American Committee for East-West Accord

Soft authoritarianism is likely to remain the best characterization of the system as long as Putin is the top player, unless he is pressed to democratize further from above and/or below.

As the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II approaches, two of that war’s main victims – Poland and Russia – are once again embroiled in a highly emotional dispute about its origins. At the heart of the matter is the perennial controversy about the Nazi-Soviet pact of 23 August 1939.

Once bitter rivals, Russia and Turkey have seen their relationship rebound over the past few years.

As Eisenhower predicted, there is no balance left, as U.S. policy is reduced to who we threaten, bomb, or occupy next.

The Erik Wemple Blog at the Washington Post looks at a number of approving remarks about the Steele dossier by journalists and others. Wemple asked RussiaGate conspiracy theorists such as Natasha Bertrand and Phil Mudd whether they’d amend their positive assessments of the dossier. They (and many others) declined.

Who says there’s no bipartisan consensus in Washington? These days, anyone calling for the resumption of U.S.-Russian dialogue is suspected to be a Putin stooge, but for The New York Times, even the Russian culture is under great suspicion.

Putin has spoken. The Russian constitution needs some tweaking, he told legislators in his annual address to the Federal Assembly.

Jim Webb, a Democrat from Virginia who served in the U.S. Senate from 2007 to 2013 and was secretary of the Navy under President Ronald Reagan asks: When did it become acceptable to kill a top leader of a country we aren’t even at war with?

A court has ordered the FBI to explain how it will correct its behavior going forward, exactly a century after it should have learned its lesson.