Epstein Secrets

country, and that some in his government had sound liberalising, pro-Western instincts. Those hopes were dashed by Mr Putin's swatting aside of Mr Medvedev last September to allow his own return to the Kremlin, the rigging of elections, his crackdown on Moscow's protesters and his new Nyet posture. Th

ing democracy; only transparent, efficient, honest government. They want a leader who can make the sclerotic system function better. Yet, much like the Soviet Union in its final years when power passed from one old man to another—Brezhnev to Andropov to Chernenko—in quick succession, the Saudi royal family con

s particularly vulnerable to upheaval from both within and without, especially if the Taliban were to prevail in Afghanistan. On June 14, President Medvedev, speaking in Tashkent, made clear that these revolutions concern Russia and its Central Asian partners. Indeed, by April it was clear to Moscow tha

y over ideology. Hard-liners, led by Khamenei, believed that compromising on revolutionary ideals could unravel the system, just as perestroika did the Soviet Union. Given the youthful Iranian public's desire for change, Khamenei seemed to have lost the war of ideas by the early 2000s. No one anticipated that

and small ways — over the years. Obama took office with a different Russian as president, Dmitry Medvedev, Putin's choice to succeed him in 2008. Medvedev, like Obama, was a lawyer by training, and also like Obama he did not believe the Cold War rivalry between the two countries should define today's

ir Putin, the Russian President and autocrat, had a plan for the winter of 2014: to reassert his country's power a generation after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He thought that he would achieve this by building an Olympic wonderland on the Black Sea for fifty-one billion dollars and putting on a dazzling t

. This leaves the option of some kind of intervention. Over the last couple of days Russia has indeed warmed up to do exactly this. Prime Minister Medvedev said on February 24 that he doubted the legitimacy of Ukraine's new authorities and that those now in power had conducted an "armed mutiny." The We

kraine from turning towards the West. EFTA00684328 For those in doubt, suffice to recall President Putin's statement in 2006 that the collapse of the Soviet Union was "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe" of the twentieth century. Ukraine firmly anchored in the Western system, on its way towards membership

m being kindly disposed toward President Dmitry Medvedev during a security conference in Seoul. During a conversation that was caught on a hot mic, Medvedev promised to deliver Obama's kind words and intentions to Putin, the man who effectively pulls the strings at Gazprom and its media subsidiaries. B

diplomacy fail to stop Iran. This is perhaps even more delusional than dreaming about Iran benignly pursuing "atoms for peace." Deterrence against the Soviet Union worked precariously and unnervingly at times, with some very narrow escapes from catastrophe, only because of a confluence of calculations between