Russia...
There are three important points about the role of Russia in the international community.
In order of importance:
First and above all, western Europe and the United States owe a profound debt to the tankers and infantrymen of the Red Army, to the peasants who grew the food to feed them, and to the workers of Magnitogorsk and elsewhere who made the tanks and the explosives they used to save us all from the Nazi abattoir. We have not paid this debt. We cannot now pay it to those to whom we owe it. But we can pay it forward--to their descendants and others...
Next, from 1919 to 1991 the Soviet Union taught all the inhabitants of the union republics and the autonomous regions that they were separate nationalities with long, brave histories who deserves, like all nationalities, to be self-governing. It took. There are now very strong nationalisms in Kazakhstan, in Ukraine, in Belarus, in Latvia, and so forth. Russia needs to recognize and accept this. Yes, the Ukrainian-Russian border was badly drawn by Vladimir Ilyich, Josef Vissarionovich, and Nikita Sergeyevitch. But the Kremlin's need to respect and accept the nationalisms of what the Kremlin wants to call its "near abroad" is an obligation the Kremlin created. The Russian Empire as a political configuration larger than the Great Russian nationality community is gone. The Kremlin needs to get over it...
Last, Donald Trump has "vulnerabilities" that the FSB is probably aware of and able to document at its option...
