This WAS bound to come out in Republicans opposition researched campaign efforts….
It now has come out in the New York Times…
The timing of this cannot be assumed to be a coincidence….
Sanders as the mayor of the Vermont City, though he was doing something for Cold War detente by forming a ‘sister city’ relationship with Yaroslavl in Russia….(There are other US/Russian ‘sister cities’)…Some in Russia wanted to use the program for propaganda favouring Russia AGAINST America….
The relationship still exists ….
“Mayor Sanders was proud to join dozens of American cities in seeking to end the Cold War through a Sister Cities program that was encouraged by President Reagan himself,” a Sanders campaign spokesman, Mike Casca, said in a statement. “The exchange between Burlington and Yaroslavl, which continues to this day, confirmed Sanders’s long held view: by meeting face to face, we can break down the barriers and stereotypes that exist between people and their governments.”
Mr. Sanders’s involvement in the Cold War debate grew in the 1980s as he forcefully opposed the Reagan administration’s plans to have Burlington and other American cities make evacuation plans for a potential nuclear war.
Instead, Mr. Sanders reached out to the Soviet Union via an organization based in Virginia, requesting a sister-city partnership with the Cold War adversary in an effort to end the threat of nuclear annihilation.
“We were saying: The goal is to not have a nuclear war, not to plan and prepare for it,” said Terry Bouricius, a Burlington alderman at the time who accompanied Mr. Sanders on the trip.
This was also the era of perestroika and glasnost, economic and cultural changes promoted by Mr. Gorbachev that had sparked optimism among some in the West — along with skepticism from many others — that the Kremlin was prepared to adopt a more conciliatory stance abroad and provide greater freedoms to its own people.
While Mr. Sanders has taken heat from President Trump and his campaign for this outreach to the Soviets, his supporters say it was a timely effort to help defuse tensions and stands in contrast to Mr. Trump’s affinity for strongman leaders like Russia’s current president, Vladimir V. Putin…..
Note…
There ARE those who think Sanders is a Communist, Not Socialist….
The above story COULD used against him politically….
image…Credit…Via the family of Valery Volovenko