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

and Methods of Modern Authoritarians 7. Military invasions: Russian forces poured into Georgia through its two breakaway territories, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, during a brief con- flict in 2008. In 2014, Russian troops occupied Crimea, oversaw a stage-managed referendum on annexation there, and unofficial

o the verge of military confrontation. The pro-Russia region of Crimea is seething, and the new central government that took over in Kiev after Mr. Yanukovych fled is barely functioning. President Obama, speaking at the White House, was right to warn Russia against any military move and to indicate that

de by that promise is unclear. In 2008, he sent Russian forces into neighboring Georgia, ostensibly to protect the secessionist Georgian enclave of South Ossetia; the real goal was to weaken the pro-Western government in Tbilisi. Russia and the West both have legitimate interests in Ukraine and its future.

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

in Putin's equation the military risks would be EFTA00684330 negligible. Nothing happened in 2008 when Russia sent its military into Georgia and South Ossetia. In fact Georgia-South Ossetia 2008 might serve—with some modifications-as a blueprint. The main risks would be economic sanctions imposed by the W

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

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 with Russia taking control of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. In a recent Lette