EuroMaidan Revolution
Ross Douthat: The games Putin plays
THE last time geopolitics intruded into an Olympics, during the 2008 Beijing Games, Vladimir Putin was the crisis’s winner: his military delivered a decisive spanking to Russia’s neighbor Georgia, whose government had fatally overestimated the West’s willingness to intervene on its behalf. The mini-war sent a clear message: after a long period of retrenchment, the Russian bear still had an appetite for power politics, and the claws to satisfy it.