Russia

Finland-Russia-border

Finland’s Eastern Frontier Pays The Price: Border Closure, Austerity, And The Quiet Erosion Of The Nordic Model

For more than two and a half years, silence has reigned along Finland’s roughly 1,340-kilometer eastern border — once one of Europe’s busiest overland trade corridors. Cafes that once welcomed Russian day-trippers now stand shuttered. Hotel occupancy reports in South Karelia show levels not seen since the Soviet Union collapsed. […]

Ukraine-Yermak-corruption

Yermak Named As Suspect: Political Shockwaves In Kyiv

Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies on Monday named a former top presidential aide, widely identified as Andriy Yermak, as a suspect in a high-profile corruption investigation, a development that could intensify political tensions in Kyiv at a sensitive moment in the country’s war with Russia. The agencies said the individual under suspicion […]

Lavrov-Russia-India-Iran

Interpreting Lavrov’s Proposal That India Mediate Between Iran & The Gulf Kingdoms

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov proposed during a Q&A session after the BRICS Foreign Ministers’ meeting in India that his host nation become the long-term mediator between Iran and the Gulf Kingdoms. The context concerned him being asked about the de facto state of armed conflict between two of the group’s members, Iran and the UAE, […]

Iran-war-US-bases-damage

Epic Interruptus: The Iranian Snare And American Defeat

On May 10, Robert Kagan, the high priest of neoconservative thought, the bell ringer for muscular interventionism and general American meddlesomeness, lamented in The Atlantic that the United States had suffered a unique defeat in its efforts to subjugate Iran.  The article says much about Kagan’s own identification with the […]