In the thick of instability

We appear to have returned to the usual state of tension between Washington and Moscow, following a period when we could not be sure of how relations would develop given US President Donald Trump's unclear declarations both during his election campaign and after he won.

It doesn't matter if this shift is due to the congressional investigation into allegations that certain close aides of Trump developed ties with Russia in the runup to the US elections. What is certain is that the crisis in Syria and the overall situation in the Middle East were not among Trump's top priorities during the race or once he was installed in the White House. A sign of this was that in his first newspaper interview, the only real "warning" that Trump issued was that the US would take matters into its own hands if China could not handle the issue of North Korea's nuclear program.

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