Staunton, June 22 – As he does each week, Dmitry Bukovsky of Kyiv’s Delovaya Stolitsa compiles a list of “the top five propaganda myths, fakes, and stupidities” for the previous week out of the mass flow of such misinformation and disinformation coming out of Moscow about Ukraine and Russia. This week’s harvest contains the following […]
Staunton, June 15 – The potential for ethnic conflicts in Tuva is relatively low, according to Vladimir Datsyshen, but if economic problems, Russian flight, and increasing localism among Tuvan intellectuals continue, Russia’s control of that republic on the Mongolian border could be threatened by the rise of militant Buddhism and shamanism. In a new article […]
Staunton, June 19 – A few days ago, Mikhail Khodorkovsky said that he was completely certain that those Russian opposition figures who are promising to return Crimea to Ukraine if they come to power will “not receive a mandate” to do so from Russian society, a declaration that has angered many Ukrainians and other Russian […]
Staunton, June 20 – Drawing on Richard Pipes’ argument that the 1863 Polish revolt was viewed by many Russians as an illegitimate European attack on Russia and led them to conclude that “only the autocracy could preserve the integrity of the country,” Irina Glebova argues that the Ukrainian revolution of 2013-2014 has had “approximately the […]
Staunton, June 20 – Many people continue to carry with them an image of the iron curtain as consisting of barbed wire, concrete blocks, raked earth, and KGB guards. That was certainly part of the institution of isolation that the Soviet government imposed on its own people and its empire in Eastern Europe. But it […]
Staunton, June 19 – Not having found any evidence that the Young Karelia (“Nuori Karjala”) movement has taken money from Finland as anonymous sources had claimed, justice ministry officials in Petrozavodsk nonetheless argue that it should be declared “a foreign agent” because it had received a grant from the UN and hosted visitors from abroad. […]
Staunton, June 15 – Every nation chooses for itself its own epithet, an American poet wrote just after the end of World War II. England, he said, was “merry old.” France was “la belle France.” “And Russia was once called holy.” Now, ever more Russians again are referring to their country in that way – […]
Staunton, June 16 – Transbaikal officials are working on a deal with China that would allow Chinese firms to rent more than 300,000 acres of land in that Russian region, but a Beijing official says that the deal won’t go through unless Moscow agrees to a massive influx of Chinese workers because there are no […]
Staunton, June 17 – Moscow’s annexation of Crimea and intervention in Ukraine’s Donbas has left many Ukrainian Baptist communities in a difficult state because the occupation authorities do not want to recognize them unless they break their ties with Kyiv and subordinate themselves to Moscow. But it has also, says Igor Bandura, the vice president […]
Staunton, June 15 – Chechnya under Ramzan Kadyrov has challenged Moscow in many ways, but now it has taken on a new one. The center has discouraged the non-Russian republics from promoting the survival and use of their titular languages outside their borders. But now Chechnya is doing just that – and adding insult to […]
