The message to Moscow at this point — with de-escalation and detente entirely missing from public discourse — is that they’re going to get squeezed harder and harder until they attack NATO itself.
Given the duplicitous history of the Minsk Accords, it is unlikely Russia can be diplomatically dissuaded from its military offensive. As such, 2023 appears to be shaping up as a year of continued violent confrontation.
The U.K. anticipated a “serious confrontation between Russia and Ukraine” as far back as 1992, declassified files show, Phil Miller reports. One senior official even questioned whether Ukraine was “a real country.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered a major address on the war in Ukraine, which changes its nature dramatically. As a service, CN provides here the English text of the speech.
With no hope of a ceasefire soon, Turkey has turned to the more limited goal of ensuring that grain supplies can be shipped out from the Black Sea through the Bosphorus.
The formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the rearmament of Germany confirmed that for the United States, the war in Europe was not entirely over. It still isn’t.
Riva Enteen reports on a recent citizens’ delegation to Russia and the chance to consider the country and its recent turbulent history from the vantage point of people living there.
They actually held a Russian-American summit in Helsinki on Monday to talk about life and death issues, though you wouldn’t know it from the corporate media. Alexander Mercouris explores some of those other issues.