Stephen F. Cohen Quotes

There’s a golden moment now to be had for everybody’s security, and it’s been thwarted by this mindless… I mean, you can hate on Trump all you want, but there’s got to be a higher priority and that’s got to be international American security, and we’re letting that opportunity slip away, I fear.

What Putin came to power to do was to modernize Russia, and that does not involve a cold war with the West. Period. End of story. That’s his mission. He wants to go down in history as the man who did this. Cold war, not to mention hot war, is spoiling what he sees as his mission.

Today I think it’s a very high probability, partly because of this Russiagate nonsense, partly because the lack of American leadership.

In four, maybe more decades of... studying Russian-American relations, I never really took seriously the possibility of war between the United States and Russia...

This is an opportunity for Trump to do the right thing and do it clean, to say to Zelensky, I support this negotiation with Putin. I hope that you and Putin can settle your conflicts.

The chance for Zelensky, the new president who had this very large victory, 70 plus percent to negotiate with Russia an end to that war, it’s got to be seized. And it requires the United States, basically, simply saying to Zelensky, 'Go for it, we’ve got your back.'

Why would you tempt one or another Ukrainian leadership to broaden the war, where you want above all to bring peace?

First of all, what everybody must want is peace between Russia and Ukraine...

Well, the first thing to remember is, is that President Obama was under enormous pressure to send military equipment to Ukraine/And why did he refuse? Well, I’m not sure what his calculation was, but the, the wisdom of not sending is clear...

You know what they said. They said—they said, when this got leaked, that this is a low point in statecraft. After Snowden? After Snowden? I mean, what did Tennessee Williams used to say? Mendacity? Mendacity? The mendacity of it all? Don’t they trust us, our government, to tell us a little bit of the truth at last?

We’re not going to be told, just like we’re not being told what’s going on in these private conversations about deposing the president of Ukraine. ...and if the Russians leak them, it doesn’t count. Is that right?

The United States is prepared to embrace that guy, too—anything to get rid of Yanukovych, because they think this is about Putin. That’s all they really got on their mind.

Notice the intimacy with which the Americans deal with the two leading so-called “moderate”—and these are big shots, they both want to be president—Ukrainian opposition.... Tyagnybok, that they say has got to play a role, he’s the leader of the Freedom Party, the Svoboda Party, but a large element of that party, to put it candidly, is quasi-fascist.... This is the guy... that Senator John McCain in November or December went to Kiev and embraced. Either McCain didn’t know who he was, or he didn’t care.

Should—we, American citizens, should be allowed to choose which policy we want? But they conceal it from us. And I’m extremely angry that the people in this country who say they deplore this sort of thing have fallen silent.

The highest-ranking State Department official, who presumably represents the Obama administration, and the American ambassador in Kiev are, to put it in blunt terms, plotting a coup d’état against the elected president of Ukraine.