Either I mis-remembered, conflating the controversy over the the "duty to warn" and the attack on the Crocus theater with the aftermath of Beslan, or I couldn't find the cite in a quick search of the Bush and Russia books here, but the 2004 rupture was real. Here is an account of it in a David Ignatius column https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/03/09/putin-bush-chechnya-ukraine-war/. He says Russian resentment turned on the conviction that the US had sheltered at some point the Chechens who made the attack.
NATO was created as, and remains, a defensive alliance. Expanding it east to include former Soviet republics has never been a threat to Russian security. Putin’s real objection, as he has been w quite clear is that it threatens his dream of reconstituting the Kievan Rus. That is what motivated him to interfere in the politics of Belarus and Ukraine. The West is entirely justified in objecting to both his expansionist dreams and his thuggish tactics.
Please explain: "Putin blamed the US for withholding intelligence on the 2004 terrorist attack on a school in Beslan, North Ossetia, in which 186 children were killed"
Since the 1990 "evolutions" in former Yugoslavia, US has executed a strategy to surround Russia with belligerents who would access the nuclear 'might' of the US military industry complex. Russia told the US in Autumn 2021 that US threatened its existence. Rightly so!
US would not bend.
Performance of US' legacy highly profitable shock and awe has been disappointing. Logistics issues ignored!
US press is less 'open' than Soviet press in the cold war!
With deep moral decay, US deterrence is nil. Nuclear is all US has!
Reasonable people can disagree. nothing very defensive about spreading east, at least past a certain point.
Either I mis-remembered, conflating the controversy over the the "duty to warn" and the attack on the Crocus theater with the aftermath of Beslan, or I couldn't find the cite in a quick search of the Bush and Russia books here, but the 2004 rupture was real. Here is an account of it in a David Ignatius column https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/03/09/putin-bush-chechnya-ukraine-war/. He says Russian resentment turned on the conviction that the US had sheltered at some point the Chechens who made the attack.
NATO was created as, and remains, a defensive alliance. Expanding it east to include former Soviet republics has never been a threat to Russian security. Putin’s real objection, as he has been w quite clear is that it threatens his dream of reconstituting the Kievan Rus. That is what motivated him to interfere in the politics of Belarus and Ukraine. The West is entirely justified in objecting to both his expansionist dreams and his thuggish tactics.
Please explain: "Putin blamed the US for withholding intelligence on the 2004 terrorist attack on a school in Beslan, North Ossetia, in which 186 children were killed"
Did the U. S. have the intelligence?
Since the 1990 "evolutions" in former Yugoslavia, US has executed a strategy to surround Russia with belligerents who would access the nuclear 'might' of the US military industry complex. Russia told the US in Autumn 2021 that US threatened its existence. Rightly so!
US would not bend.
Performance of US' legacy highly profitable shock and awe has been disappointing. Logistics issues ignored!
US press is less 'open' than Soviet press in the cold war!
With deep moral decay, US deterrence is nil. Nuclear is all US has!