Russia

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – BBC Monitoring reports on a statement in Russian at the site of its Ministry of Foreign Affairs, reacting to the Israeli air attacks on Syria and the shoot-down by the Syrians of one Israeli fighter-jet. The Foreign ministry expressed “serious concern” over the Israeli air strikes, […]

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Russia-aided Syria shoots down Israeli F-16 after downing of Iranian Drone

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Syrian anti-aircraft batteries scored a rare shoot-down of an Israeli F-16 late Saturday morning local time. It is being alleged by a whole range of analysts that this shoot-down could not have happened without Russian help. It required that the anti-aircraft personnel break Israeli radar jamming. […]

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Russia Mounts intensive Syria Air Campaign in Response to Downed Jet

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The Russian side of the story, presented in the Syrian press, is that an al-Qaeda-linked group in Idlib, a northwestern province of Syria, used a shoulder-mounted missile launcher to shoot down a Russian fighter jet. The pilot ejected and landed, but then was attacked by ground […]

Donald Trump

Chiefs Of Three Russian Intelligence Agencies Travel To Washington

contributors

Mike Eckel | ( RFE/RL) | – – WASHINGTON — The directors of Russia’s three main intelligence and espionage agencies all traveled to the U.S. capital in recent days, in what observers said was a highly unusual occurrence coming at a time of heightened U.S.-Russian tensions. Russia’s ambassador to the United States had earlier confirmed […]

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Trump declines to Sanction Russia, Spurring Speculation about Putin Hold

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The Trump administration has refused to implement new sanctions on the Russian defense sector, as mandated by Congress’s “Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act,” or CAATSA. Congress passed the bill last year and it was reluctantly finally signed by Trump in August. It is vaguely worded […]

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Russia accuses US of destabilizing Syria with Kurdish-Turkish Clash

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan’s angry threat to invade a Syrian Kurdish canton in response to the US announcement that it would train and arm a 30,000-man Syrian Kurdish border force produced anxiety in Moscow. Russia has made a big bet, worth billions of rubles and involving […]

Bashar al-Assad

Turkey threatens war against US/Kurdish Force in Syria

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The US announcement that it would form a 30,000 strong policing force in northeast Syria from the YPG leftist Kurdish militia has provoked unprecedently strong words from Turkey, and signs of an unusual convergence of Syrian and Turkish foreign policy objectives. In the cross-hairs are 2,000 […]

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Nearly a year after Trump bombed Syria, al-Assad and Russia extend control

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The Syrian war limps along at the margins. It is over where it matters but continues in key demographic pockets. The two most significant are East Ghouta near the al-Assad-held capital of Damascus and the province of Idlib in the northwest of the country. East Ghouta […]

Authoritarianism

Putin’s Medieval Romanticism and Russia’s Lurch Right

contributors

Dina Khapaeva | (Project Syndicate) | – – As much of the world makes amends for social and political injustices of the past, Russia is lionizing its despots, raising statues to the worst of them. Behind this phenomenon is an ultra-nationalist brand of conservatism that seeks to take Russian politics back to the Middle Ages. […]