Cold War Era
How the Ex-Chancellor Gerhard Schröder Became Putin’s Man in Germany
But it was more than that, Mr. Schröder said. “I had been chancellor. I couldn’t go back to being a lawyer dealing with rental contracts. I needed a project,” he said. “Something I knew how to do and where I could serve German interests.” When Mr. Putin called Mr. Schröder on his cellphone the night […]
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U.S. and Ukrainian Groups Pierce Putin’s Propaganda Bubble
WASHINGTON — Using a mix of high-tech and Cold War tactics, Ukrainian activists and Western institutions have begun to pierce the propaganda bubble in Russia, circulating information about the Ukraine war among Russian citizens to sow doubt about the Kremlin’s accounts. The efforts come at a particularly urgent moment: Moscow appears to be preparing for […]
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Would Putin Strike NATO Supply Lines to Ukraine? History Suggests No.
“The Americans were not willing to escalate militarily,” said Husain Haqqani, a Pakistani ambassador to Washington during the Obama administration. Even when President Barack Obama ordered a raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in 2011, Mr. Haqqani added, “a big concern was, what if Pakistan retaliates and this becomes some kind of […]
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For a Ukrainian Poet, Putin’s War Is All Too Familiar
LVIV, Ukraine — At 83, no longer a young poet, Ihor Kalynets knows something of life under Russia’s thumb. Having spent nine years in the Soviet Gulag, including hard labor cutting stone, he secretly wrote on cigarette papers what are regarded as some of his best verses. They were crumpled into tiny balls and smuggled […]
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On Ukraine’s Border, Moldovans Wonder: Where Will Putin Stop?
ON THE DNIESTER RIVER — Just eight miles from the Ukrainian border, the mayor of a village in Moldova watched rolling television coverage of the Russian invasion next door. He fiddled with a pen, removing and replacing its lid, staring at the screen as it showed the Russian advance toward Odessa, the nearest big city […]
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Biden Targets Russia With Strategy of Containment, Updated for a New Era
Mr. Biden emerged from the meeting offering some professional respect for Mr. Putin as an adversary. For his part, Mr. Putin said, “There has been no hostility.” At one point, Mr. Biden asked the Russian leader how he would feel if Russia’s gas pipelines were attacked from afar — a comment that some interpreted as […]
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Beyond Ukraine, Putin Eyes What He Calls America’s ‘Empire of Lies’
PARIS — President Vladimir V. Putin has ordered Russian troops into Ukraine but made clear his true target goes beyond his neighbor to America’s “empire of lies,” and he threatened “consequences you have never faced in your history” for “anyone who tries to interfere with us.” In another rambling speech full of festering historical grievances […]
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Beyond Ukraine, the Target Is What Putin Calls America’s ‘Empire of Lies’
PARIS — President Vladimir V. Putin has ordered Russian troops into Ukraine but made clear his true target goes beyond his neighbor to America’s “empire of lies,” and he threatened “consequences you have never faced in your history” for “anyone who tries to interfere with us.” In another rambling speech full of festering historical grievances […]
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The Limits of a Europe Whole and Free
PARIS — For the prime minister of Lithuania — and Lithuania knows something of life in Moscow’s imperium — President Vladimir V. Putin’s rambling dismissal of Ukrainian statehood, used to justify sending Russian troops into the eastern part of that state, “put Kafka and Orwell to shame.” There were “no lows too low, no lies […]
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