Staunton, December 11, 2015 Vladimir Putin’s increasingly frequent statements that he is prepared to use nuclear weapons in local conflicts not only contradicts the official military doctrine he signed a year ago and throws the world back to where it was at the time of the Cuban missile crisis but shows him to be either […]
Staunton, November 7 – Just as Vladimir Putin used the apartment bombings in Russian cities in 1999 to restart the Chechen war and bring himself to power, so too, again needing a war to keep his position, the Kremlin leader will exploit the terrorist plane bombing to expand Russia’s presence abroad and isolate Ukraine, according […]
Staunton, October 22 – Vladimir Putin has decided to listen to Russia’s hawks and intensify his confrontation with the West, a clear defeat for the so-called “peace party” in Moscow but quite possibly a good thing for Ukraine, according to Russian commentator Andrey Piontkovsky. By receiving Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, Putin indicated that he has […]
Staunton, June 7 – Fearful that a Russian victory in Ukraine would tempt Vladimir Putin to move against the Baltic countries whose defense would require the kind of military actions that NATO does not want to have to take, the Western powers have decided that they must stop Putin in Ukraine by non-military means, according […]
Staunton, May 23 – The West appears to have accepted the deal Vladimir Putin has been offering the last month, agreeing not to challenge Russia’s annexation of Crimea de facto in exchange for the Kremlin leader’s declaration that he will recognize the territorial integrity of the rest of Ukraine and not expand his campaign against […]
Staunton, April 16 – Vladimir Putin says his decision to sell S-300 air defense missiles to Iran will stabilize the situation in the Middle East, but an analysis by Andrey Piontkovsky strongly suggests that it will have exactly the opposite effect and drive up the price of oil and that that outcome is why Putin […]
Staunton, April 14 – Vladimir Putin believes that he can dominate the Baltic countries and destroy NATO not by a direct invasion which the Western alliance is prepared to counter but rather by threatening to use nuclear weapons against them and the Europeans, something that would lead the West not to come to their aid, […]
Staunton, February 12 In the 1930s, Hitler pursued a simple policy: he simply said one thing and did another. Putin has innovated: he not only lies but uses forces to do his bidding for which no one holds him responsible and thus has the chance to be accepted by some in the West as a […]
Staunton, February 7 – The meeting of Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande with Vladimir Putin in Moscow to discuss Ukraine without the presence of Ukrainian leaders has led many commentators to draw parallels with the 1938 Munich Conference at which Britain and France sold out Czechoslovakia to Hitler in the name of “peace in our […]
Staunton, December 20 – Twenty times during his press conference, Vladimir Putin said that he supports the territorial integrity of Ukraine, simultaneously the latest example of his dishonesty and duplicity, his efforts to win support from the West for a settlement in his favor, and his desire to exploit a pro-Moscow minority inside Ukraine to […]
