Mikheil Saakashvili can claim that 80 per cent of Georgians wanted to join NATO; on the other hand, a similar percentage of Russians would almost certainly support Putin’s quest for a strong Russia. We would mistake this mood at our peril.
The Russians are bent on establishing both a presence in the Western Hemisphere, and they’re looking for opportunities to expand military cooperation: sell equipment, air bases, as well as intelligence gathering facilities.
Our inaction created the opportunity for the Russians to reenter the Middle East in a powerful way for the first time since 1973.
Now that we are used to globalisation it’s hard to imagine a time when the countries behind the iron curtain were largely obscured from the western gaze. The Soviet bloc was a genuine mystery. Such was the dehumanisation of the Soviets that Sting could wonder in song if ‘the Russians love their children too.’
There are areas in which the Russians are actually surprisingly cooperative.
The truth is there was no collusion with the Russians and the Trump campaign.
Twenty-six million Russians died in the defense of their homeland against the Nazis.
Where were they when the Russians went down?
The dependencies of inner and outer Mongolia are the bulwarks of China. The desert of Gobi, stretching for ten thousand li, is a barrier set by Heaven to the Russians, and if they seek to invade our borders, they will find it everywhere along the Northern frontier difficult and troublesome.
In 1736, Bakhchisaray had been burned to the ground by the Russians, and when Catherine II’s army completed the conquest of the peninsula in 1783, the last khan, Sahin Giray, took refuge in Turkey, where he was eventually executed.
The history of Chechnya is one of imperialism gone terribly wrong. In the 13th and 14th centuries, Chechens were among the few peoples to fend off Mongol conquerors, but at a terrible cost. Turks, Persians, and Russians sought to seize Chechnya, and it was finally absorbed into the Russian Empire in 1859.
Donald Trump, for years, had been working with the Russians. He brought people on his campaign who had ties to the Russians.
The French consider themselves the guardians of the world’s culture and do not bother to hide the fact, which is annoying, but Paris is still where good Americans want to go when they die – and Brits, Russians, and Chinese as well, these days.
In 1942, the Germans were running out of fuel. They were advancing so fast across the grasslands, the hot grasslands of south Russia, and the Russians were running out of tanks. And so both of them turned to cavalry, and there were great cavalry battles on the grasslands.
The unspoken contract between ruler and subject is that in return for safety, prosperity, and prestige, the Russians entrust power and cede democratic freedoms to their leaders.
What Americans can’t face is that one of the reasons that the Russians and the Chinese were so impressed with us during the Cold War was the fact that Nixon and Kissinger went on bombing despite public reaction.
In American films, Russians are often portrayed like cartoon villains without clear motivations.
For Russians, to whom Pushkin’s poem ‘Eugene Onegin’ is sacred text, the ballet’s story and personae are as familiar and filled with meaning as, for instance, ‘Romeo’ and ‘Hamlet’ are for us. Russians know whole stretches of it by heart, the way we know Shakespeare and Italians know Dante.
The dramatic wish of Romanians at the end of the Second World War was to be occupied by the Americans and not by the Russians.
The decision, therefore, lies here in the East; here must the Russian enemy, this people numbering two hundred million Russians, be destroyed on the battle field and person by person, and made to bleed to death .
Probably what pushed the Russians over the edge was SDI. They realized they couldn’t beat us.
Russians don’t complain, usually.
Virgin Galactic, which will be operating SpaceShipTwo, will be only one of several spacelines. The competitors for Virgin include the Russians, Bezos’s Blue Origin, and possibly Rocketplane Kistler. And likely a couple of others who are smart enough not to tell people what they are doing!
The warning message we sent the Russians was a calculated ambiguity that would be clearly understood.
For an event that was wholly created in the poisonous psychological warfare kitchens of the Second World War, run by the ministries of propaganda in many countries, not just by the British or the Americans, but also the Russians and undoubtedly the world Jewish organizations.
The Russians had got a real head-start into space; America was playing catch-up.
We have lost one shuttle for every 57 flights and that is not a good ratio. I do believe we need to continue space flights, but maybe we can follow the example of the Russians and use unmanned vehicles to transport hardware into space.
So you had to rev your engines, to beat the Russians and I think more than anything, if the Soviet team would win, or the Soviet athletes would win, you would see and hear and read about that. Quite frequently. So they would make a big issue of it.
There has been growing quite a strain of irritating feeling between our government and the Russians and it seems to me that it is a time for me to use all the restraint I can on these other people who have been apparently getting a little more irritated.
Most of the really successful civilisations survived because they were protected from invasion by mountains, sea, deserts, or a combination of these things. Ask the Russians or the Poles what it’s like to live without the shield of the sea.
Most Russians believe they’ve never met an LGBT person in their lives. Also they immediately see LGBT people as ‘other,’ lending to the success of singling the group out as a ‘problem.’
There’s no prospect that the Russians are going to send Snowden back. Snowden is in the land of spy swaps now. Putin is not going to give this guy up for nothing.
If you look back historically, admittedly a long time ago, there were three Afghan wars in which Britain didn’t even come a good second. In more recent years the Russians were there with 120,000 men for ten years.
In poetry, I have, since very young, loved poetry in translation. The Chinese, the French, the Russians, Italians, Indians and early Celts: the formality of the translator’s voice, their measured breath and anxiety moves me as it lingers over the original.
Russians not only vehemently despise blacks, they believe Africa begins at the Ukraine border.
The Russians were responsible for the Chekov character. They put in ‘Pravda’ that, ‘Ah, the ugly Americans are at it again. They do a space show, and they forget to include the people who were in space first.’ And I said, ‘My God, they’re right.’
If the English want a king, it is their business. If the Russians want communism, it is their business. If the Americans want our form of government, it is our business.
Television is something the Russians invented to destroy American education.
The Russians know that well executed disinformation, when exercised tactically, can quickly metastasize.
From 1945 to 1991, China was engaged in a series of wars that nearly broke them. This generation has been through hell: the Great Leap Forward, hunger, starvation, near collision with the Russians – the Cultural Revolution gone mad. I have no doubt that this generation wants a peaceful rise.
The Russians are turning east to the Chinese – to the Europeans’ surprise. It always seemed to me that the relationship between Russia and China would shift from being based in Marx and Lenin to being based in oil and gas.
