Beijing’s Gamble: Putin’s Unsuccessful Mentor
As with Dr. Frankenstein’s ill-considered electrification of a dead person in Shelley’s classic, President Vladimir Putin three years into his reign sought to raise Yuri Andropov’s foreign and domestic policies from the dead to help him rebuild the USSR that Andropov’s decision-making on Soviet intervention in Afghanistan hastened toward collapse. And now there’s Ukraine. Other hardliner…
Stalking Horse, Provocateur, and PMC-Pirate for Putin
Set Up: Yevgeny Prigozhin has popped-up again in Belarus, claiming that new Wagner Group deployments are coming, emphasizing Africa and not ruling out future action in Ukraine. This, as Wagner fighters train Belarusian troops near Belarus’s border with Poland, and Russian troops mass with tanks, artillery, and multiple rocket launchers inside Belarus to open up…