Hillary to pursue more aggressive policy on Russia, Mideast: Activist

Press TV has conducted an interview with Richard Becker, a member of the ANSWER Coalition, about the United States expanding sanctions against Russia over its support for anti-Kiev fighters in Ukraine and the 2014 reunification of the Crimean peninsula with the Russian mainland.

Here is a rough transcription of the interview:

Press TV: The US is in the middle of hammering out a lasting ceasefire with Russia regarding the Syria, yet it is simultaneously increasing its sanctions against Moscow, your take on the timing of this move.

Becker: Well it is really amazing that over and over and over again we see the reality that only certain countries in the world are eligible for sanctions and others are not. Like for instance the United States is not eligible for sanctions despite having launched a completely illegal war under false pretenses against Iraq which has cost so much destruction in the Middle East, the war against Libya, but no sanctions against the United States, these are much more brutal wars, and now we see Crimea where overwhelmingly the population voted to rejoin Russia after the coming into power in 2014 of a government in Ukraine which was studded with neo-Nazis and not too surprising given the experiences that the former Soviet Union, the Ukraine has had at the hands of Nazis back in World War II.

So I think this is really another outrageous situation and there are probably more sanctions that are going to be coming …

Press TV: I’d like to get your thoughts on what Washington expects from Russia when it has accepted the cries of the Crimeans and the Eastern Ukrainians which have said that Kiev has totally marginalized and neglected them for quite some time. Did Moscow really have a choice and if it didn’t extend its hand out to these cries, what other choices it had?

Becker: Well I think that that is a very good point. If after the coup in Ukraine there had not been any pushback from Russia, then the course would have been set for Ukraine to not only join the European Union but to join NATO. If the Ukraine had joined NATO, there would be no possible way that NATO would have accepted that Russia Black Sea Fleet could continue to be based in Crimea.

In fact I think the idea was for Crimea to become a NATO base as part of this ongoing campaign to surround Russia which has clearly been in the works now for the last 25 years despite the fact that when the Soviet Union fell in 1991 and even before that, the end of the Warsaw Pact, there were assurances that were given to Russia that NATO would not move eastward. Twelve new countries have been added to NATO since that time and Ukraine would have been number 13 and would have been actually I believe the most dangerous from Russian point of view.

Press TV: And right now with all the problems throughout the Middle East and in the world in general, how imperative is it for these two world powers to try to get along and avoid drifting into another Cold War at this point?

Becker: Well I think that it is clear that the United States is pursuing what it views as its interests as it always does, the United States government. In Syria, in the Middle East and in regard to Russia and we, I believe, are very likely to see an even more aggressive policy in Europe against Russia if Hillary Clinton and her entourage come into power with the November 8 election.

The people that are around her are very aggressive for Russia and we have to remember that we are talking about the second nuclear weapons power in the world so these are people who are playing with fire.  

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