Early last week, Russia concluded Vostok-2018, its largest military exercise since the fall of the Soviet Union. It wasn’t just their size, however, that made the recent war games so groundbreaking. For the first time in history, 3,200 Chinese troops trained alongside some 300,000 Russians in eastern Siberia.
Beijing and Moscow have enhanced their cooperation in recent years, both bilaterally and on multilateral platforms, in what some observers have suggested is a united effort to change the global order now dominated by the West.
File picture showing Russian President Vladimir Putin with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi
There is little indication that Putin views India in sentimental terms, unlike an earlier generation of Russian officials exemplified by former Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov or the late Russian envoy Alexander Kadakin. India’s high-profile and sustained outreach to Moscow in 2018 is not a reversion to an imagined past.
The death of Nicholas II and the Romanov family remains a controversial moment in Russia’s history. Tsarism and Bolshevism are — for the most part — not presented as conflicting forces in a battle in which one order defeated another. Rather, tsars, Bolsheviks and later communists, are seen as a succession of “greats.” In Moscow, visitors can admire the glamour and grandeur of the tsars at the Historical Museum in the Red Square before lining up for the Lenin Mausoleum only a few steps away.
Television grab of the meeting in Helsinki between U.S. President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.
US President Donald Trump has defended Russia over claims of interference in the 2016 presidential election. After a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump contradicted US intelligence agencies and said there had been no reason for Russia to meddle in the vote. Putin reiterated that Russia had never interfered in US affairs.
Also Read – Trump-Putin Summit: US Seeks Better Ties With Russia
President Donald Trump’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin has all the makings of a political disaster. Millions of Americans believe Putin has some sinister influence over Trump. The Justice Department just indicted a dozen Russian military hackers for meddling in the 2016 election. Commentators and congressmen are demanding that Trump cancel Monday’s sit-down. And yet the howls of outrage seem to have made Trump only dig in deeper.
Also Read: What To Expect From The Helsinki Summit
On Monday, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin will meet in Helsinki. Among the Russian foreign policy elite, there is a sense of cautious optimism about the summit. Despite a clear understanding of the current obstacle to improved relations between Washington and Moscow, many believe that the two presidents can find a way to begin easing tensions.
The degree of Putin’s genuine popularity is unknowable. His reelection earlier this year was more a display of apathy than ardor. All polling and electoral data in Russia are suspect, but Putin clearly dominates the political culture. He has delivered the stability that many Russians craved before his presidency, although, as Dugin realized in 2012, stability is boring.
Given the tense state of U.S.-Russian relations and the paucity of high-level contacts, there are strong arguments for Trump to hold a summit with Putin. However fractured the relationship, it makes sense for the world’s two nuclear superpowers to sit down together and re-establish some of the channels of communication that were cut off after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and war in southeastern Ukraine.
