Russia

Authored by Mark Hemingway via WeeklyStandard.com,

Covering the Trump presidency has not always been the media’s finest hour, but even grading on that curve, the month of December has brought astonishing screwups.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has once again balked at questions over the need for a second special counsel to investigate the Justice Department, telling reporters at a Friday press conference that while he's concerned about recent allegations of bias within the FBI, "sometimes things that might appear to be bad in the press have more innocent explanations, so fairness and justice should also be provided to our personnel." 

Authored by Tom Luongo,

Iran is joining the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). By early next year, February by this account, Iran will join the five founding members of the Union and open the door for Turkey to do so later in 2018.

Between this and the end of the war in Syria, it’s not hard to declare the Brzezinski Doctrine of U.S.-led Central Asian chaos as gasping its last breaths.

Last November, one week after Trump's election and just as the "Russian collusion" narrative in the US was getting warmed up, we reported a bizarre incident in the top echelons, one in which Russia's Economy Minister Alexey Ulyukayev was arrested on suspicion of taking a $2 million bribe in return for his ministry’s support of a positive assessment that would allow state oil company Rosneft to complete a deal to purchase the government's stake in another Russian oil major, Bashneft, after he was monitored and his cell phone was bugged by the FSB for more than a year.

Via Oriental Review,

On Monday, Vladimir Putin unexpectedly interrupted his journey to Egypt, stopping off at Russia’s Hmeymim airbase in Syria and announcing the windup of Russia’s most successful military campaign abroad.