

Both America and Russia have turned from the Yalta legacy of the “areas of influence” and interference in domestic affairs of other states to noninterference even in the case of mass slaughter.

The West and the United States should revisit their policy toward Russia and attempt to find an approach that goes beyond cynical deal-making and false friendship.

Syria is the stark example that demonstrates how the Western community, including the states that declare themselves to be the defenders of the normative values, attempt to find the way to forget about their self-proclaimed mission.

Sergey Sobyanin scored only a relative victory in the Moscow mayoral election. Alexey Navalny was the real winner: he established himself as an opposition politician of national scale.

Syria is the last test when the liberal community of states can demonstrate whether as a civilization it is still capable of overcoming lethargy and defending the principles it has been declaring as its mission.

Instead of reforming the old world order, the global powers are busy establishing new institutions with unclear powers that no one really knows how to use.

Kremlin’s current actions toward Ukraine indicate that the Kremlin is ready for a rough policy of coercion and intimidation in the post-Soviet space. Moreover, the Kremlin is ready to force Ukraine to either agree or pay a high price for resisting.

The August revolution put an end to the Soviet Union, but nowadays the Kremlin sees the Soviet Union’s collapse as a disaster and looks back to the Soviet past in an attempt to build continuity. This explains why August 1991 in Russia is an unwanted anniversary that no one wants to remember.

Viktor Yanukovych will try to balance between Moscow and the European Union. Continued hesitation would mean unavoidable crisis in Ukraine’s obsolete economy. Such crisis would be Ukraine’s moment of truth: either go begging to Moscow or start carrying out the painful reforms.

How realistic are the plans to build the Eurasian Union? Countries unite in order to pursue common aims, and Moscow will come to the point when it has to use the stick and carrot approach to persuade its partners to stay under the common roof.