Section: iPolitics (Canada)
Merkel requests Monday meeting with Harper
The Canadian Press has learned that German Chancellor Angela Merkel has asked Prime Minister Stephen Harper for a short meeting in Ottawa on Monday night as she continues her frenzied transatlantic shuttle diplomacy on the Ukraine crisis. The influential German leader will be in Washington earlier Monday for a previously scheduled meeting with...
From Georgia to Ukraine — lessons on surrender
Georgia’s example in breaking with its Soviet past inspires many Ukrainians. Georgian reformers from former President Mikheil Saakashvili’s cabinet have taken high-profile posts in the Ukrainian government recently, and Saakashvili himself is widely seen as a candidate for the job of chief corruption fighter in Kyiv. So perhaps the...
Nicholson to Russia: ‘back off’ in Ukraine
The Harper government struck a provocative pose Thursday, telling Russia to “back off” in Ukraine, promising to campaign for NATO membership on behalf of another former Soviet republic and urging all allies to do more. The military alliance agreed in a Brussels meeting to establish a series of six command centres and two regional headquarters...
The West is losing Ukraine
U.S. President Barack Obama has joined German Chancellor Angela Merkel in saying that the West should take a patient, long-term approach to dealing with Russia’s aggression in Ukraine. The real message to Kyiv: You’re on your own in fighting pro-Russian rebels and Russian troops. Obama, in an interview on Sunday with CNN’s...
When Vladimir Putin declared war on a housewife
Is Russia fighting a war against Ukraine? To hear President Vladimir Putin and his ministers, it’s not — it merely sympathizes with the separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine. Yet the case of a Russian housewife with a two-month-old baby, accused of treason and jailed for making a call to the Ukrainian embassy, proves that Russia sees the...
The Drilldown: National pipeline project will be English-only, says NEB
Get the Drilldown brief straight to your inbox each weekday. Just click here. ~ • ~ The Lead Despite the Energy East pipeline’s right-of-way through Quebec and New Brunswick, proponent TransCanada Corp. will not have to submit its 30,000 page application to the National Energy Board (NEB) in French, the regulator said. The Official...
2015: The year of the Putin dictatorship
I hated what happened to Russia in 2014 so much that I decided to move away. It’s safe to say, however, that 2015 will be worse. President Vladimir Putin’s regime is on the verge of transitioning from mild authoritarianism to outright dictatorship. The country’s newly amended military doctrine is an especially ominous sign....
Russia hardens military doctrine amid NATO standoff over Ukraine
Russia hardened its military doctrine, identifying new threats after tensions with its Cold War foe NATO increased over the conflict in Ukraine. The revised document posted today on the Kremlin website names attempts to overthrow neighboring governments as a major threat, as well as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s buildup close to...
Want to hurt Putin now? Lift the sanctions.
As Russia’s economic crisis deepens, hurting trading partners from Germany to Tajikistan, many will say Westerns sanctions have succeeded. It’s a classic stone soup — or, in the Russian tradition, axe cereal — story. In this folktale, a wayfarer, usually a soldier, tricks a stingy host by saying he knows how to make a meal out of some...
Putin’s Russia, Tolkien’s Mordor — Spot the difference
I was rendered temporarily speechless by the news that a design company was planning to light up an enormous Eye of Sauron over a Moscow skyscraper this week. Though the project was ostensibly meant to mark the premiere of the third part of director Peter Jackson’s ambitious Hobbit trilogy, it was impossible to ignore the symbolism of the...
