by Svetlana Savranskaya and Tom Blanton
Oct 4, 2018
Washington, D.C., October 4, 2018 – Twenty-five years ago last night in Moscow, Russian President Boris Yeltsin ordered tanks and airborne troops to shell and storm the “White House,” the Russian Parliament (Supreme Soviet) building, to suppress the opposition trying to remove him.
Declassified documents published today by the National Security Archive include the transcript of U.S. President Bill Clinton’s phone call to Yeltsin the next day to praise him, the memcon in which U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher subsequently told Yeltsin this was “superb handling,” and two State Department cables painting a more complex portrait of the causes of the events.
Thursday, March 8, 2018
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Amid heightened tension with Russia, U.S. Senators Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and Edward J. Markey (D-MA) today urged Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to begin a new round of strategic talks with Russia without delay.
By Nadezhda Azhgikhina, The Nation, December 22, 2017
Hasty decisions made on both sides of the Atlantic are causing irreparable damage to journalism as a whole.
Jeanne Shaheen (D), in NYT: Kaspersky Lab, the cybersecurity company, is close to Putin’s government. So why is the U.S. government using its software?
Annals of Diplomacy
March 6, 2017 Issue
Trump, Putin, and the New Cold War
What lay behind Russia’s interference in the 2016 election—and what lies ahead?
By Evan Osnos, David Remnick, and Joshua Yaffa
Hans M. Kristensen & alios i Bulletin of the Atoic Scientists
Ingress: "The US nuclear forces modernization program has been portrayed to the public as an effort to ensure the reliability and safety of warheads in the US nuclear arsenal, rather than to enhance their military capabilities. In reality, however, that program has implemented revolutionary new technologies that will vastly increase the targeting capability of the US ballistic missile arsenal. This increase in capability is astonishing—boosting the overall killing power of existing US ballistic missile forces by a factor of roughly three—and it creates exactly what one would expect to see, if a nuclear-armed state were planning to have the capacity to fight and win a nuclear war by disarming enemies with a surprise first strike."
I must say that I am simply baffled by what appears to be the prevailing view in this country, and especially among liberals, that Russia is somehow a th...
The mainstream U.S. media’s relentless Russia-bashing has obscured Moscow’s legitimate fears about Washington’s provocative nuclear-missile strategies, which could lead to Armageddon, explains Jonathan Marshall.
"What was different was that it was distinctly China's G20. China did not simply host the G20 for America to sweep in, give its "leadership" and stamp to proceedings, and then to fly off. China, at this G20, made it very plain that it was leading, and to make it clearer still, it made sure that the world should see that the guest of honor was the Russian President, and not the American President (who regrettably experienced some technical difficulties that marred his ceremonial arrival). There was a deeper purpose here: to underline strategic co-ordination with Russia in the context of the display of Chinese leadership. "
"What may emerge in more concrete terms - it is too early to say - is the second strand to President Xi's global vision. In his address to the Chinese Communist Party, Xi said that relations of Russia and China should not be confined solely to economic relations, but rather, these two states should create an alternative military alliance: "we are now witnessing the aggressive actions by the United States against Russia and China. I believe that Russia and China may form an alliance before which NATO will be powerless," Xi said.