NewsTrust - Russia - Most Recent Stories: Opinion

20 Years After the Fall of the Berlin Wall: Will Another Superpower Meet Its End in Afghanistan?

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Loretta Napoleoni - Nov. 10 (Opinion) - Remarkably, the central Asian country of Afghanistan seems once again to be shaping our future. It is paradoxical that the graveyard of one superpower should become a battlefield for the other.

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Missile Defense Could Be the Silver Bullet

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

sptimes.ru - By Dmitry Trenin - Nov. 08 (Opinion) - In the eyes of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, the “resetting” of U.S.-Russian relations became a reality only six weeks ago, when U.S. President Barack Obama announced his decision to reconfigure U.S. missile defense plans for Europe. Putin called Obama’s step “courageous,” which, coming from him, is perhaps the highest form of personal approbation

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Europe's Verdict on the Georgia War

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - Oct. 03 (Opinion) - Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed.

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How to Press the Advantage With Iran

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Flynt Leverett, Hillary Mann Leverett - Sep. 29 (Opinion) - Instead of relying on sanctions, the Obama administration should seek a strategic realignment with Iran, as President Nixon did with China.

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Remember Afghanistan, Comrade?

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Anna Matveeva - Aug. 18 (Opinion) - Twenty years ago, massive casualties forced Gorbachev into a troop withdrawal. The parallels with today are haunting Do you remember Afghanistan, Comrade? This was a Soviet Afghan war song of the 1980s. "Do you, comrade, remember Afghanistan? Glows of fires, Muslim cries?" I am sure British soldiers have their own songs, it?s just I don?t know them. God bless them anyhow. The (1979-1989) is something nobody in Russia likes to recall now unless they have to. The 10-year intervention cost around 15,000 Soviet lives, a huge number compared with the 204 . What were the attitudes towards casualties in the society then? First, the war was seen as senseless. Nobody could comprehend what Soviet troops were doing in Afghanistan. The official ...

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The fog of war

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Economist - Aug. 13 (Opinion) - ONE year after the Georgian war, its outcome is as debatable as the cause. Depending on where you stand, the war can be seen as the sinister culmination of a systematic provocation by a neo-imperialist Russia or as a murderously aggressive gambit by a

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Editorial - Slain for Daring to Report - NYTimes.com

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - Jul. 17 (Editorial) - New York TimesSlain for Daring to ReportNew York TimesThe murder of Natalya Estemirova, an investigator into the brutality of Chechnya's Kremlin-backed regime, has the grisly signature of a long string of murder with impunity in Vladimir Putin's Russia. Ms. Estemirova was kidnapped by gunmen Wednesday in ...Lawless Atmosphere Cited in Death of Russian JournalistVoice of AmericaAnother Death in RussiaWall Street JournalDimitry Medvedev rejects claim Chechen leader ordered killingguardian.co.ukBBC News?-Reuters?-The Associated Pressall 467 news articles??

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Welcome to Moscow

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Economist - Jul. 02 (Opinion) - Over the past ten years, under Vladimir Putin’s leadership, Russia has become more nationalistic, corrupt and corporatist. Its economy, although much bigger than a decade ago, is even more dependent on oil and gas, an industry now controlled by a small group of kleptocratic courtiers and former spies. The decision by Ikea, a well-known Swedish furniture supplier once bullish about Russia, to suspend investment because of graft is an indictment of the dire commercial climate (see article). Its non-energy exports are smaller than Sweden’s.

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History Under Lock and Key

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

sptimes.ru - By Vladimir Rzyhkov - Jun. 14 (Opinion) - The only way to fight a real battle against the falsification of history — something that President Dmitry Medvedev has made a priority after creating a special commission to handle this issue — is to keep government archives as open as possible for historians. Unfortunately, the government is doing the exact opposite, depriving historians access to the most sensitive and important historical documents. Among other things, this is a violation of the Constitution.

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North Korea, the Next Iraq?

Thu, 28 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Robert D. Kaplan - May. 28 (Opinion) - If he doesn’t hit North Korea hard with sanctions, he risks demonstrating to Iran that America is a pushover. Indeed, Obama’s Iran policy – which requires the stick of tough action in addition to the carrot of talks and recognition – is on the line in North Korea. On the other hand, vigorous sanctions against North Korea could lead to the collapse of the regime. And anyone who talks breezily about “helping” North Korea to collapse has simply not learned the lesson of Iraq: The only thing worse than a totalitarian state is no state at all.

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The Risk of Letting Ukraine into NATO

Thu, 21 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Consortium News - By Ivan Eland - May. 21 (Opinion) - the admission of Ukraine is not in the interests of Russia, the United States, or, surprisingly, even the Ukraine. Along with the U.S. grab for influence over Caspian Sea oil and gas pipelines and the proposed installation of missile defense facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic, the admission of the Ukraine would naturally make Russia feel encircled. Even for the United States, however, pledging to defend Ukraine under Article V of the NATO Treaty is a really bad idea.

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The St. Petersburg Times - Opinion - Islands Apart

Mon, 18 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

sptimes.ru - By Peter Rutland - May. 18 (Opinion) - Prime Minister Vladimir Putin descended on Japan last week, accompanied by a dozen governors and more than 100 Russian business leaders. Yet the visit failed to break the impasse in Russian-Japanese relations over the four islands east of Hokkaido, which Russia seized in 1945. This means that the two countries are still without a peace treaty and an agreed mutual border 64 years after the end of World War II.

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The Making of a New Global Strategy

Sun, 08 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Strategic Paradigms - By Ehsan Ahrari - Feb. 08 (Opinion) - The administration of President Barack H. Obama has started the highly intricate process of developing its own strategy with a bang in different regions of the world. Here are the ingredients of that strategy: multilateralism, looking for a fresh start—which promises to be substantially different from the preceding administration—search for common ground involving Russia, invitation of negotiations with America’s traditional adversaries like Iran and North Korea, and at least the initial hope that approaches toward Palestine, Pakistan, and Afghanistan are likely to be radically different than the one the Bush administration pursued unsuccessfully. This is a huge agenda. But Obama’s administration has the enormous characteristic of freshness, metaphorically as well as substantively, in the sense that it is not carrying any baggage that had so infamously bogged down George W. Bush in an ostensibly endless inertia.

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Provoking Russia - The Boston Globe

Mon, 29 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Boston Globe - By Muammar Gaddafi - Dec. 29 (Opinion) - ONCE AGAIN, the West's policy toward Russia and its addiction to interfering in the affairs of other countries is having dangerous effects on the rest of the world. The seeds for the current danger were sown by NATO's expansion to Russia's borders after the fall of the Soviet Union. That deliberate, provocative, and continuing process echoes in Russia's long memory the painful experience of the Napoleonic and German armies storming across Europe into their motherland, hell-bent on conquest.

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Cooling Down The New Cold War

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

New Republic - By Michael Idov - Dec. 10 (Opinion) - In August, Russia provided the first significant foreign-policy challenge of Barack Obama's presidential campaign.

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General offers lessons learned by Soviet Union in Afghanistan

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Boston Globe - By Megan K Stack - Dec. 05 (Interview) - Q. In its invasion of Afghanistan, do you believe the United States benefited from the Soviet experience? Do you see any evidence of your lessons from the Soviet defeat? A. I can tell you which mistakes you made and which mistakes we made. They are the same mistakes. We set up a very weak leader, Babrak Karmal. He didn't have prestige with the people. Today the leadership of Afghanistan does not enjoy popularity with the people.

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