Epstein Secrets

Middle East Michael Weiss December 13, 2013 -- Russia is back. At least that's what they say— especially the Russians. 2013 marks the year that the Kremlin reasserted its power abroad in ways not seen since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and nowhere has this reassertion been more obvious than in the

also gain more leverage with the Kremlin as time goes on and as America's footprint disappears in the Middle East. When Netanyahu met with Putin in Sochi last May, he prevailed upon him not to deliver S- 300 missiles to Assad. At the time, Putin reportedly refused to comply, citing an outstanding cont

ag. A major question is whether Russia and the United States could make some kind of grand bargain "to exchange Syria for the Ukraine, whereby the Kremlin will abandon Assad in return for Washington and Brussels' abandoning their allies in Kiev, or vice versa," as Uraib al-Rintawi, a commentator at th

. No one is going to war over the Crimea, including the Ukraine. But there should be a political and economic price. Not going to the G-8 Summit in Sochi will not impress Putin. He will say he is protecting ethnic Russians and if President Obama and European leaders choose not to go, he will be defia

egative because of the risks posed by the conflict, affirming Russia's credit rated at BBB, the second-lowest investment grade. Russia's Reaction Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia was surprised by some of the names on today's list, and considers the use of sanctions unacceptable. It's not t

businessman Arkady Rotenberg, a former judo partner of Putin whose companies won more than $7 billion of contracts for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, and his brother, Boris, and Yuri Kovalchuk, a partner at Bank Rossiya, according to a list released by the Treasury Department. EFTA01479527 Ei

egative because of the risks posed by the conflict, affirming Russia's credit rated at BBB, the second-lowest investment grade. Russia's Reaction Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia was surprised by some of the names on today's list, and considers the use of sanctions unacceptable. It's not t

businessman Arkady Rotenberg, a former judo partner of Putin whose companies won more than $7 billion of contracts for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, and his EFTA01479536 brother, Boris, and Yuri Kovalchuk, a partner at Bank Rossiya, according to a list released by the Treasury Department. Ei

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

en muscled its tiny neighbor, eventually waging a war that ended with Russia taking control of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. In a recent Letter from Sochi, I tried to describe Putin's motivations: his resentment of Western triumphalism and American power, after 1991; his paranoia that Washington is so

iderable degree, the U.S. talks with Iran also allow Washington to deny the Russians an Iranian card, although the Syrian theater still allows the Kremlin some room to maneuver. The United States is not prepared to intervene in the former Soviet Union. Russia is not a global power, and its military ha

rity Service and Foreign Intelligence Service have been collecting files on Ukrainians for a long time. We would expect that after the Olympics in Sochi, the Russians could play their trump cards. On the other hand, even if the play fails, the United States will have demonstrated that it is back in