Boris Yelstin

Monday morning. David Chalian, CNN Political Director, on CNN’s “New Day” program. News ticker: “How do Trump-Russia and DNC-Ukraine compare?
New Day co-anchor Alysin Camerota (former Fox anchor) puts the question to her Political Director.
Chalian’s mechanical reply: “Russia is an adversary, Ukraine is not.”
Camerota, as always exuding wisdom, follows up: “Thanks so much for sifting through this with us.” (Good, so that’s settled! There had been so much sifting there, in those few precious boilerplate minutes.)

The Ancient Greeks knew: “Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.” No less a figure than the late Zbigniew Brzezinski and the CIA made use of this saying by recruiting the Muslim Brotherhood to fight a proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, which led to the withdrawal of the Soviets from the Hindu Kush. Since then, the CIA used the mercenaries to fight more proxy wars in the Balkans, Chechnya, and Azerbaijan.

Last Friday the Atlantic Council hosted a curious panel in Washington, DC, dedicated to the 25th anniversary of the dissolution of the USSR: three shabby men who personally participated in a notorious, clandestine meeting in the Belavezha forest in Belarus on December 8, 1991 were seated on a stage in the capital of the principal beneficiary of that coup d’état – Boris Yeltsin’s then-Secretary of State Gennady Burbulis; the “founding president” of Ukraine Leonid Kravchuk; and the chairman of