Staunton, February 27 – “Ukraine is where Georgia was six years ago, but Russia has been transformed into a second North Korea,” according to Sergi Kapanadze, a former Georgian diplomat and negotiator. As a result, what stopped Vladimir Putin in Georgia in 2008 won’t do so again in Ukraine, he says, but if Kyiv recognizes […]
Staunton, February 27 – Because Vladimir Putin seeks both recognition as the leader of a superpower and a new Yalta at which he and Western leaders will partition the world into spheres of influence and because he can only move toward that goal by new acts of aggression, the Kremlin leader is likely to attack […]
Staunton, February 27 – Having been slowed by Ukrainian resistance and hope to use the Minsk Accords to avoid new sanctions, Moscow is planning to spark uprisings in major Ukrainian cities in March and April before beginning a major military attack on the country in May, according to Yuri Lutsenko, head of the Poroshenko faction […]
Staunton, February 27 — Despite Vladimir Putin’s bombast and his apparent success in convincing many Russians and some Western leaders otherwise, the Kremlin leader is not a superman, according to Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and the Russian military is not the all powerful force he claims it is, according to Kseniya Kirillova. Speaking at Chatham House in […]
Staunton, February 24 – Valery Panyushkin today points to a development that, like the dog in the Sherlock Holmes story which didn’t bark, not everyone has noticed because it is about the absence of something rather than its presence – and that is the increasing lack of stories on Russian television about Russia. It has […]
Staunton, February 24 – The conflict in Ukraine is not one conflict but three: it is a conflict between the eastern and western portions of Ukraine, it is a conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and it is a conflict between Russia and the West, Vladimir Pastukhov says. And to resolve all three will require a […]
Staunton, February 24 – Both those who support Vladimir Putin and those who oppose him overestimate the Kremlin leader, Vitaly Portnikov says, with the former assuming there is nothing he cannot do and the latter explaining away their own shortcomings and failures by making the same assumption. As a result, the former assume that whatever […]
Staunton, February 3 – Calls by Russian politicians to rename Crimea “Tavrida” or “Tavriya” are part of an effort by Moscow to “de-Turkify” the peninsula and thereby separate the Crimean Tatars from the land “on which they arose and evolved,” according to Bekir Mamurov, editor in chief of Kyyrym. Mamutov, who is also a member […]
Staunton, February 25 – On February 25, Georgians marked the 94th anniversary of what Tbilisi calls “the battle of the Soviet Occupation” of that country in 1921, a self-definition that means six post-Soviet states now officially view the Soviet system as an occupation and one that marks an important milestone in their separation from Russia […]
Staunton, February 25 – At a time when criticizing Ukraine for mistakes it has made in pursuing its goals is a cottage industry not only in Ukraine and Russia but in the West, Maksim Artemyev, a commentator for Forbes.ru, identifies eight major mistakes Moscow has made that Russia has made in its Ukrainian policy. What […]
