Tag: Russia

The Andes

Venezuela drops petro-dollar: how meaningful?

Venezuela, under growing pressure from US sanctions, has told oil traders that it is dropping petro-dollars for petro-euros and petro-yuans. Despite the instinct to cheer the decline of US world domination, will this make any real difference—either to Venezuela, still dependent on oil exports in a world of depressed prices, or to Planet Earth, facing biosphere collapse as a result of burning hydrocarbons?

Europe

Moscow stonewalls on fate of Holocaust hero

A Moscow district court rejected a lawsuit by relatives of Raoul Wallenberg, seeking to access uncensored documents concerning his death in Soviet captivity. Wallenberg was a Swedish diplomat who rescued thousands of Hungarian Jews during World War II. Soviet forces detained Wallenberg in 1945, supposedly for espionage. He was reported to have died two years later in Moscow's notorious Lubyanka Prison.

Syria

Syria: Russia denies bombing Kurdish forces

With Russian-backed Assad regime forces advancing on the ISIS-held city of Deir ez-Zor from the west and Kurdish forces advancing from the east, a breaking point appears to be approaching in the Kurds’ own tactical alliance with Moscow. Now, with reports that Russian warplanes bombed Kurdish positions outside the city, this breaking point may have arrived. And US advisors are embedded in the Kurdish units, holding the risk of escalation to a global conflict.

East Asia

Hokkaido: flashpoint for world war?

Japan's northernmost main island of Hokkaido seems, unfortunately, poised to jump into the headlines as East Asia's next flashpoint for Great Power confrontation. When North Korea fired a missile over the island last month, it was during unprecedented joint US-Japan military exercises on Hokkaido. Now Russia is conducting its own exercises in the Kuril Islands immediately to the north—including territory that Japan has claimed since the end of World War II.

Syria

Syria: Rojava flashpoint for Russo-Turkish war?

Days after again vowing that Ankara will not tolerate a Kurdish state in Syria, Turkey beefed up artillery and tanks along the border, signaling an imminent offensive to take the Kurdish-held enclave of Afrin. This could be the start of a wider Turkish offensive—reportedly to be dubbed “Euphrates Sword”—to reduce or expunge the Kuridsh autonomous zone of Rojava and establish a Turkish “buffer zone” in Syria’s north. Ominously, Russia has meanwhile mobilized troops to Afrin, to back up the Kurdish militia that controls the enclave.

Iraq

Carnage in anti-ISIS campaign jumps under Trump

Civilian casualties from the US-led war against ISIS are set to double under President Trump, according to the AirWars website that has been monitoring the toll of the conflict. At least 2,300 civilians were killed in Coalition strikes overseen by the Obama White House in Iraq and Syria. As of July, more than 2,200 additional civilians appear to have been killed in Coalition raids since Trump was inaugurated.

Syria

Syria: will peace plan mean world war?

Russia announced that it is sending forces to police the “de-escalation zones” in Syria—which could provide a spark for massive escalation.

Europe

Ukraine says Russia behind global cyber-attack

The Security Service of Ukraine stated that the hackers behind the recent global cyber-attack are the same Kremlin-backed outfit that conducted an attack on Ukraine's power grid in December.

Iraq

Syria: will fall of Raqqa widen war?

With the Syrian Kurds now facing open war from both Turkey and the Assad regime, the imminent taking of Raqqa portends a multi-sided scramble for former ISIS territory.

Syria

Syria slides closer to Arab-Kurdish ethnic war

Clashes broke out between Syrian rebel factions and Kurdish fighters in Aleppo province, as Arabs and Kurds are further pitted against each other by Great Power manipulation.