As crises mount over Ukraine and Taiwan, an unprecedented bond between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping has allowed the United States’ two top rivals to force President Joe Biden into a two-front crisis that could spread his administration too thin to respond adequately to either.

Moscow has been supporting, not undermining, U.S. interests in the region.

If a dialogue produces positive results then of course such dialogue should be pursued earnestly. That’s a general rule.

The Kremlin’s sharpened rhetoric is accompanied by what some experts believe to be the early signs of Russia’s growing preparedness to escalate the military conflict in eastern Ukraine.

The various crises now springing up in Eastern Europe are meant as warnings against assumptions that Russia will simply accept whatever state of affairs the Western alliance decrees.

There have been a series of beneath-the-surface meetings between the two countries as the Biden administration applies a more sober approach to relations with the Kremlin.

Vladimir Putin took part in a plenary session of the 18th annual meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club.

The further the Biden administration kicks the Ukraine issue down the road, the greater the chance for something to set it off.

Attempts to delegitimize President Putin by making him an international poisoner is a tragedy elevated by its absurdity to the level of farce.

By Marc Bennetts via The giant icebreaker Lenin now sits in a corner of the port of Murmansk, the world’s largest city within the Arctic Circle. From 1959 to 1989 this colossal vessel accompanied thousands of ships through over half […]