A US Navy destroyer crosses the Bosphorus to enter the Black Sea, as tensions simmer around Ukraine. (File photo) Being a “swing state” may have tactical advantages but when life gets tough and the tough gets going, there could be consequences. Turkey once faced such a moment of truth a hundred years ago. It faces a similar predicament …
US shows the exit ramp to Russia
US president Joe Biden speaks on the phone to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, Delaware, Dec. 30, 2021 Getting off your high horse is never easy and it remains to be seen how deftly Moscow navigates its path in the downstream of President Vladimir Putin’s 50-minute phone conversation Thursday with his American counterpart Joe Biden. …
Spectre of war is haunting Europe
A fateful week is ending today for international security with the Russian Foreign Ministry releasing the two documents on security guarantees that Moscow had proposed to Washington as the basis for discussions to ease the tensions over NATO’s eastward expansion and to cease the alliance’s deployments close to Russia’s borders, including in Ukraine. Out of …
Russia-China alliance at the tipping point
Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) and Chinese President Xi Jinping after their talks, Kremlin, Moscow, June 5, 2019. The initiative by Beijing to propose a virtual meeting between President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday radically transforms the geopolitics of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s relentless eastward expansion and the Western military …
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Biden White House spoofs the Kremlin
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 …
Biden-Putin meeting is a cliffhanger
US President Biden dismisses Russia’s red lines on Ukraine What has unfolded in the past 24 hours in the US-Russia diplomatic tango can be seen as a foreplay of the meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Joe Biden, which is slated for Tuesday evening. Russia has got what it has been keenly …
Sino-Russian collusion over Taiwan, Ukraine seems improbable but isn’t
US has whipped up war hysteria over satellite image of Russian military camp in Yelnya, over 500 kms from Ukraine border, to allege Moscow’s invasion plans and to justify NATO involvement The “feel-good” from Tuesday’s virtual meeting between President Joe Biden and President Xi Jinping leaps out of the US-Russian summit in Geneva in June. Biden’s …
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Ukraine, Belarus in the eye of the storm
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 …
Biden gets predictability in Russia ties
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 …
Takeaways from Biden-Putin summit
Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, and US President Joe Biden shake hands before their summit in Geneva, June 16, 2021 On the diplomatic stage, there is nothing to beat Russian-American summits in sheer theatrics. When the leaders of the two most powerful nuclear powers on earth sit face to face, anything can happen. What happened in …