Russia international relations

Institut Montaigne’s broad-spectrum interview, on October 13, 2022, with Fyodor A. Lukyanov, Chairman of the Russian Presidium of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy and editor-in-chief of the “Russia in Global Affairs” journal. Note to our readers We intend in the future to publish more materials by Russian scholars and intellectuals because the de facto cancellation by NATO/EU countries of such views and of access to leading Russian media is both unfair, a violation of human rights and an element in a self-serving media warfare which, regrettably, only makes a peaceful, negotiated resolution even more difficult. We believe it is necessary to hear all conflict participants’ motives and views to be able to help solve a conflict peacefully. Any professional conflict analyst and mediator knows that and also that that does not mean an implicit endorsement of everything stated. Earlier ones are published here, here and here. – Jan...

U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin welcoming Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky to a meeting at the Pentagon, Aug. 31, 2021. (DoD, Jack Sanders) In addition to advancing longstanding U.S. geo-strategic aims, it seems the proxy war in Ukraine is also being used to sharpen the imperial war machine’s claws for a looming hot war with China and/or Russia. Caitlin Johnstone December 5, 2022 Listen to a reading of this article. A surprisingly frank article in The New York Times, “Western Allies Look to Ukraine as a Testing Ground for Weapons” describes how the imperial war machine is capitalising on the U.S. proxy war to test its weapons for future use. “Ukraine has become a testing ground for state-of-the-art weapons and information systems, and new ways to use them, that Western political officials and military commanders predict could shape warfare for generations to come,” writes Lara Jakes. Jakes says “new advances in technology and...

Vijay Prashad December 5th, 2022 Ukrainians have been paying a terrible price for the failure of ensuring sensible and reasonable negotiations from 2014 to February 2022 – which could have prevented the invasion by Russia in the first place, and once the war started, could have led to the end of this war. Originally posted on People’s Dispatch homepage on October 25th 2022, here Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022. This war has been horrendous, though it does not compare with the terrible destruction wrought by the US bombardment of Iraq (“shock and awe”) in 2003. In the Gomel region of Belarus that borders Ukraine, Russian and Ukrainian diplomats met on February 28 to begin negotiations toward a ceasefire. These talks fell apart. Then, in early March, the two sides met again in Belarus to hold a second and third round of talks. On March 10, the foreign ministers of Ukraine and Russia met in Antalya, Turkey, and...

Three experts on warfare, weapons and underlying conflicts – and even some views on peace-making – after NATO foreign ministers’ summit in Bucharest. Today I participated in CrossTalk, edited and performed by Peter Lavelle on RT, formerly Russia Today. It was a delightful preparation process that made clear what it would be about, length, participants etc – and treated the invited persons with respect and asked also – professionally – how we wanted to be presented. My praise goes to Aleksandra Danilova, RT, in this regard. You may think that is only natural, but not everybody does it the professional way, I can tell. Please see this half an hour below. You may also enjoy Peter Lavelle’s and my “pushbacks” at each other when I talked about the MIMAC – Military-Industrial-Media-Academic Complex and militarism. But it ends very nicely. The video – and all of RT’s programs – are on...

Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin at Yalta, February 1945. Photo: US Army. Richard Falk – TFF Associate November 23, 2022 Disdaining Diplomacy, Seeking Victory Ever since the Ukraine War started on February 24, 2022, the NATO response, mainly articulated and materially implemented by the U.S., has been to pour vast quantities of oil on the flames of conflict, taunting Russian and its leader, increasing the scale of violence, the magnitude of human suffering, and dangerously increasing the risk of a disastrous outcome. Not only did Washington mobilize the world to denounce Russia’s ‘aggression’, but supplied a steady stream of advanced weaponry in great quantities to the Ukrainians to resist the Russian attack and even mount counterattacks. The U.S. did all it could at the UN and elsewhere to build a punitive coalition hostile to Russia but coupled this with a variety of sanctions and the demonization of Putin as a notorious...

Jan Oberg November 18, 2022 This article was written in October for the distinguished China Investment – a magazine sponsored by China’s National Development and Reform Commission. It was published in November here in both Chinese and English. Due to the reactions to my articles there, it looks like I shall become a regular contributor to China Investment like I am to the China Daily. The European Commission has just decided on new sanctions against Russia – in fact, the eighth round of such sanctions. This time the reason is that Russia has held referenda in the Donbas region of Ukraine. I sense we’re witnessing a new disease – Sanctionitis. It seems related to a larger, fatal disease with few treatment options, namely the SHMSI Syndrome:Sanctionitis + Hubris + Masochism + Self-Destructive Impulses. The patient has foggy ideas about reality and his own strength and exaggerates ad absurdum the positive...

Caitlin Johnstone November 9, 2022 Listen to a reading of this article Mainstream punditry in the latter half of 2022 is rife with op-eds arguing that the US needs to vastly increase military spending because a world war is about to erupt, and they always frame it as though this would be something that happens to the US, as though its own actions would have nothing to do with it. As though it would not be the direct result of the US-centralized empire continually accelerating towards that horrific event while refusing every possible diplomatic off-ramp due to its inability to relinquish its goal of total unipolar planetary domination. Originally published in Caitlin Johnstone’s newsletter on October 28, 2022 The latest example of this trend is an article titled “Could America Win a New World War? — What It Would Take to Defeat Both China and Russia” published by Foreign Affairs, a magazine that...

Ukraine War Evolves: Disdaining Diplomacy, Seeking Victory Richard Falk October 27, 2022 Prefatory Note This is the third iteration of an essay on the evolution of the Ukraine War, the earlier two versions published online in Transcend Media Service (TMS) and CounterPunch. The essential argument remains: war-mongering geopolitics in the nuclear age imperils species survival and suppresses the necessity for emergency action to restore sustainable forms of ecological habitability to planet earth. Ever since the Ukraine War started on February 24, 2022, the NATO response, mainly articulated and materially implemented by the U.S., has been to pour vast quantities of oil on the flames of conflict, taunting Russia and its leader, increasing the scale of violence, the magnitude of human suffering, and dangerously increasing the risk of a disastrous outcome. Not only did Washington mobilize the world to denounce Russia’s ‘aggression’, but supplied a steady stream of advanced weaponry in...

You should ask yourself, ask friends, others and decision-makers in the West why the type of important news and conversations like the one I have here – including on nuclear abolition – is possible on Russia’s RT (and explicitly appreciated, watch the end) but not possible in the Western mainstream media. Interestingly, the conversation develops into the issue of the risks of nuclear war and why – I argue strongly – nuclear weapons must be abolished and that the nuclear weapons powers implicitly adhere – all of them – to a philosophy of terrorism. Remember how it was once called the balance of terror – a word that disappeared from the nuclear discourse after September 11, 2001. There are many definitions of terrorism, but one essential element in them all is that terrorism is about deliberately harming or killing civilians, targeting innocent people and not military forces, to achieve a...

Natylie Baldwin October 18th, 2022 I first came across Benjamin Abelow’s analysis of the Ukraine war as a lengthy article published on Medium in May.  I found the depth and thoroughness of his article impressive and complimented him on it.  When he told me that he’d expanded it into a short book, I was intrigued and offered to review it.  I was not disappointed. Originally posted on Natylies Baldwin’s homepage on October 2nd, 2022 Abelow’s overall argument as expressed in the overview of the book is that in the world in which we live, countries that are able, will use the means they have available to defend what they perceive to be their national security interests, including force.  This includes deterring or repelling hostile countries from encroaching on their border and near abroad.  The prime defender of this concept for itself is the U.S. as reflected in the Monroe Doctrine and its defense...

By Connor Echols October 17, 2022 A recent piece in Foreign Affairs revealed that Kyiv and Moscow may have had a tentative deal to end the war all the way back in April. Russia and Ukraine may have agreed on a tentative deal to end the war in April, according to a recent piece in Foreign Affairs. “Russian and Ukrainian negotiators appeared to have tentatively agreed on the outlines of a negotiated interim settlement,” wrote Fiona Hill and Angela Stent. “Russia would withdraw to its position on February 23, when it controlled part of the Donbas region and all of Crimea, and in exchange, Ukraine would promise not to seek NATO membership and instead receive security guarantees from a number of countries.” Originally published at Responsible Statecraft on September 2, 2022 The news highlights the impact of former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s efforts to stop negotiations, as journalist Branko Marcetic noted on Twitter....

Former US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland testifies during a hearing on Policy Response to Russian Interference in the 2016 US Elections before the Senate Intelligence Committee at Capitol Hill in Washington, USA on June 20, 2018. (Yasin Ozturk/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images) A Cold War true believer who sabotaged Obama’s foreign policy, Nuland is a huge risk at the State Department Medea Benjamin – Nicolas J.S. Davies – Marcy Winograd October 13, 2022 Who is Victoria Nuland? Most Americans have never heard of her, because the U.S. corporate media’s foreign policy coverage is a wasteland. Most Americans have no idea that President-elect Biden’s pick for deputy secretary of state for political affairs is stuck in the quicksand of 1950s U.S.-Russia Cold War politics and dreams of continued NATO expansion, an arms race on steroids and further encirclement of Russia.  Nor do they know that from 2003...