press-secretary, said Thursday, as the Kremlin indicated retaliatory measures against Washington. “In our point of view such actions […]
Erdogan-Putin Syria Bromance as Turkey accuses US of backing ISIL
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Turkey and Russia are announcing they have reached a cease-fire deal in Syria. The ceasefire reached in Aleppo will be continued past December 28, and will be expanded to other parts of the country Russia is representing the government of Bashar al-Assad, which its air force […]
Why do they Hate Putin’s Freedoms? Russian Ambassador assassinated in Turkey
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – It is not entirely clear why Mevlut Altintas, a young policeman in, ironically, a counter-terrorism unit in the Turkish capital of Ankara, shot Andrei Karlov– the Russian ambassador to Turkey– in the back on Monday. Was he a lone wolf? Part of a far-right Muslim vigilante […]
Trump’s Sec of State pick Tillerson chief of US-Russian Oil Company in Tax Haven
By Jon Queally, staff writer | Commondreams.org | – – Leaked documents show Trump’s nominee for Secretary of State is director of subsidiary based in Bahamas Documents leaked to a German newspaper reveal that ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, nominated by President-elect Donald Trump to be the next Secretary of State, has been the quiet director […]
Demonization of Putin as “Personally” behind Clinton Hack is old Propaganda Technique
Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The leaked allegations supposedly from the CIA that Russian President Vladimir Putin “personally” directed how hacked emails from the Clinton campaign should be treated with a good deal of skepticism. I have already said that the allegations of effective Russian interference in the US election do not […]
After Aleppo, Russians prepare to defy Trump re: their Iran Alliance
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – the left-leaning Lebanese newspaper al-Safir [Ambassador] reports that the armed resistance to the regime of Bashar al-Assad in the East Aleppo pocket is finished. Reports from Wednesday morning say that the ceasefire that Russia and the regime signed onto in hopes that the few hundred hold-outs […]
Russia/Syria: War Crimes in Month of Bombing Aleppo
Human Rights Watch (New York) – The Russian-Syrian coalition committed war crimes during a month-long aerial bombing campaign of opposition-controlled territory in Aleppo in September and October 2016. The Violations Documentation Center, a Syrian civil monitoring organization, documented that the bombing campaign killed more than 440 civilians, including more than 90 children. Airstrikes often appeared […]
Russian Pundit: Fall of East Aleppo a Geopolitical Turning Point toward Multi-polar World
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – By Friday evening outside observers like Rami Abdelrahman of the Syria Observatory in the UK were saying that even more of the East Aleppo pocket had fallen to the Syrian Arab Army, Hizbullah and Iraqi militias and that the government forces had consolidated their control over […]