Riva Enteen reports on CCI’s recent delegation to Russia and the chance to consider the country and its recent turbulent history from the vantage point of people living there.

Consortium News
October 23rd, 2019
By Riva Enteen

I just came home to California from a 50-person citizen diplomacy delegation to Russia to ponder my neighbor’s bumper sticker that says “Just pretend it’s all OK.” That’s the American state of mind, but it doesn’t extend to Russians, who are painfully aware of war and its death and destruction. The still pervasive images of wheat in the cities and towns reflect the necessity of feeding the people. The US unapologetically operates on the principle that war is good for business. Russians know war too deeply to accept that premise.

Russians call WWII the Great Patriotic War because of all the allies, they lost the most people (27 million) by a wide margin and fought the longest to defeat the Nazis. The siege of Leningrad lasted an almost incomprehensible 900 days. There is a visceral understanding of war in Russia, while in the US war is so sanitized that the corporate media is forbidden to show coffins draped in American flags.

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Dear CCI Readers,

Enjoy Natylie Baldwin’s latest piece. It’s very timely and has a different perspective than our U.S. mainstream media.

Rather than continuing these dangerous wars throughout the Middle East, doesn’t it make sense to stop them and create solutions that allow all sides a reasonable outcome? It just takes honorable diplomacy, common sense and goodwill. No one gets everything they want, but the outcome is far better than endless killing fields and refugees. Removing our troops from Syria is one thing on which I can agree with Trump.

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Dear CCI followers,

Finally, Graham Fuller, former U.S. senior CIA official and author of numerous books on the Middle East, makes sense of the Middle-East and Syria dilemma today––in addition to the highly confusing situation in which our country has been knee-deep in for decades. Our media sees Syria and the region as a U.S.-Russia confrontation. Even as Fuller makes clear the history, high level Democrats and Republicans alike are still against pulling our soldiers out and stopping wars in the region.

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UN GENERAL ASSEMBLY: LAVROV SAYS WEST IS WASTING ITS TIME TRYING TO UNDERMINE RUSSIA’S PARTNERSHIP WITH CHINA; PUTIN REFERS TO RUSSIA & CHINA AS “ALLIED RELATIONSHIP”; UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT REITERATES THAT HIS PRIORITY AS PRESIDENT IS TO END DONBAS WAR WHILE U.S. STATE DEPT. APPROVES $39M IN MILITARY AID TO KIEV

Natylie’s Place
October 17, 2019
Natylie Baldwin

In a huge blow to the editorial board of the NYT, Russian FM Sergey Lavrov, in his speech to the UN General Assembly last month, said that the west’s attempts to undermine the partnership between Russia and China are a waste of time.

To reinforce the point, in his October 3 remarks at the Valdai conference, president Putin referred to Russia’s relationship with China as “an allied relationship in the full sense.” He also announced that Russia will be helping China create an early warning missile defense system:

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Natylie’s Place
October 14, 2019
Natylie Baldwin

A couple of weeks ago, I conducted an email interview with Nicolai N. Petro, professor of Political Science at the University of Rhode Island, on the state of democracy in today’s Russia, after having read his eye-opening 2018 journal article, “Are We Reading Russia Right?” His full biography is below the interview.

1)  In your 2018 article, “Are We Reading Russia Right?” you attempt to correct some misconceptions many in the west have about the state of democracy in Russia.  You point out, for example, that Russia has a much more diverse media that includes anti-Putin reportage and opinion.  Can you explain for readers a bit more about Russia’s media landscape and what percentage of the media that state TV actually consists of and what the demographics are who consume state TV vs. other types of media?

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