There’s an irony of fate as the old rivals again look for common ground
For years, Russian-American relations seemed to be in an irreversible coma. Diplomacy was dead, overtaken by hostility, sanctions, and a growing risk of military confrontation. Many insisted that nothing could break this trajectory — Moscow and the Washington were locked into an unchangeable course of conflict.
Yet today, the pace of change is astonishing. The recent high-level meeting between Russian and American officials...
... Agreement implementation and international monitoring is not very reassuring, and the line of contact today is much longer than it was back in 2015. To put together a well-trained and properly equipped international monitoring mission of tens of thousands uniformed men and women would be next to impossible, at least within the time framework suggested by the US Administration. Needless to say, Russia would hardly accept a EU/NATO peacekeeping mission on its territory.
Territorial compromises
Trump ...
... aims against Ukraine, noting that the
Kinzhal
missile is ‘a
consequential
weapon … with the same warhead on it as … any other launched missile. It doesn’t make that much difference, except it’s almost impossible to stop it’. Similarly, USAF Commander Gen. Wolfers claimed that Russia’s aim was ‘to
demonstrate the capability
and attempt to put fear in the hearts of the enemy’.
In other words, Russia appears to have used the
Kinzhal
case in an attempt to control escalation between ...
As the world's two super-nuclear powers, the relations of Russia and the U.S. are inseparable from nuclear risk
Since the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, Russia and the United States have been engaged in an almost open nuclear game, but in different forms and with different objectives. Both Russia and the United States are well aware of the presence of the nuclear weapons factor in this conflict. Russia's main objective is to deter the United States and NATO from directly intervening...
The cost of a conflict with Russia for the United States will be measured not only and not so much by support for Ukraine, but also by the enormous cost of containing the Russian-Chinese tandem
The aggravation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is an indicator of the growing imbalance in the existing system of international relations. This imbalance is characterised by the emergence of new conflicts and resumption of old ones, with large-scale human casualties and risks of further escalation....
... Alternatives from the Days Gone By and Possible Futures
However, there might be even a third motive for the President’s refusal. It fact nuclear deterrence is aimed at preventing a number of other threats, besides nuclear aggression, and this implies ... ... Russian TNWs in Belarus, made on March 25, 2023, was a dramatic turn in Russia’s military policy and in the course of the Ukrainian crisis. [
39
] This initiative is significant not only because the Russian Federation took such a step for the first ...
Five questions regarding China-Russia relations and Chinese policy through the prism of the Russia-Ukraine conflict
One unexpected outcome of the Russia-Ukraine conflict is that China-Russia relations have taken center stage in global affairs. Even though China is not a party to the conflict, while the Russia-Ukraine crisis has nothing to do with the PRC and the conflict’s termination does not hang upon China, Sino-Russian relations are a major variable in the international environment where this...
... are in reality quite selective and biased.
Another explanation is that in the West the ongoing conflict in Ukraine is often presented as a part of the global clash between "good democracies" and "bad autocracies," as yet another crusade in defense of Western liberal values against the Eastern despotism. The fact is that many nations in Africa, Middle East and Southeast Asia can hardly fit the Western "democratic" standards; these nations were not even invited to the virtual ...
... so-often criticized “policy of double standards” of the United States. In the USSR, under the concrete slabs of socialist ideology, there was also its own version of realism. It has not been reflected upon to the extent that it could be done in the USA. But latently it developed in the environment of academic science, diplomacy and intelligence. The existence of this layer (Yevgeny Primakov later became its icon) allowed Russia to quickly acquire a pragmatic foundation for its foreign policy after ...
... Soviet Union reclaimed the peninsula from the Nazis in 1944; and the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev handed over Crimea to Ukraine a decade afterwards, in 1954. In 2014, the people of the peninsula made their choice to reunite with Russia.
Since 2014, thousands of people have been killed in the Donbas. Unfortunately, this current crisis in Ukraine is yet another pivotal moment in a lengthy and tumultuous history in the area that will be added to a long list of regional conflicts that now has the West ...
