Dear CCI Followers,

At last … 30 years plus, the truth comes out. There are numerous accounts by the top leaders of the Free World that they all agreed that the United States would never enlarge NATO to reassure Mikhail Gorbachev that the new Russia had no worry from NATO, definitely there would be no enlargement beyond the borders of the reunited Germany.

Below note how many of the VIP’s assured Gorbachev that he need have no fear … they were adamant that NATO would never move closer to the struggling-to-survive new Russia in the 1990s.

These facts below have been ignored, blurred and buried as Bill Clinton mercilessly began admitting one piece of the  former USSR into NATO. Today NATO surrounds Russia with the latest NATO missiles and troops aimed at Russia.

This is what Putin’s defiant resistance and threat to NATO in Ukraine is all about. He demands to have assurances that NATO will back off … or else. Russia is now strong enough militarily to make such demands. All of us could be caught in the crossfires if this situation isn’t resolved.

Read the article below to let it sink in how unfair, how two-faced our policies have been since Clinton began taking in former Soviet countries, several of which had fought with Hitler against the USSR in WWII. This is why today the world is facing nuclear annihilation unless Biden, et al, are ready to backtrack and be responsible and responsive toward Russia … as was intended in good faith in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

[Continue Reading]

Dear CCI Followers,

Seldom, if ever, does an American Ambassador release an article to the public that deals as directly with the facts as the message below. This must speak for the deep concern felt today by Ambassador Matlock.

Read it carefully and send to as many friends and colleagues as possible. We America citizens must better understand the Ukraine issues and weigh in with President Biden, et al, or face the prospect of an all-out war which may go nuclear in minutes. There is no other issue as pressing as this one.

Ambassador Matlock is our quintessential living Ambassador, he knows from which he speaks. The bolding below comes from Matlock himself.

[Continue Reading]

CCI Friends,

I received an email from Vladimir Pozner in Moscow last evening saying the 4-month lockdown in Russia is not truthful! I sent an email to Chris Weafer (in Moscow also) who is watching COVID issues in Russia more closely than anyone I know. See it below.

Many thanks to Vladimir and Chris!

Sharon Tennison
Center for Citizen Initiatives

[Continue Reading]

ACURA
November 28, 2021
By David C. Speedie

A classic definition of the difference between a politician and a statesman is that, in disagreements with other nations, the latter can understand the position of the other side.  This being essential to diplomatic engagement, the speech given by President Putin on November 18 to foreign policy elites in Moscow deserves close attention; indeed, it may be described as an elegy for constructive U.S.-Russia relations.

The tone of President Putin’s presentation was as important as the content: overall, he spoke more in sorrow than in anger [though he did betray a degree of exasperation when speaking of NATO’s expulsion of Russian diplomats].  There was moreover a regret at “missed opportunities” throughout, along with a measured reflection on current stresses in the relationship that contrasts with the hectoring and lecturing approach to Russia from Washington.

That said, this reasonable demeanor should not be confused with any weakness or capitulation: Putin spoke forcefully of red lines, and of the folly of our “superficial” treatment of those [one noticed how he paused for a long moment to find the right word].  The obvious red line of paramount importance is Ukraine; the Minsk Agreements and the deliberations of the Normandy Quartet are mired in the refusal of the two “neutral” observers–France and Germany–to hold Ukraine’s feet to the fire.  This is all the more dangerous because, as Putin said starkly: there is no alternative to Minsk.  Also complicating matters in a perilous fashion is the fact the the United States seems to be avoiding any direct interventionist role [which the Ukrainians expect, rather like Saakashvili did with disastrous consequences in Georgia in 2008] by, providing high-grade weaponry to Kiev–a consolation prize that since the 2014 coup amounts to some $2.5 billion, including such sophisticated items as electronic warfare equipment.  The latest tranche of $150 million also seems to include U.S. training personnel at Ukrainian air bases.  From NATO, there has come Turkish war drones, those which killed 6000 people in the war over Nagorno-Karabakh.  This military largess has emboldened Kiev not merely to stall on the Minsk accords, but to threaten violation [the most recent buildup of Russian troops on the eastern border was in response to Ukrainian threats to attack the cities of Donetsk and Lukansk, which are inside the buffer zone established by MInsk in 2015.]  Finally, in his visit to Kiev on October 18, US Defense Secretary Austin reaffirmed our support for eventual Ukrainian membership in NATO {the reddest of lines for Russia.]  All this begs the question: what is the national interest for the United States in Ukraine, other than to stoke Russian neuralgia?

[Continue Reading]

“Vladimir the Terrible”

Fits the Needs of the U.S. Military-Industrial Complex
for an “Evil Foreign Enemy”—

But the Real Putin Is Well-Regarded by Many Russians for Standing Up to
U.S. Imperialism and Reviving the Russian Economy

CovertAction Magazine
November 26, 2021
By Danny Shaw

Putin is considered a threat because he restored Russian sovereignty, erased the humiliation of the Boris Yeltsin era, and championed Russia’s national interests. But that is just what the U.S. elite could not tolerate.

The U.S. military-industrial complex needs enemies like human lungs need oxygen. When there are no enemies, they must be invented.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Pentagon spin doctors had to search for a new bogeyman to justify their immense $778 billion budget, and its crippling effect on the U.S. economy. If that meant creating a propaganda campaign to paint Panama President Manuel Noriega—a longtime CIA asset—as a mad-dog “threat to American democracy” in order to justify the 1989 invasion of Panama (whose dead have yet to all be counted 32 years later)—well, so be it.

Or if it meant that other CIA assets, like Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, also had to be painted as dangerous threats to American democracy to justify the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, at the cost of countless Iraqi and Afghan lives, not to mention the lives of the thousands of gullible U.S. soldiers who served as cannon fodder—well, so be that, too.But once those enemies were gone, a new one was needed. And almost as if on cue, the re-emergence of a strong, sovereign Russia in 1999 provided the ideal candidate. It also provided a perfect excuse to initiate a new Cold War, which would justify the ever-increasing expenditures for exotic weaponry that the military-industrial complex kept demanding from its bought-and-paid-for politicians in the White House and Congress.

[Continue Reading]