Ukraine’s parliament speaker said the nation is “running out of time” to resolve its political crisis, reiterating calls for a government shake-up to end months of infighting that’s jeopardizing the flow of international aid.
Paul Robinson: Fear-mongering, Pure and Simple
‘Russia is ready to kill us by the thousands’. So reads a headline in today’s Daily Telegraph, one of Britain’s leading daily, allegedly high-brow (i.e. non-tabloid), newspapers.
Notions of ‘Russian threat’ are nothing more than new Cold War rhetoric (The Independent)
Alexander Yakovenko, the Russian Ambassador to Britain, writes that a “truly cooperative approach to conflict resolution on a realistic basis has no sound alternatives.”
Leonid Bershidsky: Release the Dutch Evidence of the DNC Hack
Specific evidence linking Russian intelligence to the DNC hack would dramatically change the current picture of limited attempts at interference via Facebook and the state-owned network Russia Today, especially if it could also be shown that material obtained in that Russian hack surfaced on Wikileaks. It serves no purpose to keep that kind of information from the public.
PODCAST: Kiev Increasingly Resembles an American Colony (Stephen F. Cohen)
Nation Contributing Editor Stephen F. Cohen and John Batchelor continue their weekly discussions of the new US–Russian Cold War. (Previous installments are at TheNation.com.) With Kiev sinking into political and economic crisis, Washington is pushing for the American Natalie Jaresko, currently Ukraine’s Finance Minister, to replace the immensely unpopular Yatsenyuk as prime minister.
Cohen asks why a country of some 40 million citizens has to appoint so many foreigners to high-level government positions. As a result, Kiev increasingly resembles an American colony or dependency. That the Western-backed “Maidan Revolution” for “independence,” in February 2014, may be in its death agony, with Ukraine mired in civil war and in economic ruin, was dramatized, Cohen reports, by a top European Union official’s recent statement that the country could not even aspire to EU membership, the professed goal of the Maidan leadership, “in the next 20-25 years.” Nearly 10,000 people have died and millions been displaced for a purpose that was ill fated and unwise from the outset. In the U.S., only “Putin’s Russia” is blamed for the tragedy, but Cohen argues that the Obama Administration and EU leadership are equally, if not more, responsible.
Batchelor asks if long-standing Russophobia is driving Washington’s fervent opposition to cooperation with Moscow both on Ukraine and now, in regard to the partial ceasefire, on Syria. Cohen thinks that Russophobia, which can be traced to Tsarist pogroms and the arrival of many Jews in America before the 1917 Russian Revolution, and the revival and intensification of such sentiments during the preceding forty-year Cold War, clearly play a role. But, he adds, the current US demonization of Putin is an even more important, virulent, and largely unprecedented factor.
Meanwhile, the Russian Communist Party, long a minority opposition in the post-Soviet parliament, or Duma, is showing new strength among voters as a result of the economic hardships due to the collapse of world prices for Russia’s energy and, to a lesser extent, to Western economic sanctions imposed in connection with the Ukrainian crisis. The extent to which this might affect Russian politics and the role of the new parliament to be elected in September remains to be seen. But how seriously Putin takes this potential challenge was indicated by his scathing public attack on the historical role of Lenin, the founder of the Communist Party, in January, essentially for the first time. Cohen and Batchelor discuss various aspects of this new development in domestic Russian politics, especially now as the twenty-fifth anniversary of the end of the Soviet Union and 100th anniversary of the Revolution approach.
Paul Robinson Review’s Amy Knight’s Orders To Kill
Knight is a respectable author whose 1993 biography of Beria I found quite informative. In Orders to Kill, however, she has abandoned academic neutrality in favour of political activism. The result is far from satisfactory.
ISIS THREATENS ‘APOSTATE PUTIN’ IN NEW PROPAGANDA VIDEO (Newsweek)
Islamist group Islamic State (ISIS) has threatened “Putin the apostate” with an imminent attack on Russian soil in a new propaganda video. Since Russia began air strikes on ISIS and other anti-government targets in Syria during the last week of September 2015, there has been a concentrated anti-Russian backlash from the group
Norman Solomon: Remembering Investigative Journalist Robert Parry
What made Bob Parry a trailblazer for independent journalism also made him a bridge-burner with the media establishment.
UN SAYS SYRIA PEACE TALKS TO BEGIN WITHIN DAYS (AP)
The U.N. envoy for Syria will begin holding “substantive” talks between the Syrian government and the opposition no later than Monday.
Robert Parry on Receiving Harvard’s I.F. Stone Medal
The annual award, established in 2008 to honor Stone’s life and to recognize journalists capturing the spirit of his independence, integrity, and courage, was presented to Parry for his career distinguished by meticulously researched investigations, intrepid questioning, and reporting that has challenged mainstream media.
How to Lose a Proxy War with Russia (Michael Kofman)
The tenuous cease-fire deal in Syria offers an opportunity for reflection on not just the Syrian war, but also the conflict in Ukraine, where the war burned bright this time last year and still simmers. Aspects of the conflict in Syria offer a window on how a proxy war might have played out in Ukraine.
Robert Parry, Journalist and Editor, Passes Away at 68.
It is with a heavy heart that we inform readers that Consortium News Editor Robert Parry has passed away.
How to help civilians in Ukraine (CNN)
The prolonged economic and political crisis in Ukraine has lead to serious struggles for millions of people living in the conflict zone.
Organizations are delivering medical supplies, food, water and other items to those in need. Groups are also helping displaced families who cannot return to their homes.
Amb. Jon Huntsman: We Can and Must Improve Ties With Russia
For a better future for Russians, Americans and the world, we have to begin to find solutions to the common problems.
Russia offers access to its Syria bases to help deliver aid (Reuters)
Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Monday it was ready to give access to its military bases in Syria for humanitarian aid deliveries.
Lev Golinkin: How the Holocaust Haunts Eastern Europe
Earlier this month, Kiev made headlines by banning “Stalingrad,” an award-winning book by Antony Beevor, an acclaimed British historian, on account of a single paragraphthat mentions a Ukrainian unit killing Jewish children. Poland’s ruling far-right Law and Justice Party proposed legislation making it illegal to accuse Poles of participating in the Holocaust, and targeted authors and journalists for daring to say otherwise. Once again, the Jews of Eastern Europe may face persecution and censorship for honoring their slain.
NY Times Editorial on Syria: Putin is an Indispensable Partner
According to an unsigned editorial in the March 5 edition of the New York Times: “Mr. Putin is untrustworthy, and the world must remain alert to his capacity for mischief. His military intervention in the war five months ago rescued Mr. Assad’s embattled regime, and there are good reasons to worry that he will exploit the cease-fire to his advantage. Still, Mr. Putin is an indispensable partner in the search for a lasting solution. This is a growing imperative for the West, and not just because the war is a disaster for the Syrians and the region.”
William J. Perry: It is now two minutes to midnight
For some time I have feared that the threat of nuclear disaster has grown beyond the risk we faced during the darkest years of the Cold War. The events of the past year have only increased my concern that the danger of a nuclear catastrophe is increasingly real.
Jaresko emerges as top candidate for prime minister (Ukraine Weekly)
Chicago-native Natalie Jaresko, the current finance minister of Ukraine, is among the top candidates to succeed the embattled Arseniy Yatsenyuk as prime minister, according to Kyiv insiders and recent news reports.
Amb. Tony Kevin (Australia) – Current Prospects for East-West Detente
Former Australian diplomat Tony Kevin (Australian Ambassador to Poland 1991-94, and to Cambodia 1994-97) gave a talk entitled ‘Current Prospects for East-West Detente- Reflections of a Former Western Diplomat’ to the Moscow Museum of Contemporary Russian History in late January.