Epstein Secrets

lution as the latest form of American interventionism, and began a process of restricting Russian NGOs that was to reach a climax a decade later. Yanukovych eventually won the presidency in a 2010 comeback. but a second protest-driven revolution www.freedomhouse.org 23 EFTA00804747 BREAKING DOWN DEM

religious harmony, boast of government policies to ensure fair treatment for Russia's large Muslim population, and denounce those who brought down Yanukovych's government in Ukraine as fascists and pogromists. Yet when it comes to potential allies in Europe, it makes no difference to the Kremlin whether

case that countries like the United States have no right to lec- ture others on democracy, and that perhaps all elec- tions are equally flawed. The Kremlin's chief propagan- dist described the 2016 U.S. election as "so horribly noxious that it only engenders disgust towards what is still inexplicably c

a back seat to security concerns, or to policy conces- sions aimed at maintaining good relations with Russia. Prior to the saber rattling from the Kremlin, Estonia had an economy with one of Europe's higher rates of VNAvireedomhoustorg 49 EFTA00804773 BREAKING DOWN DEMOCRACY: Goals, Strategies, an

s, who wanted their country to be oriented toward the European Union. Putin finally brought Yanukovych around, but this sparked the Maidan revolt, Yanukovych's rapid exit, and Putin's need to shift strategies. For both Khrushchev and Putin, a competition in risk-taking offered a beguiling EFTA00662757

e relationship with Ukraine. EFTA00662755 In an April 17 interview, Putin declared, "We have reached a point beyond which we cannot retreat." The Kremlin's determination to stop the advance of Euro-Atlantic institutions was signaled in a smaller campaign against Georgia in 2008. Now Putin also implie

e English-language Kyiv Post published a classic in the genre when it reported how journalists arriving at the "inner sanctum" of the mansion where Yanukovych had lived in splendor discovered that he had been cohabiting not with his wife of four decades but, rather, with—and try not to faint—a younger wom

in Ukraine used different, but no less ominous, historical analogies. Some compared the arrival of Russian troops in Simferopol to the way that the Kremlin, in 2008, took advantage of Georgia's reckless bid to retake South Ossetia and then muscled its tiny neighbor, eventually waging a war that ended w

ers in the the East to spearhead such a move. The opening moves of this scenario may already be playing out, given the rising tension in Crimea and Yanukovych's flight. It is anybody's guess what the endgame might look like. Having watched and analysed the U.S. stance vis-à-vis Iran's alleged nuclear-weap

to humiliate even a powerful adversary. When George Shultz, President Ronald Reagan's secretary of state, asked Mr. Kennan how to approach the new Kremlin leader, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the former diplomat replied that the Soviets remained "in many respects insecure people and require reassurance in th