Re-evaluating Russia

Convivium, 12 January 2017

Father Raymond J de Souza delivers an analysis of Prime Minister Trudeau's promotion of Chrystia Freeland to foreign minister and Russia's position on the world stage. 

The Cold War rom-com starring Robin Williams was called Moscow on the Hudson . The main character, a circus musician, defects from the Soviet Union at the perfume counter of Bloomingdale’s. This week, the media circus was a few blocks away at Trump Tower, and Moscow was very much on the mind of those gathered on the Hudson. And when our prime minister shuffled his cabinet, it was Moscow on the Rideau this week.

Ever since the 2013 debacle in Syria, when Barack Obama declined to enforce his “red line” on chemical weapons – a capitulation facilitated politically by the British House of Commons and morally by Pope Francis – Vladimir Putin has been on the march.

He took “custody” of Assad’s chemical weapons in Syria, took sides in the civil war to protect Assad’s regime, and took over the Syrian skies, from where he pummeled Aleppo until he took it on the ground. He took hold of Ukraine’s foreign policy, instructing his puppet to abandon a proposed European Union accord; the subsequent people’s revolt would lead him to take Crimea, and take up armed occupation of eastern Ukraine.

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https://www.convivium.ca/articles/re-evaluating-russia