Are US sanctions strong enough without Russian ban from SWIFT financial system? BY DANIEL FINE, SENIOR COLUMNIST
THE COMPLETE ARTICLE IS HERE→ THE COMPLETE ARTICLE BY DANIEL FINE
"Thirty years ago in Moscow the Soviet Union crumbled and everyone watched on CNN.
One question was still undecided. This was what would happen to the “Near Abroad”— Russians who were now separated from Russia in independent republics.
President Boris Yeltsin promised that they would have the Russian republic or Federation to look after their interests, language and culture.
President Vladimir Putin said nothing about this but rather denounced the Communist Soviet Union as having abandoned Russia.
Ukraine’s existence was part of that end of the Soviet Union, which Putin declares was a grave mistake.
I was in Moscow pursuing a lease to the second largest copper deposit in the world and at the celebration of the birth of the Russian Federation as the prime power in the CIS, or Community of Independent States. "