Carol J. Williams is a retired foreign correspondent with 30 years' reporting abroad for the Los Angeles Times and Associated Press. She has reported from more than 80 countries, with a focus on USSR/Russia and Eastern Europe.
From the paranoid perspective of Putin, Navalny had to be eliminated, just as the last, best hope for a democratic candidate’s survival was eliminated nine years ago in a drive-by assassination of former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov on the doorstep of the Kremlin.
Russia’s vaunted naval forces have dominated maritime civilian and military activity in the Black Sea since Crimea became the southern pillar of the Imperial Russian Navy in 1783. But in less than two years of fierce defiance of the Kremlin invasion, Ukraine has destroyed or disabled half of the Black Sea Fleet.
The hostilities riling the world today differ from those of the Cold War in that the adversaries are now more numerous and fractured than during the superpower confrontation.
Here are the countries, large and small, where stark choices confront voters struggling through economic difficulties and indifference to the political stakes when they fail to engage in decisions that will influence how and by whom they are governed.
“Think about the signal that delayed Ukraine aid sends to the leaders and people of Taiwan. If, God forbid, they are faced with the decision of whether to fight or capitulate to the People’s Republic of China, they will need to soberly assess the credibility of America’s commitment to helping them defend their island. Right now, we are sending a terrible message."
What began as a small radical right-wing Republican bloc in the U.S. House of Representatives opposed to further aid to Ukraine has expanded in the chaotic aftermath of former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s ouster two months ago.
“The full-scale invasion of Ukraine that Russia launched on February 24, 2022, has precipitated by far the most significant crisis in Russian studies since the collapse of the Soviet Union."
The attacks on U.S. military and diplomatic sites over the past week are suspected to have been orchestrated by Iran and designed to further sabotage prospects for a U.S.-brokered peace accord between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
There is no hope of diplomatic resolution of the crisis taking the lives of hundreds on both sides each day. Death tolls have soared beyond 2,000, with more bodies and atrocities being discovered as IDF reach massacre scenes and Hamas fighters dig out from the rubble of punishing Israeli aerial bombardment.