Staunton, October 5 – One of the characteristics of Vladimir Putin’s behavior — just as has been the case with other dictators in the past — is that he has often signaled what he intends to do by blaming those he intends to attack for something they have not done and have no intention of […]
Staunton, September 16 – Moscow’s demands for a voice in the definition of the policies of the Ukrainian state are “something unheard of in the contemporary world,” Georgy Kunadze, who served as Deputy Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation at the beginning of the Yeltsin period, says. “It is impossible to satisfy them,” he continues […]
Staunton, September 15 – In a change of tactics reflecting Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s statement on Saturday that Russia wants to have a “neutral” Ukraine rather than to create another Transdniestria lest that further alienate the rest of Ukraine, Moscow will back the participation of the Donbas in the October 26 Ukrainian elections. Under […]
Staunton, September 8 – The current ceasefire ends one phase of the war between Russia and Ukraine making this a good time to consider the impact of the conflict in the broadest terms, as Moscow commentator Konstantin Gaaze does so in ten questions and answers. Gaaze’s first question is “Why did we (they) act as […]
Staunton, June 27 – The Russian military was ready to invade Ukraine in April but stopped short of doing so, Pavel Felgengauer, a leading independent military analyst in Moscow, says. Now it is not and probably won’t be until the middle of July at the earliest “regardless of what happens in Ukraine. Felgengauer’s comments came […]
Staunton, June 17 – In the corridors of the Russian foreign ministry, commentator Ruslan Gorevoy says, people are saying that Moscow would hardly have annexed Crimea if other separatist movements had not appeared elsewhere in Ukraine that Moscow could use as leverage against Kyiv and block its turn toward the West. In the new issue […]
Staunton, June 11 – Unlike Spain which turned to economic modernization only seven years after the beginning of political modernization, a pattern that prevented the recrudescent of the past, Russia’s leaders chose the reverse, enriching themselves but opening the way for a return to support for Soviet-style imperialism, according to Emil Pain. And it is […]
Staunton, June 10 – Over the last several days, many in the West have professed to see Moscow pulling back from its subversive aggression against Ukraine and expressed confidence that the crisis Vladimir Putin’s actions there have caused is approaching an end that both Russia and the West will be able to live with, however […]
Staunton, May 27 – Thanks to the presidential elections, Ukraine has received “a breathing space,” but that space won’t last long, Yuri Felshtinsky says, because “Putin’s Ukrainian complex can be compared only with Stalin’s Polish complex and Hitler’s Jewish complex.” The last several months have demonstrated, the Russian historian says, that “one must not believe […]
Staunton, May 15 – Russian commentators have talked openly about dividing up Ukraine and Moldova in order to support ethnic Russian communities there and weaken these two countries, but now one Moscow writer has taken such ideas further and called for the dividing up of Romania in support of Russian national interests in the Balkans. […]
