Staunton, April 7 — Moscow officials are asserting and some in the West are accepting the notion that local officials in Crimea are to blame for any problems with the registration of Crimean Tatar media outlets such as ATR television, but that is a lie in the case of the former and a self-deception on […]
Staunton, April 7 — Eurasianism by definition is diverse because it argues that Russia to one degree or another has roots in both Europe and Asia, with some of its advocates stressing one and others the other. But few ever went as far in stressing the Asian nature of Russia as Erendzhen Khara-Davan whose ideas […]
Staunton, April 7 — One of the most notorious practices of the Soviet system in its last decades was the incarceration of perfectly health dissidents in psychiatric prisons under the pretext that they were suffering from “sluggish schizophrenia” and treating them with mind-altering drugs in the name of “curing” them of their proclivity to dissent. […]
Staunton, April 7 — Many members of the Russian intelligentsia do not support Vladimir Putin and his repression at home and aggression abroad, but a significant and surprising number of them do, the result of a complex combination of their experiences over the last generation and Putin’s actions as well, according to Kseniya Kirillova. In […]
Staunton, April 7 — Vladimir Putin stopped using the preposition “v” or “in” Ukraine in 2004, reverting to the older form “na” or “on,” in official government documents, an indication that the Kremlin leader did not view Ukraine as a country but rather as a Russian borderland, according to Andrey Illarionov. From the time he […]
Staunton, April 6 — Tajikistan is being pressured to shut down the Islamic Rebirth Party, something that will drive its members into the underground and make the Islamist threat there greater; and Dagestani leaders want to adopt an earlier Tajik policy and call home those from that republic now studying in Muslim schools abroad, something […]
Staunton, April 6 – At a time when many commentators are seeking to explain what is going on in Ukraine by searching for analogies with other places and events, it is useful to be reminded of the limits of at least some of these comparisons as Bogdan Butkevich does in an article titled “10 Reasons […]
Staunton, April 6 — Of the slightly more 3,000 media outlets in Crimea before the Anschluss, the Russian occupation authorities have reregistered and therefore allowed to continue to operate only 232. Hardest hit have been those in Crimean Tatar, there, the Russian officials have closed 11 out of 12. Of the 232 with official permission […]
Staunton, April 6 — Between 2,500 and 5,000 residents of Novosibirsk staged a demonstration yesterday to demand that Moscow follow the principles of the Russian Constitution and allow artistic and other freedoms instead of pursuing what is an increasingly obscurantist, reactionary and authoritarian policy. The meeting sparked by the Tannhauser case called for that play […]
Staunton, April 6 — Lies are not only a moral failing but ultimately a political one as well because they typically are unmasked and the liar held responsible and because, however cleverly designed, they quite often provide an indication directly or indirectly of where the liar plans to move because even those who lie cannot […]
