RUSSIA DESK

ERIC ZUESSE—The views of Alexei Navalny in Russia and in the United States are virtually opposites of each other.

In America, for example, on June 20th, the New York Times headlined “U.S. Preparing More Sanctions Against Russia, Sullivan Says”, and sub-headlined “The national security adviser raised the issue of more penalties in the poisoning of Aleksei A. Navalny days after President Biden met with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.” The Hill online bannered “Sullivan says US preparing more Russia sanctions over Navalny”, and the “Best” or most popular of the many hundreds of reader-comments was “Putin is too chickenshit to face Navalny in an election”. In other words, the view is: Putin is aiming to kill Navalny because Navalny represents democracy and Putin is the dictator. That is the dominant view of Navalny not only in the United States but in its allied countries.

Hard to believe, but the Putin-Biden summit may have actually opened the road to an improvement in the global situation, at least a recognition by the US that its power is not unlimited, and that endless hostility toward sovereign nations like China or Russia may prove ultimately counterproductive and downright deleterious to American power. As well, if this summit opens a path to peace in the Donbas, everyone will be the winner. Russia’s rapid and highly impressive military mobilisation during the last US-precipitated crisis in Ukraine may have opened the eyes to some Western planners, forcing them to accept the fact Russia is a major world power, capable of global strategic muscle.

At the Geneva summit, President Biden of the US and President Putin of Russia announced the restoration of their ambassadors and agreed to new talks on vital issues. Meanwhile in Washington and major US media outlets, Russiagate-addled hawks promoted increased confrontation. James Carden analyzes the talks and the bellicose US media response. “US media outlets seem to be egging Biden on to take a harder line than than the President wanted to,” Carden says. “It’s a product of the last several years of Russiagate hysteria. But it also shows who make up the American press really don’t know that much about Russia or foreign policy.”

PEPE ESCOBAR—In Geneva, the US and Russia issued a joint statement where “we reaffirm the principle that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” Assorted Dr. Strangeloves will cringe – but at least the world has it in writing, and may breathe a sigh of relief with this breakthrough of sorts. That doesn’t mean that a “non-agreement capable” US industrial-military complex will abide. Moscow and Washington also committed to engage in an “integrated bilateral Strategic Stability Dialogue in the near future that will be deliberate and robust.” The devil in the details is in which “near future” the dialogue will progress. A first step is that ambassadors are returning to both capitals. Putin confirmed that the Russian Foreign Ministry and the State Department will “start consultations” following the new START-3 treaty extension for five years.

CALEB MAUPIN—Forerunners of the “color revolutions”, Caleb discusses the CIA-supported Hungarian uprising of 1956 and the Czech “Prague Spring” of 1968, the latter term symbolising the coming in from the frozen cold of communist tyranny. Every nation that heeded the capitalist siren song of the West became a corrupt neoliberal regime, warns Caleb. And each of these regimes were at the time of their birth hailed as great improvements over communism by many people who still define themselves as being anti-imperialist and “on the left”.