Russia

Photo: Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Source: Wikimedia Commons

The Navalny Case: Why Hasn't Germany Sent Samples of the Tests to WHO?

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN) – I begin this column with a declaration that shows my bias: if President Vladimir Putin wanted Alexei Navalny dead, he would be dead. Army sharp-shooters do not miss a sitting target. A bullet in the head would leave an imprint hard to trace, and that would be that. Novichok, a poison, creates a multitude of problems, as we have seen.

Nevertheless, let’s assume the Kremlin was guilty of poisoning Navalny with Novichok. If the authorities had kept him at home nobody would know what had nearly killed him. Then Russia would have been free to invent any cock and bull story, even though they knew it had been Novichok.

: Jonathan Power; OPINION; 22 September 2020

Photo credit: Deutsche Welle: P. Lorgerie

Besides Mali, Russia Keenly Interest in 5-Nation Sahel Group

Viewpoint on By Kester Kenn Klomegah*

MOSCOW (IDN) – Russia’s alleged involvement in the political change on August 18 in Mali, a former French colony with the fractured economy and breeding field for armed Islamic jihadist groups (some of which are reportedly aligned with Al Qaeda and ISIS), demonstrates the first drastic step towards penetrating into the G5 Sahel in West Africa. The G5 Sahel are Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger.

Despite this widely published allegation, Moscow officially said it was seriously concerned about the developments in Bamako and further urged “all Malian public and political forces to settle the situation peacefully at the negotiating table”.

: Kester Kenn Klomegah; THE WORLD; Russia; 21 September 2020

Photo: U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson meets with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, in Manila, Philippines on August 6, 2017. (Photo credit: U.S. Department of State/Public Domain)

U.S. Shifts Arms Control Strategy with Russia

By Kingston Reif and Shannon Bugos

While Kingston Reif is the director for disarmament and threat reduction policy, Shannon Bugos is research assistant at the Arms Control Association.

WASHINGTON, D.C. (IDN) – The Trump administration has softened its demand that China immediately participate in trilateral nuclear arms control talks with the United States and Russia and says it is now seeking an interim step of a politically binding framework with Moscow.

But the administration continues to reject Russia’s offer of a clean five-year extension of the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) and has said that President Trump will not consider an extension until several conditions are met.

: Arms Control Association; ARMAMENTS; Nuclear Weapons; 17 September 2020

Photo: Russian dissident politician Alexei Navalny landed at Berlin Tegel airport after being airlifted from a hospital in Omsk, Russia. He is being treated for suspected poisoning at Berlin's Charite hospital. Source: Deutsche Welle.

The Mystery of The Poisoning of Alexei Navalny

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN) – Take the strange case of Alexei Navalny, the Russian dissident, who many think nearly died from a poisoning ordered by the Kremlin.

After sifting through the conflicting evidence, I was suddenly struck by a couple of sentences in a novel I’m reading right now, “The End of the Affair”, written by Graham Greene, widely considered to be one of the great writers of twentieth-century English literature.

“Does truth lie at some point in the pendulum’s swing, at a point where it never rests, not in the dull perpendicular mean where it dangles in the end like a windless flag, but at an angle, nearer one extreme than another? If only a miracle could stop the pendulum at an angle of sixty degrees, one could believe the truth is there.”

: Jonathan Power; OPINION; 15 September 2020

Photo: Bhikkhuh Sanghasena, a leading Buddhist monk based in the state capital Leh, led a procession of local spiritual leaders across the town centre. The spiritual leaders included not only Buddhists, but also Muslims, Hindus, Christians and Sikhs.

Ladakh Buddhist Monk Leads A Campaign for Peaceful Resolution of Border Conflict

By Kalinga Seneviratne

This article is the 43rd in a series of joint productions of Lotus News Features and IDN-InDepthNews, flagship agency of the Non-profit International Press Syndicate. Click here for previous reports.

SINGAPORE (IDN) – When India's Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar and his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi met on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation foreign ministers' meeting in Moscow on September 10, Wang noted that it was "normal for India and China to have differences as two neighbouring major countries".

: Kalinga Seneviratne; THE WORLD; Asia-Pacific; 12 September 2020

Photo: The Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny marches on Tverskaya street on 26 March 2017. CC BY-SA 4.0

Reactions to Navalny's Poisoning Aren't Much Ado About Nothing

By Kester Kenn Klomegah

MOSCOW (IDN) – Despite Western and European countries and many reputable international organizations calling for objective investigations that will inevitably establish facts about the alleged "poisoning" of the opposition leader Alexei Navalny, Russian officials have categorically turned down and confidently played against such suggestions.

He is a Russian opposition politician and anti-corruption activist. He came to international prominence by organizing demonstrations and running for political office, to advocate reforms against corruption in Russia, President Vladimir Putin, and Putin's government.

: Kester Kenn Klomegah; THE WORLD; Russia; 07 September 2020

Photo: Protest rally against President Lukashenko, 16 August. Minsk, Belarus. CC BY-SA 3.0

Nonviolent Protests in Belarus Have More Chance Than Any Violent Activities

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN) – There have never been such massive crowds of anti-government protestors in the countries of the ex-Soviet Union as there are this week. In Minsk, the capital of Belarus and in other major cities they stretch as far as the television cameras can see. Not even the protestors in Ukraine seven years ago had numbers like these.

Moreover, they have a legitimate figurehead in Svetlana Tikanovskaya, unlike in Ukraine or unlike during the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, (albeit she had to flee to Lithuania for the sake of her children).

: Jonathan Power; OPINION; 18 August 2020

Photo: Russian President Vladimir Putin and Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong prepare for a group photo with ASEAN leaders at the ASEAN-Russia Summit in Singapore, 14 November 2018. Source: ASEAN

Russian Influence in Southeast Asia Will Struggle to Be More Than Marginal

Viewpoint by Joshua Bernard B Espeña, UP Diliman *

DILIMAN, Quezon City, Philippines (IDN) – The Russian people have voted in favour of constitutional reforms that give President Vladimir Putin the potential to stay in power until 2036 through a landslide victory in a national referendum on 2 July 2020. While critics complain about voting irregularities, the changes mean that Putin could become Russia’s longest-serving ruler since Peter the Great.

: Kalinga Seneviratne; OPINION; 17 August 2020

Never-Ending Russia-US-Africa Geopolitical Triangular Games

By Kester Kenn Klomegah

MOSCOW (IDN) – Instead of concentrating on developing its newly-established strategy for Africa, Russia has locked horns with United States over its funding for educational programmes, media and NGOs.

Russia has also accused foreign players of adopting neocolonial tendencies and approaches in dealing with Africa, according to analytical reviews and observations by diplomats, policy experts and researchers.

: Kester Kenn Klomegah; THE WORLD; Russia; 13 August 2020

Map: Soviet Invasion of Manchuria (1945), based on Glantz's maps in Levenworth Paper No 7 - Feb 1983. CC BY-SA 3.0

Soviet Advance Not U.S. Atomic Bombings Forced Japan To Surrender

Viewpoint by Jonathan Power*

LUND, Sweden (IDN) – Seventy-five years ago the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima on August 6 and on Nagasaki on August 9 was premeditated mass murder.

President Harry Truman had a workable alternative to using the atom bomb – to cooperate with Stalin, as Roosevelt and Churchill had done on the Western front, in the Soviet advance on Japan, rather than making it a race for control.

Indeed, it was the Soviet advance that convinced Japan to surrender.** Although unaware of each other’s thinking both Truman and the Japanese leadership shared a common cause – they both wanted to pre-empt the possibility of the Soviet Union occupying parts of Japan before the U.S. had got its boots on Japanese ground. Truman did not want to be compelled to concede Soviet participation in the government of post-surrender, occupied, Japan.