via our friend Carolyn Schott: This is a great summary of the situation in Ukraine and the danger that Russia poses to the world, a statement be the U.S. ambassador to the UN. (Im a big fan of hers!) Yet time and again, Russia’s words promise peace while Russia’s actions make war. Time and again, President Putin has extended an olive branch in one hand while passing out Grad missiles and tanks with the other. The endgame in all of these Moscow-manufactured crises has been identical: to gobble up parts of neighboring countries and to create frozen conflicts. And Russia is consistently working to put these frozen conflicts under a deeper freeze. What is frozen in these conflicts? Instability is frozen. Violations of sovereignty are frozen. Militarization is frozen. In sum, all the problems that the United Nations, and the Security Council in particular, were created to address, are frozen. If Russia succeeds in achieving its aims, if we allow this behavior to become the new normal, this will not be the last time Russia uses this well-worn playbook
Posted on: Fri, 23 Jan 2015 07:00:06 +0000