No foreign power has been a more prominent ally to the Assad regime than Russia. Along with China, Russia yesterday once again vetoed a Western-sponsored UN Security Council resolution on Syria, even as international pressure to act mounts.
But even the previously stalwart Kremlin has shown hints that it thinks Assad’s end is near. The Guardian notes that Russia’s ambassador to France, Alexandre Orlov, told French RFI radio today that “I believe it is difficult for him to remain after everything that has happened... and he has accepted this in some way. … He has accepted he has to go, but to go in a civilized way.”
The Guardian adds that Russia also has yet to deliver its controversial shipment of military helicopters to Syria. While a Russian source told Interfax that the worsening situation in Syria has prevented the safe shipment of the helicopters, the Guardian wonders if perhaps the Russians “are just not trying very hard.”
Mark Sappenfield
Dear Reader,
About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:
“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”
If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.
But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.
The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.
We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”
If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.
