The EU as Soviet lite: I’ve seen this movie before and it does not end well

After the Brexit and recent attacks against migrants in Britain I can’t get rid of the deja vu feeling. I’ve already watched this movie, a quarter century ago. I know how its ends.

In summer of 1989, the Lithuanian Sejm decided to withdraw from the Soviet Union and establish Lithuanian laws in the country. It was the beginning of the end for USSR — a giant corrupt monster, which for 70 years had bullied the world and its people under the pretense of communist ideology.

Intimidation and sanctions could not prevent the collapse. The fabricated artificial entity, thoroughly impregnated with falsehood and lies, fell apart like a house of cards.

U.S. General: We Have ‘Hugged’ the Russian Bear for Too Long

U.S. commander in Europe calls for more forces and equipment to deter ‘a revanchist Russia’

The commander of U.S. forces in Europe says the United States has accommodated Russia for too long amid aggressive military actions by Moscow and a shrinking U.S. footprint in the region.

U.S. Air Force Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, who is also NATO’s supreme allied commander in Europe, said that the United States had “hugged the bear” in Europe—a reference to Russia—after the fall of the Soviet Union in an attempt to promote cooperation with Moscow, the Department of Defense’s news service reported on Tuesday. Breedlove recently met with U.S. Marine Corps Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at the headquarters of U.S. European Command in Stuttgart, Germany.

Putin is turning the Syrian coast into another Crimea

 

For years, Russia has been helping Syrian despot Bashar al-Assad cling to a diminishing power structure in a shrinking territorial base without trying to impose an overall strategy.

Now, however, there are signs that Russia isn’t content to just support Assad. It wants to control Syria.

The Putin treatment is reserved for countries in Russia’s “near neighborhood” that try to break out of Moscow’s orbit and deprive it of strategic assets held for decades.

‘Europe’s fate is being determined in Ukraine’

Karel Schwarzenberg was Foreign Affairs Minister of the Czech Republic from 2007 to 2013. He was chancellor under Václav Havel in the 1990s, when he led the first delegation of the OSCE to Nagorno-Karabakh following the outbreak of war between Armenia and Azerbaijan. He now leads the conservative TOP 09 party and ran for the Czech president in 2013, losing to Miloš Zeman in the second round.

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How do you assess the current geopolitical situation in Europe?

Right now we are heading towards, or already have behind us, a great defeat. The ceasefire that the leading powers of the EU – Germany and France – negotiated in Minsk did not even hold for 24 hours. But this was clear right from the outset. Putin has succeeded in ridiculing the EU’s representatives, and Europe will have to decide if it still wants to take itself seriously.

The Galloping Militarization of Eurasia

Russia’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula and the deployment of up to 40,000 troops on Ukraine’s border to support the actions of pro-Russian separatist forces have been widely identified as a turning point in the “post-Cold War” European security system. But Russia’s militarized policy toward Ukraine should not be seen as a spontaneous response to the crisis. It has only been possible thanks to a long-term program by Moscow to build up its military capabilities.

A 21ST CENTURY RUSSIAN MILITARY

To be a “great power” – which is the status that Moscow’s political elite claim for Russia – is to have both an international reach and regional spheres of influence. To achieve this, Moscow understands that it must be able to project military force, so the modernization of Russia’s armed forces has become a key element of its “great power” ambitions. For this reason, seven years ago, a politically painful and expensive military modernization program was launched to provide Russia with new capabilities. One of the key aims of this modernization has been to move the Russian military away from a mass mobilization army designed to fight a large-scale war (presumably against NATO) to the creation of smaller and more mobile combat-ready forces designed for local and regional conflicts.

Russia Stations Advanced Missiles in Armenia

YEREVAN (RFE/RL)—Russia has deployed in Armenia state-of-the-art ballistic missiles capable of striking targets more than 400 kilometers away, according to a source in the Armenian Defense Ministry.

Speaking on the condition anonymity, the source told RFE/RL’s Armenian service (Azatutyun.am) over the weekend that several Iskander-M systems are currently stationed at undisclosed locations in the country. The source declined to clarify whether they were delivered to the Armenian armed forces or the Russian military base headquartered in Gyumri.