Staunton, January 27 – Despite fears that Vladimir Putin may soon shift from his partially covert and still in some circles deniable offensive in Ukraine to a full-scale military invasion of that country, there are five compelling reasons why that won’t happen, Kseniya Kirillova says. But the very fact that a full-scale invasion won’t happen […]
Staunton, January 26 – Moscow believes that its attack on Mariupol and its envelopment of a significant Ukrainian force will put Russia in a position to force Kyiv to capitulate, Moscow commentator Boris Sokolov says; but he argues that Ukraine still has the ability to win this war despite these defeats. In a commentary on […]
Staunton, January 26 – Because both Vladimir Putin and the West have tried, albeit for radically different reasons, to avoid saying that Russia has invaded Ukraine and that the two countries are thus at war, many of the terms analysts and political leaders have used in earlier conflicts need to be updated to take the […]
Staunton, January 26 – Russian officials insist that food prices have gone up in Kaliningrad only 22 percent over the last year, but a survey of markets and stores found that they have in fact risen 50 to 60 percent, a development that is forcing Kaliningraders to draw down their savings and cut back their […]
Staunton, January 26 – The Russian Orthodox metropolitanate of Stavropol and Nevinnomyssk says that over the last 20 years, some 6,000 mosques have been built in that region for its six million Muslims while only 600 churches have been erected for its three million Russian speakers. That means there is now one mosque for every […]
Staunton, January 26 – In the Moscow Patriarchate’s clearest signal yet that it opposes the non-ethnic identity of Rossiyane [Russian Federation citizens], Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin says that no one should be afraid of talking about the national self-consciousness of the ethnic Russian people or try to “dissolve” it within some “new and artificial identities” at […]
Staunton, January 25 – Ninety-six years ago, the Soviet government launched what became a decade-long campaign to “de-Cossackize” Russia, a campaign that Cossacks remember as “yet another genocide” in the Caucasus and a reminder that relations between the Cossacks and the state are more complicated and conflicted than most assume. As portrayed in Hollywood movies […]
Staunton, January 25 – The Anschluss of Crimea could have become the occasion for the formation of a new nation in Russia, just as Moscow’s attacks on Ukraine have contributed to nation building in Ukraine. But Vladimir Putin has not been willing or perhaps even able to take that step, Aleksandr Morozov says. The reason, […]
Staunton, January 25 – Aleksandr Sytin, an historian who quit the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies because of its imperialist and anti-Western views, says that despite widespread support for Vladimir Putin, no one in Russia “will die” for the Kremlin leader. According to Sytin, those who are prepared to die now in Ukraine are a […]
Staunton, January 23 — Following the “tectonic” shifts in the world that Russia’s moves in Ukraine began, the leaders of the Baltic countries must recognize “the need to have a dialogue with Russia,” the head of the Moscow Institute for the Russian Abroad says. If they don’t, others who are ready to do so “will […]
