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The Sino-Russian gas deal emphasizes and accelerates the fading of Russia’s until-now special relationship with the EU. The partnership between Russia and China is acquiring truly strategic depth.
Russia should not treat the post-2014 situation in Afghanistan as a potential disaster for its security in the south. Nevertheless, the coalition withdrawal from Afghanistan will force Russia to take more responsibility for regional security.
Vladimir Putin’s first visit outside the former Soviet Union since the beginning of the Ukraine crisis is to China. The vector of Russian foreign policy has changed dramatically, and Russia has been seeking ways to strengthen ties with leading non-Western powers.
Germany is Europe’s sole emerging power, and potentially a power in Eurasia, and Ukraine is a good place to start working toward its new role. For starters, Germany needs to stop thinking of Ukraine as a U.S.-Russian issue, and assume responsibility there on behalf of the EU as a whole.
Since the 1990s, warnings from Russian liberals that Western pressure would push Russia toward China have failed to materialize. Now, however, faced with U.S.-led geopolitical pressure in Eastern Europe and East Asia, Russia and China are likely to cooperate more closely.
The quarterly journal Pro et Contra, published by the Carnegie Moscow Center, is being retooled as a web-based online publication, which the Center plans to roll out later in 2014.
Russia certainly pursues its interests in Ukraine, as does the United States, but the actual forces engaged there are the locals. The victorious Maidan has proven both unwilling and powerless to bridge or stitch together the fault lines which have emerged.
After the May 25 poll, a new president of Ukraine will hardly inaugurate stability. One can only hope that Ukraine decides its future before it turns into a burnt-out case.
After the end of the Cold War, the West neglected the task of solving the “Russia problem” through integration. Trying to solve it now through economic warfare is not going to work.
The current situation in Ukraine has intensified the long-simmering debate in Finland about joining NATO.
