A close look at the tangled web of relationships involving Trump, his Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort, his campaign in general, Putin, Russia, and WikiLeaks in light of the DNC and Clinton-aimed related hacking is not reassuring. Trump is fond of using the phrase: "There's something going on!" when he wants to imply a scandal without going into detail. Well, ...
... casualties, but among rivals, you could add objectivity and a sense of proportion to that initial casualty list.
Among certain not uncommon elements in the U.S. and the West, especially among American Republicans, there is a tendency to speak of Russia and Putin today hyperbolically in the same breath as interwar Germany and Hitler, that somehow, Putin is a monster of a potential Hitleresque quality, if not in genocidal intent then in a global ambition to dominate. The word “appeasement” is ...
... senior editor of The Economist. He was the weekly’s Moscow bureau chief between 1998 and 2002, later serving as its Central and East European correspondent. Lucas is author of three books: Deception, on Russia-West espionage, The New Cold War, on Putin’s Russia and the threat it poses to the West, and The Snowden Operation. He is a non-resident fellow at the Washington think-tank CEPA.
Assessing the consequences of the Ukraine crisis for the wider world, commentators’ concerns ...
... government ‘legitimate’ or ‘illegitimate’ as it suits her and treat it accordingly.
The annexation of part of Eastern Ukraine by Russia would be a disaster. But federalisation could be no less: if such a federation is as loose as Putin wants it to be, and a number of regions are controlled by Russian puppets, it will not only amount to the ‘finlandisation’ of Ukraine — Putin’s goal — but to complete governmental paralysis, and perhaps sustained separatism....
Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea has enraged the West. His lack of openness to any compromise has forced it to launch a — weak — sanctions regime. Putin finds this ‘unacceptable’ and threatens retaliation.
In yesterday’s ...
Having invaded Crimea, set up a puppet government and organised a sham referendum, now Vladimir Putin will have to facilitate the region’s accession to Russia. There is little doubt this is going to happen swiftly. Any different reaction to yesterday’s clear, if unfair, results, will seem much too cynical even to Russians, who now — ...
... Magnitsky and the rest across Western media.
The latter - it’s true - show little sympathy. But they communicate more on a symbolic level. What they see is a coarsely macho and highly extravagant, therefore repugnant but also interesting leader, Putin. Sochi is his show: a temple to Russia’s, thus his greatness.
A show that, as Liliya Shevtsova rightly said, was a scandal much before it started. With an initial budget Russia cannot afford, a corruption cost no country in the world can,...
... Syria, whatever form it takes, would still aim at weakening the Assad regime to give the rebels a strategic edge. But a point which seems to be completely ignored by the Obama administration is that the opposition in Syria is not homogeneous. As Mr. Putin puts in his recent op-ed in the New York Times, "There are more than enough Al-Qaeda fighters and extremists of all stripes battling the government. The United States State Department has designated Al Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq ...
During my analysis of UK media perspectives on the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, I have noticed several patterns: articles about Medvedev’s presidency invariably include a paragraph or two naming Putin as the ‘real power’ in Russia; almost every article which mentions Putin makes reference to his time in the ...
Recently in the British press there has been extensive coverage of Ramzan Kadyrov, the Chechen President. While my main research focus is representations of Vladimir Putin in UK print media, it is interesting to observe how another ‘Russian’ leader is portrayed, in reference to both masculinity and international politics. Over the past few weeks the British press have covered two stories on Kadyrov – ...
