RE:RE:RE:HOMOPHONESMy apologies to the board for my replies on this topic, but what has been presented as a balanced view of Putin is hardly balanced. Cohen was well-known as pro-Putin. An excerpt from the article I just posted:
In recent years, Dr. Cohen was a frequent commentator on Russian matters in the Nation and on radio and television. In general, he supported Russia’s sovereign rights and seldom criticized Putin’s autocratic impulses or human rights abuses.
Dr. Cohen likened Russia’s view of NATO to someone in a suburban house watching neighbors turn their lawns into military camps. (Critics pointed out that the countries bordering Russia were the ones asking to join NATO because they feared being overrun.)
When Russia annexed Crimea — part of the country of Ukraine — in 2014, then instigated an armed uprising in Ukraine, Dr. Cohen said the actions were justified as a response to “surreptitious NATO expansion.”
The purpose of the aggressive stance, he said on WABC radio’s “The John Batchelor Show,” was to “restore Russia’s traditional zones of national security on its borders, [and] that means Ukraine as well.”
On CNN, he declared, “Putin is not a thug. He’s not a neo-Soviet imperialist who’s trying to re-create the Soviet Union. He’s not even anti-American.”
After these comments, Dr. Cohen was called a “dupe” in New York magazine and was charged in Slate with “repeating Russian misinformation.” The headline of a 2014 New Republic article referred to him as “Vladimir Putin’s American apologist.”
“He holds views that I also hold,” Dr. Cohen told the Times. “It’s the views that I defend, not Putin.”
Later, Dr. Cohen discounted claims, supported by U.S. intelligence agencies and a bipartisan Senate report, that the Russian government had interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. In an appearance on Fox News, he called a potential investigation of President Trump’s connections to Russia “the No. 1 threat to the United States today,” adding, “There is no evidence there was any wrongdoing.”