Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) met with Russian President Vladimir Putin via video link on December 15, 2001 The New York Times got the story correct when its Moscow bureau watched the outcome of the videoconference between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping yesterday and assessed that the US’ two main adversaries …
Continue reading “A Sino-Russian military alliance is gratuitous (as of now)”
US President Joe Biden (R) and aides talking with Russian president Vladimir Putin, December 7, 2021 This must be a rare occasion when Russian President Vladimir Putin during his 18 years in the Kremlin came out second best in an encounter with an American president. And it had to be at the hands of President …
Taliban Acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi (L) met Qatari officials before talks with US/EU representatives, Doha, Nov. 27, 2021 36. One Hundred Days of Solitude As the Taliban completes its first hundred days in power, the Western powers are groping for a face-saving formula to engage with the authorities in Kabul with some modicum …
President Vladimir Putin addressing the expanded meeting of the Russian Foreign Ministry Board, Moscow, November 18, 2021 Wouldn’t that be a delicious irony — the British defence secretary Ben Wallace rushing to Warsaw on Thursday to work up detailed plans to strengthen Poland’s border fence with Belarus? Britain had partnered the US in the invasion of …
US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin (L) and Georgian Defense Minister Juansher Burchuladze signed a pact on Georgia Defense and Deterrence Enhancement Initiative, Tbilisi, Oct. 18, 2021 Moscow has butted the grand old transatlantic alliance in the chest on Monday with the foreign ministry announcing that it will suspend the NATO military liaison mission with …
German Chancellor Angela Merkel to visit White House on July 15, will be the first European leader to do so during Biden presidency A caveat must be added to the famous line by Lord Hastings Lionel Ismay, NATO’s first Secretary General and Winston Churchill’s chief military assistant during the Second World War, that the purpose …
Continue reading “Takeaways for Russia, India from Merkel’s US visit”
The guided-missile destroyer USS Ross enters the Black Sea to participate in Sea Breeze 2021 exercises, June 26, 2021 The Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov exhorted today in an extraordinary statement that the state authorities and the society at large must mobilise their resources amid the West’s pressure. Addressing an audience in Vladivostok, Lavrov said, …
Bagram after US military left the base, Kabul, July 5, 2021 The British newspaper Daily Telegraph did some kite-flying in the weekend that London is considering open-ended deployment of a contingent of elite special forces to Afghanistan “ to provide training to Afghan units and deploy with them on the ground as advisers.” At the …
Continue reading “A hybrid war to replace Afghan ‘forever war’?”
The morning after a Russian-American summit is most critical to know whether the previous day’s bonhomie was real, surreal or unreal. Surveying the Geneva Summit (June 16) between presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin, I cautiously assessed the next day, “Does Biden have the political capital to press ahead with a project to create “stability and …
The first components of Turkey’s S-400 air defence missiles arrived from Russia in Ankara in July, 2019. (File Photo) Less than forty-eight hours separate the US President Joe Biden’s meeting with his Turkish counterpart Recep Erdogan in Brussels from his summit with Vladimir Putin at Geneva on June 16. In between falls the shadow of the …
Continue reading “US reclaims Turkey for the western alliance”
