Recent Posts

Kazakh President Announces CSTO Troop Withdrawal, Criticizes Predecessor

Kazakh President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev says troops from the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) will begin withdrawing from Kazakhstan in two days as the situation calmed following the deadliest violence in the ex-Soviet republic’s three decades of independence from Moscow. In a televised address to parliament on January 11, Toqaev …

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Iran, Qatar Discuss Afghanistan, Yemen

The foreign ministers of Iran and Qatar talked about a range of regional and international issues, including the latest developments in Afghanistan and Yemen. Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian held a meeting with his Qatari counterpart Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani in Doha on Tuesday. The two senior diplomats talked …

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Surkov Says Russia Must Expand Or Die, The Most Dangerous Of All Possible ‘Prescriptions’ – OpEd

Vladislav Surkov, the Kremlin’s former chief ideologist, has published a new programmatic article in which he argues that the solution to Russia’s domestic malaise lies in imperial expansion. Indeed, he says, Russia must expand territorially or die (actualcomment.ru/kuda-delsya-khaos-raspakovka-stabilnosti-2111201336.html). Many Russian commentators have suggested that his analysis of the domestic situation …

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Iran-US: No Exit?

To borrow from that wiliest of ex-bishops turned statesmen, Charles de Talleyrand, George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq was worse than a crime: it was a mistake. Twenty years after 9/11, American military and foreign policy leaders are still struggling to resurrect something of the functionally stable balance of …

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US, Russia Hold Day-Long Talks Amid Ukraine Tensions

Diplomats from the United States and Russia held day-long talks Monday in Geneva about Moscow’s massive troop buildup along its Ukraine border and Russian demands for Western security guarantees. A U.S. State Department spokesperson said the meeting, the first of several this week, began just before 9 a.m. local time …

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