Monthly Archives: September 2023

1. The Russian empire is crumbling before Putin's eyes  The Telegraph
2. Putin's 'Mini-NATO' in Peril as Russian Peacekeepers Killed by Azeri Troops  Newsweek
3. The West's weakness on Azerbaijan will embolden dictators everywhere including Putin  The Telegraph

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The Russian empire is crumbling before Putin's eyes - The Telegraph

In Ukrainian, Holodomor means death by forced hunger. It is what Josef Stalin did 90 years ago, starving about 3.9 million Ukrainians to death. Unfathomable as it may seem, Stalin and his underlings confiscated from the Ukrainians, all their crops, livestock, food from silos, warehouses, stores and homes. As food was disappearing, the authorities under order from Stalin prevented Ukrainians from migrating to safer havens in what became one of the most gruesome genocides in a century filled with horror.

Now, Russian President Vladimir Putin is tracing Stalin's footsteps, stealing Ukrainian grain from occupied lands, sabotaging the Nova Kakhovka Dam resulting in the destruction of agricultural lands, and ending the Black Sea Grain Initiative which will make it impossible for Ukrainian food stocks to be shipped to Africa and Asian countries through the Black Sea. Removing Ukrainian grain from the market is forcing world food prices to escalate, exacerbating ongoing hunger issues in the Horn of Africa, Afghanistan and Yemen.

Russia's war on Ukraine has resulted in mined Ukrainian farmland taken out of production. Ukraine's fertile lands are saturated with explosives. To further drive home their disdain, Russians are striking port cities like Odesa and Izmail that ship the grain.

For now, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is exploring moving grain through Romanian ports. Some have floated the idea of a NATO naval convoy to escort the grain haulers. But leaders in the West worry that the war will then widen. This same concern regarding potentially widening the war has restrained some of Ukraine's allies from providing fighter jets that could escalate the conflict.

Pope Francis recently addressed a crowd in St.Peter's Square, saying, "Beleaguered Ukraine, where war is destroying everything, even grain." The pope went on to say, "the cry of millions of brothers and sisters who are suffering from hunger rises to heaven."

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told the U.N. Security Council, "They [Russians] were exporting more grains [a benefit to Russian farmers] than ever before and at higher prices. Russia is simply using the Black Sea as blackmail. It's playing political games. It's holding humanity hostage."

As the U.N. General Assembly meets in New York this week, the evil of purposely weaponizing hunger once again by Russia needs to be addressed. It must be put in front of the International Criminal Court, which has already indicted the Russian president, accusing him of kidnapping Ukrainian children, and is looking at a long list of other war crimes by Putin and his military.

In 1976, I was elected to the U.S. Congress as a representative for Macomb and St. Clair Counties in Michigan. I was new to Washington, as was a newborn hunger organization called Bread for the World. Founded by the Rev. Art Simon, the pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church on New York City's Lower East Side, its goal was to prevent hunger from occurring in the first place, rather than just reacting to it. Simon said, "It's better to put a fence at the top of a cliff than to have an ambulance at the bottom."

As a neophyte, I had the good sense to team up with a legislative pro: Hubert Horatio Humphrey, the former vice president of the United States who had returned to Congress as the senator from Minnesota. We both were interested in food and hunger issues.

With the support of Bread for the World, we worked together to require a hunger impact statement on all countries receiving U.S. foreign aid, underscoring the need to consider the country's track record on the fundamental human right for food. It passed the House and in the conference between the House and Senate, Humphrey was at the table to make sure it stayed in the bill. It was then signed into law by our new peanut farmer president from Georgia Jimmy Carter.

The right to food is a basic human right recognized in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Yet, the number of undernourished people in the world keeps increasing. The U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization reports that in 2020, between 720 and 811 million people in the world faced hunger. And beyond hunger, one and in three people did not have access to adequate food in 2020. Since then, climate, war, inequality, and COVID-19 reversed the downward trend over the past decade. From 2019-2022 the number of undernourished people grew by 150 million.

Putin's war is only going to increase that number, putting the most vulnerable worldwide on the brink of famine. Undernutrition is connected to nearlyhalf the deaths worldwide of children under 5 years old, according to UNICEF. The organization Embrace Relief reports that 66 million children of primary school age attend classes hungry across the developed world, 23 million of whom live in Africa.

How many emaciated children with skeletal bodies, bloated stomachs, and deadened eyes, are Putin and Russia prepared to sacrifice in their maddeningly immoral war? And how long is the rest of humanity prepared to let them get away with it?

Editor's note: David Bonior spent 26 years in the U.S. Congress representing Macomb and St. Clair counties in Michigan. In 1991 he was elected the Democratic whip, the No. 2 leadership position where he served for 11 years.

Bonior's grandparents migrated from Ukraine and Poland, and he was raised in his Ukrainian grandfather's home. In Congress he was active on Ukrainian related issues and has over the years visited Ukraine as it transitioned into a democracy with western values.

In March 2023, Bonior and Fr. Peter Daly, a retired Catholic priest and immigration lawyer, traveled to Poland and Ukraine to talk with Ukrainian refugees and their caregivers. They were accompanied by former Michigan Congressman Jim McDermott, who is also a psychiatrist, and Tanya Keppler, who works in information technology. They spent a week in Poland and a week in Ukraine; they have since written and spoken out about what they learned and experienced bearing witness to the stories of Ukrainian refugees and their protectors.

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Vladimir Putin, like Stalin before him, is weaponizing food - National Catholic Reporter

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email transcripts@nytimes.com with any questions.

Im Tom Friedman, and Im the Foreign Affairs columnist for The New York Times. I just returned from Kyiv, Ukraine, and I would start every day by walking around the grounds of Saint Michaels Golden Monastery, which is a beautiful Orthodox Church, but also with incredible grounds. There was something very new in the piazza, and it was an exhibition of captured Russian destroyed tanks and armored personnel carriers. Some were fairly intact. Others were just completely gutted and rusted.

But as I would walk there, this contrast between this rusted military equipment in the middle of this beautiful piazza, and I eventually realized that it reminded me of a meteor, that it was like a meteor that came from outer space and landed on this country. Of course, it wasnt a meteor. It was an invasion by Putins army. And theyre still trying to figure out how to get this meteor out of the heart of their city, out of the heart of their country. Thats really the struggle thats going on there.

My recent trip to Ukraine taught me the Wests focus has to be engineering some kind of end to this conflict. And it can only come to an end if Ukraine is in NATO and the European Union. Adding Ukraine to NATO and the European Union would be the biggest geopolitical shift in our lifetime. You put Ukraine in the EU, and that becomes our Russia policy. I think the best thing that happened in my life was the creation of the European Union.

Now, most Americans will do anything for the EU, except read about it. OK? So the EU is this really boring thing that the Europeans do. And theres a parliament and a commission, and we cant figure out any of it. But in fact, the EU is one of the greatest miracles in global history, a continent, a giant space that, from time immemorial, basically, was famous for endless tribal, ethnic, nationalist, family conflicts. It became the biggest center, geographic center of free markets, free people, the rule of law and human rights. That is a miracle. Its an incredible, boring miracle.

If we bring Ukraine into that European Union, that would be one of the most consequential geopolitical tipping points since East Germany was united with West Germany. Oh, oh, oh, East Germanys Germany. Who was the Russian spy in East Germany who was introduced to international relations by running the KGB there? It was Vladimir Putin. It was Vladimir Putin whose big introduction to geopolitics was watching the magnet of the West melt down East Germany and lead to the unification of these two countries. Well, that, for me, has always been my framework about Ukraine and Russia.

NATO expansion was never the issue. The real threat for Putin was that Ukraine would become the new East Germany, that it would become an incredible model, magnet, and mentor for the rest of Russia, an example of a Slavic successful economy, start-up country and democracy, next to Putins Slavic kleptocracy and autocracy. Thats what this war has always been about in my view.

I think weve done the right thing, which is rushing to Ukraines support and supporting Ukraine militarily as best we can for as long as Ukrainians want to fight. The big decision point going forward is, when do we say to the Ukrainians we may have to settle for a dirty deal? Because people are not going to sign up to support you indefinitely. And they know that. People have asked me, so whats a possible dirty deal? The natural dirty deal is that Russia gets to keep some or all of its ill gotten gains, where it is right now, roughly those lines, even though that will mean sanctioning of one state, taking territory of another by force, and in return, Ukraine gets to be in NATO and the European Union.

Meanwhile, Putin I dont want to give him anything, but again, were talking about a dirty deal now will be able to go and say, I showed those Nazis in Ukraine. I punished them enough. Ive come back with more territory than I left with, and all hail the emperor. But Ukraine joining the EU would be an existential threat to him because hes the one who keeps telling us Ukraine and us, were the same. Were brothers. Because the whole proposition was, marry me or Ill kill you.

Vladimir Putin is a guy who is always looking for dignity in all the wrong places and in all the wrong ways. And so rather than saying, I want to build my country up to be a real competitor for the EU, it was all about fulfilling some fantasy, Peter the Great dream of forcing Ukrainians to unify with Russia so he could groove on the map, basically. And look at the price hes paid. People forget Russia put the first satellite into orbit in 1957. Its called Sputnik. It led the world. It led the world in that science and technology.

And today, Putins Russia, have you ever tried to buy a Russian watch? Have you ever thought of buying a Russian car? This is a country more famous now for poisoned underwear, poison tipped umbrellas, and locking people up in penal colonies in Siberia, and pumping oil and gas. Its a tragedy of what this guy, the country that gave us Dostoevsky and Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky and Sakharov and all these great writers, has given us rusted, burned out Russian tanks in the heart of Kyiv.

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Opinion | A Dirty Deal With Putin Could Be a Power Shift for the World - The New York Times

Ben Jones/Heart Agency.

Interviewed in the Guardian in March 2022, the international lawyer Philippe Sands said that: The world changed in 1945. It was a revolutionary moment. For the first time, states agreed that they were not absolutely sovereign, that they could not kill individuals or destroy groups. Sands called this the Nuremberg moment. In the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, Nuremberg has compelling significance. Vladimir Putin described the invasion as a special military operation; international lawyers characterise it as a crime of aggression a legal term inherited from Nuremberg. Sands and others, notably former British prime minister Gordon Brown, demanded, as theDaily Mail informed its readers: a new Nuremberg trial to make Putin pay Let him face the legacy of Nuremberg.

Between June and August 1945, before the trials of Nazi war criminals began, international lawyers had gathered in London to debate the legality of the prosecutions. They confronted a question: what crimes, under existing international law, had the Nazi leaders committed? Would it be necessary to devise new laws? Winston Churchill had (perhaps) anticipated this when he described reports of the mass killings of Jews on the Eastern Front as a crime without a name. Some of the complex issues debated at the London Conference in 1945 have never been resolved. Nevertheless, the London Agreement and Charter became the legal foundation of the trials that would take place in Nuremberg.

At the same time that Sands and others proposed a new tribunal to bring Putin and his warmakers to account, the International Criminal Court (ICC) set in motion proceedings to prosecute Putin, his advisers and other alleged perpetrators. By issuing arrest warrants for Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, the Russian Commissioner for Childrens Rights, the ICC was playing a high-stakes game of name and shame. Neither Russia nor the US ratified the Rome Statute that created the ICC and so neither state is subject to its requirements. The chances that Putin, or any member of his regime, will be arrested and tried are slim. Russia retaliated by opening a case against the ICC judges and prosecutors on the grounds that the ICC had acted illegally under Russian law. The Duma is considering legislation that would punish anyone co-operating with the ICC. The war in Ukraine has opened a legal battlefield a terrain which is littered with complex and highly specialised legal principles that offer a plenitude of opportunities for dissent and resolution.

After 1945, international courts took on unprecedented roles in the unfolding of real-world history. International criminal law began to influence historical actors. Even heads of state could be held responsible and prosecuted. The dictum of Never Again may often be a chimera, but it reflects the legal revolution that defined and proscribed, for the first time in history, a legal term unknown before 1945: genocide. The deceptively simple definition Acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethical, racial or religious group is packed with legal notions such as intent that have proved notoriously difficult to resolve.

International criminal law has regulated relations and conflicts between states for centuries. Jus ad bellum, the moral justification for resorting to armed force, is rooted in Roman law and preoccupied medieval thinkers; in the 17th century, the Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius, in his legal masterpiece De Jure Belli ac Pacis (On the Law of War and Peace, 1625), recognised that since certain uses of force by rulers and states might be unjust, aggression could be judged as such and thus criminalised, and perpetrators prosecuted.

Yet Grotius and those who followed had no means of seeing beyond the near-sacred doctrine of state sovereignty that was consecrated by the 1648 Peace of Westphalia. The idea that a third party such as an international court could take precedence over states was anathema. The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 established rules of conduct by treaty and thus created international law, but do not provide any legal tool to realise their ideals. In practice, the laws of war provided guides to conduct rather than enforceable laws. Throughout the first half of the 20th century, the Hague Conventions were habitually flouted by combatants and not only by fascist powers. One of the Nuremberg judges lamented that The Hague Convention [sic] nowhere designates [certain] practices as criminal, nor is any sentence prescribed, nor any mention made of a court to try and punish offenders.

This explains why the Nuremberg moment was truly revolutionary. On 8 August 1945, after much wrangling behind closed doors, the delegates drew up four counts of crimes for which the Axis leadership could be legally prosecuted: crimes against peace; crimes against humanity; war crimes (meaning violations of the existing laws of war); and a common plan or conspiracy to commit these acts. Only crimes against humanity was truly innovative, encompassing murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhumane acts. International law could now hold the Nazi leaders criminally liable for offences against their own citizens in peacetime, regardless of whether domestic law permitted their actions.

The Cold War blunted the impact of the Nuremberg moment until the collapse of the Soviet Union and the savage Balkan wars of the 1990s. The establishment of the ICC through the Rome Statute (1998) inaugurated a succession of international criminal tribunals that were appointed to investigate war crimes and genocide in the territories of the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Cambodia. Nuremberg meant that a third party, in the shape of an international court, could challenge the borders of sovereign states and that international criminal lawyers finally had the means to prosecute and punish individual state actors. What this means for historians is that the Nuremberg moment decisively transformed the way history is made.

As a consequence, history-makers such as army commanders, soldiers, political leaders, bureaucrats, officials and even, in the case of the Rwandan genocide, radio producers and other propagandists, can become subjects of international criminal law. This means that historians must become familiar with some tricky legal concepts.

Take, for example, the Genocide Convention (1948), an international treaty that obliges state parties to both punish and prevent a crime defined as the intent to destroy any of four enumerated groups: national, racial, ethnic or religious. This legal definition of genocide is hedged with challenges such as the definition of a group and the meaning of destruction in whole or in part. Just as problematic is the duty to prevent. How might this be achieved? The answer to that question requires us to grasp a fundamental concept in Anglo-American common law. According to Article 3 of the Convention, the punishable acts are (a) Genocide; (b) Conspiracy to commit genocide; (c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide; (d) Attempt to commit genocide; and (e) Complicity in genocide. All of these are defined as inchoate crimes. This means they do not have to be completed to be punishable acts. As in common law where, for example, engaging in a conspiracy to commit a robbery or murder is a criminal act, the planned act need not be carried out. Under the Convention, then, conspiring, inciting or attempting genocide are legally punishable crimes.

Accusations of genocide are powerfully stigmatising. As we know from allegations of genocide against the Uighur people in China and the Rohingya in Myanmar, states react aggressively. And the Genocide Convention provides international lawyers who act for these accused states with knotty legal challenges. Notably, prosecutors must prove that the accused state or, in a number of cases, non-state parties such as the Republika Srpska that enacted the Srebrenica genocide had the dolus specialis or special intent to carry out the destruction of a group. It is not enough to commit the most egregious atrocities if these actions are not proven to be committed with genocidal intent.

One implication of the Nuremberg moment is, I suggest, that familiarity with international law should be added to the toolkits of historians. If law shapes human action, it shapes history. One of the problems debated during the London Conference was the legal concept of Nullum crimen sine lege, no crime without a law: the principle that no one should suffer prosecution and punishment for an act that was not criminalised. The problem of retroactive law-making bedevilled discussions at the London Conference and has never been completely resolved. The legal experts at the Conference had to justify innovative law-making to capture the scope of Nazi atrocities crimes, as Churchill had said, without names.

Law pivots between conservative precedent and innovation and both history-makers and historians would be advised to keep up to date. Returning to where we began on the battlefields of Ukraine, the raft of ongoing investigations, indictments and legal initiatives in short, the pursuit of accountability for Russias crimes against peace suggests that the conflict may end not at a negotiating table but in a courtroom.

Christopher Hale is a non-fiction writer and producer. He recently received an LLM in human rights law from the University of Edinburgh.

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Will Putin Get His 'Nuremberg Moment'? - History Today

In February 2022, President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale war of aggression aimed at destroying Ukraine as an independent state. As the human and financial toll of Putins illegal war climbs with each passing day, there is a growing global consensus that Russia has an obligation to pay for the death and destruction that it has wrought on the Ukrainian people and other victims of Russias aggression, unprecedented since the end of World War II. Although many countries have frozen Russian sovereign bank assets in response, they can and must do more. Any country that currently holds Russian assets should transfer them to Ukraine to help that sovereign nation survive and rebuild.

To this end, RDI has issued a comprehensive report on Constitution Day, 2023, demonstrating that transferring Russias assets to Ukraine is currently possible with no changes in U.S. law. This report was principally authored by constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe in partnership with his colleagues at the law firm Kaplan, Hecker & Fink LLP.

Read the full report here

In these extraordinary circumstances, the Presidents power to execute the proposed transfer flows from the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). Subsection B of IEEPA explicitly empowers the President to block and/or direct and compel the transfer of any right, power, or privilege with respect to Russias property. Traditional tools of statutory interpretation demonstrate that transfer means the conveyance of a property interest from one entity to another. Thus IEEPA authorizes the President to direct and compel the conveyance of Russian sovereign assets to Ukraine. RDIs report removes any reasonable doubt about the consistency of such transfer with precedent and historical practice and shows that it would be fully consonant with the United States Constitution and all applicable congressional statutes.

The proposed transfer also comports with settled principles of international law. Because Russias actions constitute grave and ongoing violations of international law and lack even a plausible justification, the doctrine of countermeasures entitles the United States and its allies to respond to Russias flagrant actions so as to induce its compliance with international legal norms. RDIs proposed transfer of Russias assets to Ukraine would satisfy the key requirements of a lawful countermeasure, including the principles of proportionality and reversibility.

Objections based on claims of sovereign immunity are baseless. Using Russias assets as a countermeasure helps restore the principles of national sovereignty; it doesnt violate them. Moreover, sovereign immunity as a legal doctrine arose out of the need to prevent the courts of one state from sitting in judgment on the actions of another. It is thus a doctrine applicable only in judicial proceedings, not one designed to hamstring a countrys foreign policy as reflected in executive or legislative action. There is simply no basis for saying that Russia can violate Ukraines sovereignty while invoking its own sovereignty as an inviolable shieldespecially given that the United States and its allies have already crossed the Rubicon and frozen Russias assets.

Russias assets could be transferred to Ukraine in a manner that is transparent and accountable, with safeguards against the abuse of these legal authorities in the future. RDIs report demonstrates that the policy objections to such transfer rest on misconceptions: The U.S. dollar will remain the worlds reserve currency because of unique structural advantages, and Russia possesses few, if any, avenues to meaningfully retaliate to the transfer of its assets to Ukraine. Not only would transferring Russias frozen assets to Ukraine make strategic sense. Failing to do so would embolden lawless aggressors by sending the dangerous signal that the United States and its allies lack the political and moral will to do all it takes to stop President Putin and his military from murdering civilians and flouting the basic rules of the international order.

Authors Laurence H. Tribe, Raymond P. Tolentino, Kate M. Harris, Jackson Erpenbach, and Jeremy Lewin

Media Requests Please direct media requests for this report to info@rdi.org.

Acknowledgements The authors are grateful to a number of individuals whose contributions were invaluable to the production and publication of this report. Angela Scorese was essential in assisting the authors research and in moving the report through the publication process. Elizabeth Wallace and James Piltch, as Summer Associates at Kaplan Hecker & Fink LLP, conducted crucial research and assisted in drafting portions of the report. Alysha Naik, James Blum, and Peter Kaplan helped to finalize, fact check, and proofread the report.

This report was made possible by generous donations to RDI from many individuals and organizations all of whom support the idea advanced by the report but none of whom sought to influence the analysis or conclusions reached by the reports authors. Thus, the views expressed in this report are solely those of RDI and of the reports authors, not of Kaplan Hecker & Fink LLP or of RDIs donors.

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Making Putin Pay RDI - Renew Democracy Initiative

Vladimir Putins backyard just got a whole lot smaller.

A year and a half after the Russian presidents rash, illegal, blundering invasion of Ukraine, Russian peacekeepers have been forced to admit defeat in the faraway enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, handing control back to Azerbaijan after a 24-hour military offensive, which killed a senior Russian officer.

For Azerbaijan, which began talks with Karabakhs Armenian separatist leaders on Thursday to formally take back control of the region, it looked like a surprisingly swift conclusion to a 35-year conflict that has cost thousands of lives.

But for Putin's Russia, its an equally stunning loss, proof that Moscow's writ no longer holds in the Caucasus and that the post-Soviet security bloc Putin set up to mirror NATO in the regionthe Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO)is a spent force.

And the Russian dictator has only himself to blame.

In the two full-on wars fought over Nagorno-Karabakh, from 1988 to 1994 and again in 2020, the separatists had full military and political support from Armenia itself and, indirectly, from Russia.

Attack Drones Dominating Tanks as Armenia-Azerbaijan Conflict Showcases the Future of War

But since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Caucasus calculus has changed. Armenia took no action as Azerbaijan moved to cut off its supply route to Nagorno-Karabakh, the Lachin Corridor, over the past year. Then, earlier this month, Armenia held its first joint military exercises with the United States, clearly turning its back on the CSTO.

On Tuesday, emboldened by events, Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev ordered the offensive, his troops quickly capturing key heights and strategic junctions in Nagorno-Karabakh. The separatists crumbled, agreeing to a ceasefire backed by Russian peacekeepers.

Amid the violence at least two Russians were killed, reportedly including the deputy commander of Russias North Fleet submarine forces, Captain First Rank (Colonel) Ivan Kovgan, who was seconded to the region with Russian forces stretched desperately thin.

Under the terms of the CSTO, any military aggression against one member is seen as an attack on all of them, just like NATOs Article 5, but Russia did nothing to stop the latest incursion.

In an interview earlier this month with Politico, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan spelled out clearly what was going on: Armenia could no longer rely on Moscow to guarantee its safety and had to assert its own independence. As a result of the events in Ukraine, the capabilities of Russia have changed, Pashinyan said. We want to have an independent country, a sovereign country, but we have to have ways to avoid ending up in the center of clashes between West and East, North and South."

It is clear that the bloodshed is not yet over. Thousands have joined protests on the streets of Yerevan this week to protest Pashinyans perceived desertion of Armenians inside Nagorno-Karabakh, known to Armenians as Artsakh. Despite the ceasefire, there are still reports of fighting in the mountainous region.

The Karabakh conflict began in the late Soviet era when Armenians inside the enclave demanded that it be transferred from the control of Azerbaijan to Armeniaboth then still Soviet republics.

The main man in Soviet Azerbaijan was Heydar Aliyev, a former KGB official who became the first president of independent Azerbaijan in 1983. After his death in 2003, his son Ilham took over, thanks to rigged elections, and has held power ever since after doing away with constitutional term limits.

The Gravedigger Who Fears Digging His Own Sons Grave in Nagorno-Karabakh

If Putin, abandoned by yet another ally as Armenia turns towards NATO, is the big geopolitical loser in the latest Caucasian crisis, the big winnerthis may have a familiar ringis Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Turkey has long been Azerbaijans key ally, supporting it through the various Karabakh conflicts. As Aliyev carved out a post-Soviet role for his nation, primarily as an energy producer, he has developed increasingly close ties with the Turkic-speaking nations of Central Asia and with Erdogan himself.

In June 2021, Aliyev even took Erdogan on a visit to an area of Nagorno-Karabakh recaptured the previous year in a 44-day conflict that laid the ground for this weeks victory. Armenia called the visit an outright provocation against regional peace and security, but the Turkish leader's message was unmistakable: that this is now his backyard.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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Shockingly Quick Defeat Shows Putin Is Now Too Weak to Defend ... - Yahoo News