A week after top diplomats from Russia, the US, Turkey and Saudi Arabia met in Vienna for “constructive” talks on Syria, they’re doing it again. Only this time, Iran will be at the table.
The German public may not trust Vladimir Putin personally, but they are readily buying the Russian argument that Moscow feels encircled and endangered by the West.
It has been a year since the United States, European Union, and other allies first sanctioned Russia for its illegal annexation of Crimea and aggression toward Ukraine.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is also known as the “Kasimpasa man” after the tough Istanbul neighborhood of his childhood. But when it comes to tough man of the region, Vladimir Putin, the Turkish leader can be surprisingly soft.
If it chooses enlargement, NATO could reassert itself in security discussions in the post-Soviet sphere by engaging its eastern neighbors through concrete measures aimed at closer integration.
The recent bombings in Volgograd, Dagestan, and Pyatigorsk - the last less than 350 miles east of Sochi - have come as a shock, but not as a surprise, to the Russian public.
Germany’s Russia policy remains above all guided by economics and energy, and the substantial Russia lobby in the German business community is unlikely to be moved by events in Ukraine.
