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Russia, The US and Syria After the Boston Bombing

Vladimir Putin can remind Barack Obama that in Syria, as in Chechnya, misreading the essential nature of an insurgency has its price, writes Fyodor Lukyanov.
U.S. President Barack Obama meets with Russia's President Vladimir Putin in Los Cabos, Mexico, June 18, 2012. The leaders are in Los Cabos to attend the G20 summit.       REUTERS/Jason Reed   (MEXICO - Tags: POLITICS) - RTR33TY7
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Every major terrorist act gives rise to conspiracy theories. September 11, 2001, still stirs the imagination of those who are convinced that it involved powerful forces pursuing their own goals behind the scenes. The tragedy in Boston is no exception. Although it was on a much smaller scale, questions remain about where it came from and why it happened. Since many people in Russia are convinced that America’s all-powerful intelligence agencies exercise absolute power around the world, some interesting hypotheses have appeared here, too. For example, everything that happened is connected to the events in Syria, with China looming in the background.

American strategists are supposedly worried about the increasingly close relationship between Moscow and Beijing (after becoming president of the People’s Republic of China, Xi Jinping visited Russia on his first foreign trip) and have begun playing a complex combination by bringing the Chechens into the game. This puts the issue of Russian-American cooperation in the war on terrorism back on the agenda. The United States is beginning to show a better understanding of Russia’s position on the situation in the Caucasus, while, at the same time, Washington is distancing itself from the Syrian conflict, which has reached a stalemate with no good prospects anyway, thereby seeming to make concessions to Moscow. As a result, Russia is drawn into a new round of cooperation, China is left on the sidelines, and the United States, by distracting Russia, can increase its presence in Asia, while also guaranteeing that the two greatest Eurasian powers will not join forces against America.

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