There is an old Soviet tale about Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. At lunchtime, he would retreat into his office and stare at the map of the world. The map was centered on the Soviet Union. The old Bolshevik would just glare at it as if it were a giant chessboard awaiting Moscow’s next move.
On Wednesday, Chinese officials hosted Taliban co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar and a Taliban political delegation in Tianjin. During the high-profile visit, China’s Foreign Ministry publicly expressed support for the Taliban, saying they would “play an important role in the process of peace, reconciliation and reconstruction in Afghanistan.”
Joe Biden is lying about his 2011 dealings with Vladimir Putin in Moscow, and the Russian president isn’t putting up with it. I know this because I was an eyewitness to the events of that day. Events that Washington, D.C.’s media have failed to press Biden on – and that give an extraordinary insight into how our now-president was humiliated by his Russian counterparts.