Interview Highlights
– When Putin came to power in Russian in 2000 he had two missions: “Restore Russian statehood… and restore Russia’s traditional zones of security on its borders.”
– President Obama’s bombing campaign against ISIS “has failed”. In Syria, Russia says we need Assad to fight terrorism, whereas the White House is saying we can only join this fight if we also fight Assad. This is the main “political debate” occurring now.
– “The Israeli government didn’t feel the United States was handling the crisis in Syria in the right way and thought Russia may.”
– President Obama should put his “full weight” behind the Minsk accord to end the civil war in Ukraine. Obama “has been ambivalent” about it thus far.
About Stephen F. Cohen
Stephen F. Cohen is a Professor of Russian Studies and History Emeritus at NYU, and Professor of Politics Emeritus at Princeton University. He is among the most distinguished scholars of Russian history in the United States, and is internationally recognized for his academic works on Russian and Soviet political history since 1917. Cohen is also an expert on Russian-American relations, and has for decades contributed both domestically and abroad in shedding light on the two countries’ political and historical relationship. Cohen is contributing editor of The Nation and part of the editorial council of the Moscow based Svobodnaia Mysl’. He is currently working on a full biography about Nikolai Bukharin, to be released in 2014.
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