One day after President Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin held their first phone call, Russian-backed forces mounted their largest offensive in months in eastern Ukraine.
Now, days later, one of Russia's most prominent opposition activists is in a coma in a Moscow hospital.
Vladimir Kara-Murza, a writer and civil-society activist with many supporters in Washington, D.C., is believed by his family to be the victim of a poisoning attack--the second they believe he has suffered since 2015.
His agony most likely holds a message from Putin to the new Trump administration. Since 2014, the Kremlin has endured sanctions from the United States and the European Union for its aggression in Ukraine and for human rights violations, such as the killings of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky and opposition leader Boris Nemtsov. With the new assault on Ukraine and the felling of Kara-Murza, the Kremlin hopes to establish that such crimes will be tolerated by the new U.S. president as part of a refounded relationship with Moscow.
So far, Putin's gambit is succeeding: Trump, while sparring with close U.S. ally Australia, has had nothing to say about the events in Ukraine and Moscow.
Editorial on 02/07/2017