Staunton, January 21 – Since Moscow’s Anschluss of Crimea almost a year ago, many in Russia, Ukraine and the West have asked not only why Vladimir Putin has chosen the path of aggression, but also why he has chosen it now rather than at some other time and what his timing says about his broader […]
Staunton, January 19 – The looming decline in the number of Russian births, the increase in emigration, and the rise in the number of births among non-Russians and especially Muslim groups will spark “inter-ethnic conflicts” in the Russian Federation that will have “a more destructive effect” than those in Europe, according to Nataliya Shishkina. An […]
Staunton, January 20 – Vladimir Putin “understands that the threat to his regime is to be found among the thinking and educated” and thus has been taking steps to “destroy higher education” in Russia and cut the financing of science, according to Moscow commentator Alfred Koch. Such actions may buy Putin some short term protection, […]
Staunton, January 20 – Even as observers try to keep track of the shifting lines of the front in Donetsk and at the airport there, a more frightening form of conflict is spreading across Ukraine – a partisan-style war in other parts of that country that will give Moscow additional leverage on Kyiv while complicating […]
Staunton, January 19 — Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov’s aspirations to be the leader of Russia’s Muslims threatens the stability and unity of the Russian Federation by exacerbating conflicts between Moscow and the predominantly Muslim non-Russian republics and by intensifying concerns among Russians about what Kadyrov’s efforts mean for Russia. That conclusion is suggested but not […]
Staunton, January 19 – Over the past year, Ukrainians have torn down more than 500 memorials to Vladimir Lenin, actions that reflect their revulsion at the Soviet past but ones that have had the unintended consequence of transforming Lenin into a conservative figure for many Russians and making the destruction of Lenin statues in their […]
Staunton, January 19 – Twenty-five years ago today, on Mikhail Gorbachev’s order, Soviet troops invaded the Azerbaijani capital of Baku by land, sea and air, killing hundreds and enflaming ethnic hatreds, in an action the Soviet president five years after the events acknowledged was “the greatest mistake” of his political career. That event, known to […]
Staunton, January 19 – A Russian blogger has gathered pictures of homemade signs in Russian Orthodox churches, signs which carry injunctions that are nowhere to be found in the Bible, as he points out. (See TsarValera, also re-posted here. Among them are the following: “Brothers and Sisters! Don’t use Orthodox newspapers as toilet paper. That […]
Staunton, January 13 – The continuing dominance of an imperial mentality among Russians and their failure to consolidate as a nation reflects the fact that the Russian state became an empire before the Russian people came together as a nation, according to Yevgeny Anisimov, a scholar at the St. Petersburg Institute of History. In a […]
Staunton, January 18 – Even as some in the West are thinking about how to rebuild their relationships with Moscow, Yevgeny Savostyanov, the former head of the Moscow FSB, says that what Vladimir Putin has done in Ukraine will have a far deeper, longer-lasting and more negative impact on relations between Russia and the West. […]
