THE "WE KNOW YOU KNOW WE KNOW" GAME

by Colin Liddell

Things are hotting up in the Ukraine. After earlier gains by the Ukrainian army, the pro-Russian rebels have successfully counter-attacked. They have reportedly recaptured Lugansk airport, and have even opened a new front further South near the Sea of Azov, where the city of Mariupol seems to be threatened.

Of course what has happened is that, following earlier setbacks for the rebels, Putin has slowly turned up the dial of Russian military support, either in the shape of more or better weapons or "special volunteers" – probably both. It's not unlikely that a stray column of tanks may have crossed the border as well.

The pattern the war has been developing in recent month reveals very clearly the kind of game Putin is playing, and also how it is likely to play out.

WHAT WILL RUSSIA DO?

An interview with Alexander Dugin on the Syrian crisis.

by Manuel Ochsenreiter

Prof. Dugin, the world faces right now in Syria the biggest international crisis since the downfall of the Eastern Block in 1989/90. Washington and Moscow find themselves in a proxy-confrontation on the Syrian battleground. Is this a new situation?

Dugin: We have to see the struggle for geopolitical power as the old conflict of land power represented by Russia and sea power represented by the USA and its NATO partners. This is not a new phenomenon; it is the continuation of the old geopolitical and geostrategic struggle. The 1990s was the time of the great defeat of the land power represented by the USSR. Mikhail Gorbachev refused the continuation of this struggle. This was a kind of treason and resignation in front of the unipolar world. But with President Vladimir Putin in the early years of this decade, came a reactivation of the geopolitical identity of Russia as a land power. This was the beginning of a new kind of competition between sea power and land power.