Staunton, October 19 – One of the most memorable passages of Solzhenitsyn’s “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” is when one GULAG inmate explains to another that Moscow has decided what time it is — regardless of where the sun is located in the sky — prompting the latter to speculate that the […]
Staunton, October 19 – In an indication of Vladimir Putin’s isolation even in the former Soviet space and of the weakness of the CIS as an institution, not a single president of a member state publicly supported the Kremlin leader’s bombing campaign in Syria at the CIS summit in Kazakhstan, Arkady Dubnov notes. The Russian […]
Reports of the murder of a dozen border guards by jihadist terrorists at the Turkmen-Afghan border this summer and the seizure of $1.5 million from jihadists in the north of the country have shone light on the much-increased threat Turkmenistan faces from international terrorism. Critics, including one dissident ex-MP, have expressed fears this could lead […]
Staunton, January 12 – Both the tsarist and Soviet armies had at various points units consisting of Muslim soldiers, and these units fought well. But if Moscow allows Central Asians to serve in the Russian army and even forms “Muslim battalions,” it is far from clear whether these units would be willing to fight for […]
Staunton, June 12 – The Russian Federation, by focusing on the construction of “oligarchic capitalism,” essentially “threw all the union republics” to their own fates, and as a result, the governments and peoples have turned away from Moscow and ethnic Russians are fleeing back to Russia, thus further undermining Russian influence. That harsh judgment, one […]
