TEMPLATE ANALYSIS

The decline in relations between Russia and the West began with the collapse of the Soviet Union, when Moscow having turned its back on Communism looked to its former Cold War foe for guidance.
The year was 1991, and what followed in the months and years after can today be seen for what it is – a great lost opportunity.
Washington sent in its academics, including one Jeffrey Sachs who came up with a revolutionary idea of his own called shock therapy – opening up the state and its assets to market forces.
Within seven years, a superpower was bankrupt and today’s Russia is arguably still suffering from the after effects both socially and economically.
Russians regard that dark period in their history as a lost decade. It was a time when a forward thinking and humanitarian leader like Boris Yelsin, who pulled his troops out of Grozny…

TEMPLATE ANALYSIS

The pictures unfolding on our television screens show well armed ‘professional’ troops patrolling the key sites of the Crimea. By all accounts, the atmosphere is calm and everyone is carrying on their daily duties with some waiving Russian flags, others Ukranian.
When they are asked whether they are Russian, the troops do not reply. Since the takeover in Kiev, hundreds of such men have arrived in the Crimea and have occupied key strategic areas. Initially, they were there to protect the Russian speakers who form the majority of the province but the longer they are there the more this looks like a complete takeover of what to Vladimir Putin is a vital part of his nation’s identity. Russia has been accused by the Nato Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen of putting peace at risk in Europe. The US President Barack Obama has threatened Moscow with economic and political…