Russia

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Buzzfeed has published the unverified allegations by a former MI6 analyst with good Russian contacts, contained in a two-page hitherto secret annex to the US intelligence community’s report on Russian hacking and interference in the 2016 election. These two pages have circulated in Washington for months. […]

How the Arrogance of Cold War Triumph brought us this Low

By Andrew J. Bacevich | ( Tomdispatch.com ) | – – The fall of the Berlin Wall in October 1989 abruptly ended one historical era and inaugurated another. So, too, did the outcome of last year’s U.S. presidential election. What are we to make of the interval between those two watershed moments? Answering that question […]

Circus of Liars: How Trump & GOP are Twisted into Pretzels over Putin Hack

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Donald J. Trump has picked another fight with the elders of his own Republican Party, over whether Russia engaged in hacking aimed at influencing the US election. Trump has maintained that it is impossible to trace hacking attempts, that it isn’t clear who was behind them, […]

GOP Russia Hawks attack Trump: McCain Says he Must ‘Stand Up’ to Putin

TeleSur | – – On Friday, Trump congratulated Putin for not retaliating to Obama’s expulsions. On the same day a top aide to President-elect Donald Trump said the White House may have disproportionately punished Russia by ordering the expulsion of 35 diplomats, Republican Senator John McCain reaffirmed his conviction that the United States could only […]

Russia

No, it’s not a new Cold War: The USSR is Gone Forever

By Ghia Nodia | (Project Syndicate) | – – MOSCOW – This New Year’s Eve marks the 25th anniversary of the formal dissolution of the Soviet Union. But, rather than celebrating, many Russians – and some people in the West – are ambivalent about that outcome. Russian President Vladimir Putin tops the list of doubters. […]

Barack Obama

Top 5 Ways Obama Sanctions on Russia work for Democrats

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 […]

Government surveillance

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