Moscow’s Actions Producing Exactly the Opposite of Its Proclaimed Goals, Eidman Says 2016-05-03 00:30:45 Staunton, VA, May 2, 2016 – Even during the first Cold War, Moscow commentator Igor Eidman says, there was no talk about Sweden and Finland joining NATO. Now that is very much on the front burner of discussions, a reflection of the […]
According to preliminary statistics, 660,000 Muscovites attended Easter services at one of the churches of the Russian capital today while only about 100,000 went to May Day events, a kind of referendum on the two holidays.
Those who study the post-Soviet world and especially its non-Russian parts are often struck by the fact that many who do so show an understanding or even sympathetic deference to Russia and Russian feelings while ignoring those of the peoples of living in countries near Russia and a tendency to forget or downplay the crimes of communism.
General Sergey Afanasyev, deputy chief of the GRU, the Russian military’s intelligence service, says that approximately 4,500 people in Central Asia have sworn allegiance to the Islamic State.
Many of the apparent contradictions in Russia today, Lilia Shevtsova says, can be explained by the fact that Vladimir Putin and his regime have entered what Argentinian political scientist Guilliermo O’Donnell once called “the impotence of omnipotence,” the gradual loss of power by leaders who remain in office for a long time.
Given the longstanding servility of the Russian people, Vladimir Putin can be deprived of popular support only by showing how weak he in fact is, according to a commentator, something that requires the opposition within Russia to unite and the West to reduce to a minimum any contacts with him.
Many experts are speculating whether Putin’s regime will fall, but what’s important to analyze are the ways and means, as these could be very dangerous for the world. Nikolay Petrov, currently a visiting senior fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, has come up with the most sophisticated scenario.
As the world’s attention shifts, many Russians and many in the West are telling themselves that Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine has been a war like any other regardless of whether they support it or not. But in fact, as Arkady Babchenko points out, this has been something else, “a point of bifurcation” and a fundamental turning point in Russian history.
At least one person who asked Vladimir Putin an inconvenient question was arrested, others were harassed, and still a third was denied the opportunity because operators said the city he was calling from – Asbestos – doesn’t exist.
Germany’s Bild has published excerpts from a new book by Boris Reitschuster titled Putin’s Secret War that suggests that Moscow is organizing special military units inside Germany and other Western countries that the Kremlin could use to destabilize these states
