TimeLine Layout

May, 2023

  • 16 May

    Black Sea Grain Initiative Suffers Setbacks – OpEd

    The high-level four-party meeting (Russia, Türkiye, Ukraine plus the UN) in Istanbul has still not reached an agreement on extension for the Black Sea Initiative on the export of Ukrainian grain, which expires on May 18. On May 11, delegations from the parties to the Black Sea grain deal agreed …

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  • 16 May

    Sudan war complicates Russia’s port plans, strains Wagner ties in Libya

    Events in Sudan would have perhaps gone unnoticed in Russian society, including by politicians and the media, if Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had not visited Khartoum two months before fighting broke out last week between Gen. Abdel-Fattah al-Burhan’s army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) led by Mohammed Hamdan …

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  • 16 May

    Britain Sending Hundreds More Missiles, Long-Range Drones To Ukraine

    Britain said Monday it is sending Ukraine hundreds more missiles and attack drones in hopes of boosting Kyiv’s fight against Russia’s 14-month invasion. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy thanked British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, a staunch ally, for the new weaponry as they met at Chequers, Sunak’s official country retreat. Zelenskyy …

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  • 16 May

    Macron’s Radical Reform To French Diplomacy – Analysis

    On March 16, while French citizens were protesting pension reforms and clashing with the police, President Emmanuel Macron found time to deliver a speech at the Quai d’Orsay (French foreign ministry). There, Macron endorsed a controversial reform of the country’s diplomatic corps. Specifically, Macron’s reform calls for the winding down …

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  • 16 May

    Cold Capitalism And The Carbon Curtain – Analysis

    Imagine yourself as a civilian in eastern Ukraine in autumn 2022. Only a few months ago, an apartment building in your neighborhood was obliterated by a HIMARS rocket, which sent a wave of concrete dust careening in every direction. You and your family moved your belongings to a friend’s cellar, …

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  • 16 May

    Kurdish PUK party returns to cabinet meetings after boycott

    One of the dominant Kurdish parties in northern Iraq on Sunday ended a more than half-year boycott of regional government cabinet meetings with its main coalition partner, easing tensions between factions that fought a civil war in the 1990s. The rifts had been a source of alarm to Western countries, …

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  • 16 May

    Syria’s main insurgent group seeks to move away from al-Qaida past, get off Western terrorism lists

    The leader of an insurgent group that rules much of northwest Syria rose to notoriety over the past decade by claiming deadly bombings, threatening revenge against Western “crusader” forces and dispatching Islamist religious police to crack down on women deemed to be immodestly dressed. Today the man known as Abu …

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  • 15 May

    Blundering on the Brink

    The Secret History and Unlearned Lessons of the Cuban Missile Crisis There aren’t enough palm trees, the Soviet general thought to himself. It was July 1962, and Igor Statsenko, the 43-year-old Ukrainian-born commander of the Red Army’s missile division, found himself inside a helicopter, flying over central and western Cuba. …

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  • 15 May

    Iran: Replacing Khomeini with Clinton

    In an editorial last Monday, Kayhan, believed to reflect the views of the “Supreme Guide”, claimed that now that the Islamic Republic has defeated the American “Great Satan” in the Middle East, it must deal with hyperinflation as “the greatest threat to our revolution.” The new tune may be partly …

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  • 15 May

    Israel under Fire and The West’s Pusillanimous Response

    Neither Ukraine nor Israel has any territorial ambitions or aggressive intent against their attackers — both Ukraine and Israel are fighting purely defensive wars to protect their civilian populations. There is another common factor. Islamic Jihad in Gaza is an Iranian proxy terrorist group, funded and directed from Tehran. Iran’s …

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