Russia's War Against Ukraine
OP-ED
Washington Post: Obama doesn’t grasp Putin’s Eurasian ambitions
US President Barack Obama (2L), British Prime Minister David Cameron (L), German Chancellor Angela Merkel look on as Russian President Federation Vladimir Putin (C) arrives for the family photo during the G20 summit on September 6, 2013 in Saint Petersburg. World leaders at the G20 summit on Friday failed to bridge their bitter divisions over US plans for military action against the Syrian regime, with Washington signalling that it has given up on securing Russia's support at the UN on the crisis. AFP PHOTO / JEWEL SAMAD
IT’S EASY to conclude that Vladimir Putin’s passionate defense of Russia’s takeover of Crimea “just didn’t jibe with reality,” as Secretary of State John F. Kerry put it. In a speechon Tuesday, the Russian ruler repeated mendacious charges that the Ukrainian government had been hijacked by “nationalists, neo-Nazis, Russophobes and anti-Semites”; voiced his paranoid conspiracy theory about supposed Western sponsorship of popular revolutions, including the Arab Spring; and brazenly compared Russia’s abrupt annexation of Ukraine with the reunification of Germany.
