There has been an interesting development in the protests in Hong Kong. Hong Kong leader CY Leung has made the charge that “external forces” are involved in the protests. There were no specific details to the accusation, but it is a similar charge to that made by Russia after the protests in Kiev forced President Yanukovich to flee the country. We have no evidence that Leung’s fears are justified, but the accusation is often made against civil protests in order to delegitimize the protest movement as not being authentic. Meanwhile, violence continues to escalate in Hong Kong.
Sweden is searching its coast for what it suspects is a Russian submarine near the waters off Stockholm. The Swedes have received visual clues (see the photo) and intercepted Russian conversations on what is usually an emergency-only radio frequency. Submarines often patrol coastlines but if this photo (and it was one of three shot by three different observers) is actually of a Russian submarine, it clearly is in Swedish territorial waters. Both Sweden and Finland have recently reported harassing behavior in the air and on the sea by the Russians, and neither country is willing to ignore behavior that may signal aggressive intent. Right now, the suspicion is that the submarine may be experiencing mechanical trouble which would be an embarrassment to the Russian Navy.
I do not usually post purely opinion pieces, but Anne Applebaum of the Washington Post has written a short essay on an important question: whether the behavior of the US and NATO has provoked Russian President Putin to take such aggressive actions in east and central Europe. She ignores important Western actions in the Balkans in the 1990s, but she does list a large number of conciliatory actions taken by the West to encourage Russian support for preserving the Post-Cold War world order.
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