The national security argument in the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump was a big dud. While the House managers made the case that the United States should arm Ukraine, they didn’t follow up the point because it was weak. The president’s defenders noted, accurately, that Trump’s Ukraine policy was more militaristic than President Obama’s....
Category: Russia
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FSB Blocks ProtonMail After a Wave of Bomb Threats
If you’re not familiar with it, ProtonMail is a free encrypted email service, meaning if third parties intercept your email they can’t read it. Now the FSB, Russia’s equivalent of the FBI, has banned it. The recent bomb scares are big news in Russia. So is the government’s effort to ban a private communication channel...
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Impeachment Primer: How Does the U.S. Support the Ukraine Military?
With President Trump’s impeachment trial focuses on the U.S. military assistance to Ukraine, the details of U.S. support are key to understanding the debate in the Senate. The Washington-based Security Assistance Monitor explains what the aid does–and does not–do. U.S. support has grown rapidly since 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea, the easternmost part of the Ukraine. After...
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Let’s Compare U.S and Russian Conspiracy Theories
Meduza, the independent Russian news site, has an interesting podcast, Naked Pravda, comparing the conspiracy theories that circulate in each country. They’re talking about each other again in Moscow and Washington, often spinning stories that aren’t exactly rooted in facts. Whether it’s Russiagate in the United States or color revolution in Russia and countries across...
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Turkish and Syrian Spymasters Meet in Moscow
One of the realities of the 21st century is that spies have replaced diplomats as leading geopolitical players. A case in point comes from Al-Monitor, a reliable Mideast news site. Under Russian mediation, the Turkish and Syrian intelligence chiefs met face to face in what was the first high-level Turkish-Syrian encounter since 2011, when Turkey’s...