Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
My dad was a coal miner in County Durham.
Putin has become the wild card in his own system.
I know Kurt Volker definitely to be a man of integrity.
The Russians thrive on misinformation and disinformation.
Obama is under incredible pressure to supply arms to Ukraine.
Putin is trying to create the best possible atmosphere for Russia.
So with President Obama, he's a very different style. Very thoughtful, posed.
I don't want to suggest that Trump is emulating Putin. Trump is his own creation.
You could say that by standing up to Russia, the U.S. is finally getting some balls.
The people who run the giant companies and the government are all part of the same crowd.
For the United States, in particular, the South Caucasus has been a priority since the 1990s.
Outside of the Moscow elite and a very small urban elite, Russia is one great big blue-collar country.
We have politicized the issue of Russia to a point that we can't have a sensible conversation about it.
The Cold War was obviously driven by a very intense ideological struggle that was very clearly defined.
The idea is that Putin-Trump would be a win-win for the Kremlin, as they have mutual interests and alliances.
So Putin is not the dictator that he's often accused of being. He has to be very sensitive to public opinion.
Putin has the ability to advance his interests in many different ways. Sometimes tactical diplomacy can help.
Indeed, for Russia, inconsistency is an integral part of its foreign policy strategy, particularly under Putin.
Because the more you engage with someone who is spreading untruths, the more validity you give to those untruths.
Few issues better illustrate the limits of the Obama administration's 'reset' with Russia than the crisis in Syria.
Russia has always been very careful to try to balance the interest of the Gulf states and Iran off against each other.
Tough sanctions would mean saying to BP, Exxon, Chevron, Shell, Boeing and Siemens that they can't do business in Russia.
The unfortunate truth is that Russia was the foreign power that systematically attacked our democratic institutions in 2016.
Chechens need to be able to develop their own viable political society and regional economy whether they remain part of Russia or not.
Russia was dependent on China growing and driving the demand for its commodities: oil, gas and minerals. China was an alternative to Europe.
Our basic problem is how do we stop the hot war on the ground in Ukraine, and not get into a more and more escalatory relationship with Putin.
The capital city of Grozny in Chechnya was reduced completely to rubble, and Putin thought this was worthwhile because it kept the state together.
Stop pyschoanalyzing Putin, and recognize that there is a certain mind set. The West must draw a line under 'Putinography' and just get on with it.
The Russian leadership doesn't operate in the same way as ours does. Informal networks have a much more important role to play than formal networks.
People in Washington, D.C., may not be paying that much attention to what's happening in Chechnya, but people in Riyadh and Amman and elsewhere are.
And being forceful with the United States and not letting the United States have its way, is always good politics in the Russian domestic environment.
Absolutely everything I've done - my research, my training, my book - was made possible due to Harvard opening doors and providing me with connections.
Putin operates like a super PAC, taking advantage of opportunities for negative campaigning. The purpose is to show that the U.S. has no moral authority.
The problem in Pankisi is an extension of broader problems throughout Georgia. The whole system is based on shady deals. The entire government is corrupt.
We've got ourselves into a situation where government service is somehow seen to be a political act rather than an act of civic duty or of public service.
New ties between Russia and Japan would mark not only a breakthrough in their relations but also a significant shift in Northeast Asia's political dynamic.
There's no prospect that the Russians are going to send Snowden back. Snowden is in the land of spy swaps now. Putin is not going to give this guy up for nothing.
The whole purpose of Russian propaganda is to show that the U.S. and U.S. politics is filled with hubris and hypocrisy and to show it is not better than anyone else.
There is a good supply of Russia experts out there - people who have lived there with lots of good experience - but the demand has just not been there from government.
Calling Trump 'Putin's puppet' is a sign of the weakness of the American political system. It appears so weak and fragile that outsiders can actually meddle about in it.
I refuse to be part of an effort to legitimize an alternate narrative that the Ukrainian government is a U.S. adversary, and that Ukraine - not Russia - attacked us in 2016.
Russia and China thawed their frosty relationship in the 1990s and signed a friendship treaty in 2001, but China's rise has increased tensions in every regional relationship.
President Putin and the Russian security services operate like a super PAC. They deploy millions of dollars to weaponize our own political opposition research and false narratives.
Putin's treatment of Chechnya became a cautionary tale of what would happen to rebels and terrorists - and indeed to entire groups of people - if they threatened the Russian state.
I tend to look at Trump as a real-estate mogul. You look at a building and say, 'I'm just going to tear that down and build up something new.' He's not exactly Mr. Preservationist.
The real concern for the Russians is that they're going to get closed out, that there's gong to be a new 'Iron Curtain'... for European expansion and all of its institutional forms.
Chechnya was part of that whole wave of entities of the Soviet Union that had a very separate sense of identity, of political and social history, that set them apart from the rest of Russia.
Every military scenario that the Russians basically engage in their annual exercises, either on their western or eastern flank, always involved some kind of local revolt pulling in outside forces.
The Russians didn't invent partisan divides. The Russians haven't invented racism in the United States. But the Russians understand a lot of those divisions and they understand how to exploit them.
I grew up poor with a very distinctive working-class accent. In England in the 1980s and 1990s this would have impeded my professional advancement. This background has never set me back in America.