Staunton, February 2 – Why don’t Russia and the other former Soviet republics have an institute to produce specialists who know how to “enslave other countries,” having organized pro-Moscow revolutions in them, seized power via coups, and exported “pro-Russian ideology” to them? That outrageous question is posed today by Erlan Esenaliyev and Ermek Taichibekov, two […]
Staunton, February 2 – Russian revolutionary Lev Bronstein famously took his nom de guerre “Trotsky” from that of his first jailor because he observed in Russia there will always be jailors and bureaucrats. And indeed, Ivan Sukhov argues today, the Russian bureaucracy is still capturing those who try to lead it and overwhelming those who […]
Staunton, January 30 – The old left-right continuum in Russian politics with its differences between conservatives and reformers ceased to be relevant as the basis for analysis and understanding with Putin’s Anschluss of Crimea and the formation of a populist left-right alliance of support, according to Aleksandr Morozov. In a commentary in New Times, he […]
Staunton, February 1 – Vladimir Putin has clearly learned the lesson some of his predecessors did not: when times are tough, boosting alcohol prices is a good way to trigger a social explosion. But his decision to cut the price of the cheapest vodka — which went into effect February 1 — is a recipe […]
Staunton, January 28 – Vladimir Putin is very much afraid of losing face, and some in the West are trying to figure out how to resolve the situation in Ukraine without his doing so. But what they should be focusing on, Aleksandr Skobov says, is precisely how to “help him lose face and break his […]
Staunton, January 28 – With each passing day, it is becoming more critical that the US and the EU increase their assistance to Ukraine not only because Russian aggression there is becoming more violent and vicious but also because what happens in Ukraine is rapidly becoming a model for the future of the post-Soviet space, […]
Staunton, January 27 – For more than 150 years, the Anglo-Saxon world has been the main competitor and threat to the Russian way of life, and today, the United States is carrying out ‘a ‘quiet’ and bloodless’ war against Russia by promoting the Americanization of its language and culture, according to a Moscow military writer. […]
Staunton, January 27 — Many people are operating under the misapprehension that nuclear weapons make war impossible: they don’t. Rather they simply change the way in which war is conducted, with each side employing as weapons many things that no one would have called weapons before, according to Dmitry Yuryev. Indeed, the Moscow analyst says, […]
Staunton, January 25 -Russian actions at the Donetsk airport last week and in Mariupol January 24 show that “except for military blackmail and murders, Putin has nothing to offer either Western leaders or Ukraine,” a conclusion that Vitaly Portnikov argues should compel both to re-examine their willingness to negotiate with him. Ukraine’s defensive actions need […]
Staunton, January 27 – Russia’s attraction of labor migrants from the former Soviet republics in recent years was “the main and most reliable integration instrument” Moscow had over that space, but now, thanks to the collapse of the economy and harsh restrictions on immigration, Russia has lost both migrants and that source of attraction as […]
