US LAWLESSNESS

MIKE MADDEN—NATO and U.S. officials said regular units of the Russian military crossed a few kilometers into Ukrainian territory on August 2014, which Russia denied, when the separatist forces had been pushed eastward toward the Russian border and hundreds of civilians had been killed. On Aug. 25, 2014, 10 Russian paratroopers were captured 20 km inside the Ukrainian border. 

Nuland called this “Russia’s invasion of eastern Ukraine.” The incursion would be more properly characterized as Russia exercising the liberal interventionists’ favorite Responsibility to Protect doctrine.

As happened in Georgia in 2008, a government militarily attacked its own people and Russia intervened to drive the military forces back and protect the local population. In that 2008 case, a European Union investigation determined that Georgia, not Russia, was the aggressor.

GILBERT DOCTOROW—As I have said previously, Putin’s entire approach is that Russia is in an arm-wrestling match with one country only, the USA. He knows that the USA does not really care if Russia and the EU blow one another up: that would only enforce their global hegemony. So the iron-clad logic is that the Russians would also station their hypersonic cruise missiles just off the US shores as Putin threatened three years ago, when he spoke about Russia’s cutting edge, next-generation strategic weapons that had then and today still have no equals in the world.

ERIC ZUESSE—What can explain these recent instances, proven by Agence France-Press, in which outright frauds — lies (in the form of faked photos and videos) — are being spread online to support the agenda of breaking off, from China, Hong Kong (which has been historically always a part of China) so as to make Hong Kong an ‘independent’ nation?

THE SAKER—There is a certain specificity of American politics in this. Very often, American diplomats come to Moscow and say one thing, then when they come back, they are attacked by the media and Congress. Both the media and the Congress are totally in the hands of the “War Party” here. Accusations of weakness, softness, cowardice, etc. follow and here they need to show their “coolness”.

So, for example, Trump acted when he negotiated with the Russian side, and then declared: “There were no agreements.”

Therefore, it remains to be seen whether Biden will be able to withstand the onslaught of the “War Party” now. If he can do it, say, in the next 2-3 weeks, then I would say that for him this conversation was a clear and undoubted success.

ANDREI RAEVSKY—Putin is both very predictable and, at the same time, very unpredictable.  The predictable thing about Putin is that he only uses force when there is no other option left.  The very unpredictable thing about Putin is how and where he is willing to use force.  He did not intervene in the Donbass, which everybody expected, and he did not allow the LDNR to take even just Mariupol, never mind the rest of the Ukraine.  But when he moved a special task force into Syria, nobody saw it coming.  Ditto for the move to protect Crimea from a Ukrainian invasion.  When assessing Putin’s possible next steps, we need to keep in mind this paradox about him being both predictable and unpredictable.  So moving nukes to Kaliningrad and/or Belarus is not the only option for Russia.