Portending a Global Rift: Secretary of State Antony J.In the North : A different sort of war game is playing out in northern Ukraine, where Russian shelling is tying up thousands of Ukrainian troops that might otherwise defend against attacks farther south.Putin announced that Russia would suspend its participation in the New START nuclear arms control treaty - the last major such agreement remaining with the United States. But the trip was also the first of several direct challenges to President Vladimir V. Biden Visits Kyiv: President Biden traveled covertly to the besieged Ukrainian capital, hoping to demonstrate American resolve and boost shellshocked Ukrainians.So far, the military assault appears to be a catastrophic misstep, one that has resulted in crippling economic sanctions and heavy military losses for Russia, as well as mass civilian casualties and destruction in the very Ukrainian cities Putin claims he wants to “liberate.” Understanding Putin and the forces that shaped him has become an urgent global concern, as leaders around the world try to determine his motivations in launching an unprovoked and disastrous invasion of Ukraine, how to best engage with him and how the conflict might evolve. To Gessen, Putin’s unabashed description of himself as “a thug” was key to his self-image: someone who could not be bullied, who would lash out unpredictably if he felt slighted and who relished violence. Masha Gessen, a Russian American journalist and Moscow native, recounts this exchange in a 2012 biography, “The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin,” which was praised as “part psychological profile, part conspiracy study” in The New York Times Book Review. Putin described his younger self, with a hint of self-congratulation, as “a hooligan.” When the interviewer asked if he was exaggerating about his tendency to get into brawls as a schoolboy, Putin took offense. In an interview more than two decades ago, Vladimir V.
0 kommentar(er)
