In March of 1969, Chinese troops ambushed and killed a Soviet border patrol on an island near the Chinese-Russian border. Fighting on and near the island lasted for months and ended with hundreds of casualties. Fifty years later, the ferocity of the skirmish between Mao Zedong’s China and Leonid Brezhnev’s Soviet Union seems to belong […]
There was once an uninhabited islet lying close to the Chinese side of the Ussuri River, which marks the border between Russia and China in the Far East. “Was,” because it has since attached itself to the Chinese bank in a defiant act of geographic irony. But during the turbulent spring of 1969 this little […]
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. Read Here – Foreign Policy
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. Read Here – South China Morning Post
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. Read Here – The Hindustan Times
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, […]
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. Read Here […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
