Heading into the new year, tensions between Moscow and Washington show no sign of abating, a U.S.-based private intelligence and analytical company Stratfor wrote in its report.
A threat prevails of a significant escalation in Donbass, according to a Ukrainian political scientist Volodymyr Fesenko, who believes that the trend is stable, Glavred reports.
Putin's decision to go on an offensive against Ukraine and launch a military campaign in Syria was based on the assertion that he would see no symmetrical military response, ex-CIA director (2013-2017) John Brennan said in an interview with PBS Frontline, Voice of America reports.
Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has based his political and business career on bonding with people he sees as fellow alpha males. The most enduring of the former German chancellor’s buddies is Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to The Times.
In two articles published online this week, Moscow analyst Aleksandr Nemets details the evidence many have assembled showing that Moscow is heavily involved in both the rocket program of North Korea and Pyongyang’s “aggressive plans” to use it against other countries, Euromaidan Press reports.
Russian political scientist and journalist Andrey Piontkovsky in an interview with the Ukrainian news portal Apostrophe has said that a significant part of Russia's political elite would agree that the Russian forces withdraw from Donbas only if the world community turns a blind eye to the Crimea occupation.
Russian intervention in Ukraine has led to the unification of the Ukrainian society, U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine negotiations Kurt Volker told Deutsche Welle.
The late July announcement by the Kremlin proxies of the foundation of “Malorossiya,” seen as a bizarre attempt to replace Ukraine with a “Little Russian” vassal state, was one more indication of how hopelessly out of touch Russian policymakers are with Ukrainian public opinion, Peter Dickinson wrote in an article titled “Putin Still in Denial over the Loss of Ukraine,” which first appeared on the Atlantic Council website.
On June 5, Montenegro officially joined NATO. On June 6, the Ukrainian parliament agreed to consider the need for legislative consolidation of Ukraine's path toward the Alliance during the current session. But this, in itself, is unlikely to help Ukraine become the Bloc’s 30th member.