The United States’ newly released national security strategy calls for restrained use of the American military in the Middle East.
Instead, it prioritizes “out-competing China and constraining Russia” while criticizing the expanded missions of U.S. wars in recent decades.
How the Country Can Take Back All Its Territory
or too long, the global democratic coalition supporting Kyiv has focused on what it should not do in the invasion of Ukraine. Its main aims include not letting Ukraine lose and not letting Russian President Vladimir Putin win—but also not allowing the war to escalate to a point where Russia attacks a NATO country or conducts a nuclear strike. These, however, are less goals than vague intentions, and they reflect the West’s deep confusion about how the conflict should end. More than seven months into the war, the United States and Europe still lack a positive vision for Ukraine’s future.
For Europe, Ukraine is the good war — a moment when brave Ukrainian patriots have partially rolled back a brutal Russian invasion and, in the process, reignited belief in the values of democracy and common defense.
As Ukrainian troops surged forward on the ground this week, European leaders who gathered at a conference here were heady with what many described as an impending Ukrainian triumph over Russian President Vladimir Putin and the lawless, autocratic system he represents.
Seven and a half months after it began, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine has not gone as the Kremlin had hoped. The Ukrainian military has resisted with skill and tenacity, in recent weeks clawing back territory in the country’s south and east. As the Russian invasion falters, concern has arisen that Putin might turn to nuclear weapons.
Cracks have emerged in their marriage of convenience, but the two autocrats are in it for the long haul.
Anyone who has been in a relationship knows there are good days and not so good days. While trust and respect are the bedrock of healthy partnerships, transactional and even toxic relationships have proven, time and again, to be just as durable. Sometimes more so. That is why Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s marriage of convenience will endure, not despite Russia’s recent battlefield setbacks, but because of them.
Acceptance of MIR bank cards would have eased Russian tourists’ payments inside Egyptian hotels and resorts.
Egypt has shelved plans to apply the Russian MIR payment card system in its resorts and hotels amid worries of possible US sanctions, according to a source at Egypt’s largest state-owned bank.
The war in Ukraine provides us with yet another opportunity to consider what might be done about the wars that continue to ravage the world.
The current Russian war of aggression is particularly horrific, featuring a massive military invasion of a smaller, weaker nation, threats of nuclear war, widespread war crimes, and imperial annexation. But, alas, this terrible war is but one small part of a history of violent conflict that has characterized thousands of years of human existence.
Iran is working on a major project to link its national grid with Russia and other members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization through a transmission line in the east of the Caspian Sea, an official said.
In an interview with IRNA, the Iranian energy minister’s adviser in international affairs said efforts are underway to connect the country’s national grid to Russia and other SCO member states through a transmission line passing through Turkmenistan.
It has been the longstanding policy of the Moscow Patriarchate that the borders of what it calls its canonical territory are independent of any changes in the political borders within that space. As a result, it did not move to absorb Russian Orthodox churches in Abkhazia and South Ossetia after 2008 or in Ukraine’s Crimea after 2014.
Russia retaliated Monday for an attack on a critical bridge by unleashing its most widespread strikes against Ukraine in months, a lethal barrage that smashed civilian targets, knocked out power and water, shattered buildings and killed at least 14 people.