Staunton, December 22 – “For mass repressions [in Russia], there are neither mechanisms, not resources, nor desire,” Yekaterina Schulmann says; but there may not need to be, according to Aleksandr Baunov, because “the average age of the population is about 40,” while “in all the countries of the ‘Arab Spring’ it is about 20.” “In […]
Staunton, December 22 – More than 60 percent of Russians say they have noted a deterioration of their economic situation over the last year, but 75 percent of them blame the West rather than their own government for this situation, according to a study conducted by the Moscow Institute of Sociology. In a summary provided […]
Staunton, December 21 – The conflict between Russia and Turkey after the shooting down of a Russian aircraft that violated Turkish airspace has led to intensified pressure on Circassians who have succeeded in returning to their ancestral homeland in the North Caucasus and reduced still further Moscow’s willingness to take in Circassians from war-torn Syria. […]
Staunton, December 21 – Many observers assume that those who fled the Donbass to the Russian Federation did so because they were pro-Russian while those who fled in the opposite direction into other parts of Ukraine were pro-Ukrainian, Maksim Bushkevich says. But in fact the calculations of those who fled the fighting were far more […]
Staunton December 21 — Even as Vladimir Putin continues to talk about the Russian world and the importance of reuniting it after the demise of the Soviet Union, the number and share of ethnic Russians in all former Soviet republics and occupied Baltic countries have declined, in many cases precipitously and with no sign that […]
Staunton, December 18 – The flood of news stories from a country as large, diverse and strange as the Russian Federation often appears to be is far too large for anyone to keep up with. But there needs to be a way to mark those which can’t be discussed in detail but which are too […]
Staunton, December 16 – Two new and completely outrageous Russian charges – that the Crimean Tatars are under the control of Turkish intelligence and that the Ukrainian Library in Moscow was involved in the preparation of terrorist actions in the Russian capital – point to a new round of increased dangers for Ukraine. Since the […]
Staunton, December 14 – Moscow’s primary goal in Syria is not to support its ally Bashar Al-Assad against all challenges but rather to destabilize the situation in the Middle East, undercutting the influence of the West and boosting its own; and to that end, it will be quite prepared to sacrifice the Syrian dictator, according […]
Staunton, December 12 – Russia faces a serious challenge in producing medicines domestically that it had been importing until Moscow’s counter-sanctions effort, a challenge complicated by a weak pharmaceutical industry, tensions between the state and academic researchers, and overly long periods between the invention of a drug and its production. All three of these problems […]
Staunton, December 12 – By his orders to the Russian army to respond “harshly” to any challenge to them in Syria, Vladimir Putin has brought the world to “the brink of war,” in the words of Wacław Radziwinowicz, the Moscow correspondent of Warsaw’s influential Gazeta Wyborcza. The Polish journalist points out that Putin’s order for […]
