Russia not headed for Ukraine invasion

Putin wants a written promise that Ukraine will never join the Western alliance. NATO countries would never allow it anyway, precisely because there is some risk that it could drag them into a war with Russia, but U.S. President Joe Biden is unwilling to put it in writing.

Symbolism and historical stereotypes are what this is all about, and the dominant stereotype in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s mind is the fact that practically everybody on the "A" list of would-be world conquerors has invaded Russia, writes Gwynne Dyer.Photograph courtesy of the World Economic Forum

Opinion

BY GWYNNE DYER

December 9, 2021

LONDON, U.K.—I must admit that I Googled the plot of the 1997 film Wag the Dog before starting to write this. It’s a dark comedy about a U.S. president facing a sex scandal whose staff invent a completely fictional war in the Balkans to draw the media’s ...

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