Here's an update from RFE/RL's news desk:
Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said today that Moscow will take counter measures if Washington imposes new sanctions on Russia over the Ukraine crisis.
On December 11, the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives unanimously passed the Ukraine Freedom Support Act, which would approve fresh sanctions against Moscow and allow Washington to provide lethal military assistance to Kyiv for its fight against Kremlin-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.
U.S. President Barack Obama is yet to sign the bill into law.
"Certainly, we will not be able to leave that without an answer," Ryabkov was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.
The bill would open the way for the provision of up to $350 million worth of military hardware to Ukraine --including the delivery of antitank and antiarmor weapons, radar, surveillance drones, and communications equipment.
Ukrainian lawmakers welcomed the move as a "historic decision."
(Reuters, Interfax, AFP)
Good morning. We'll start today's live blog by pointing you in the direction of an interesting op-ed by John Guida in "The New York Times," which looks at potential different approaches for the West to adopt toward Vladimir Putin and Russia generally. Here's a taster:
At The Interpreter, a blog published by the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney, Matthew Sussex offers a blueprint for the West to re-evaluate its approach to Russia.
“If the U.S. and E.U. lose Russia, they risk driving it completely toward China and thereby recreating bipolarism in a messy globalized environment,” he writes. “The West already faces an uncomfortable reality: its own normative vision of democratic individualism will have to compete with other narratives seeking to shape legal, institutional and trading arrangements.”
Mr. Sussex offers an alternative: “maneuver Russia into a ‘pivot’ position between East and West. That would allow Moscow to sell its policies to domestic audiences via exceptionalism and great power imagery; it would ensure that energy and resources continue to flow; and it will turn Russia into a massive buffer zone between China and the transatlantic space.”
As it happens, Mr. Sussex says, this is “precisely what the Kremlin wants, too.” Russia does not want to become “China’s mine and petrol pump.”
“It is better to have Russia as a part-time partner than a recurring problem to be managed,” Mr. Sussex adds. To create such a partnership, he says, the West must recognize that Russia will not become a liberal democracy anytime soon. And he believes “European security structures are in urgent need of renovation,” and that any reform must be one “that Russia can join on an equal footing.”
Read the entire article here