While assigning criminal culpability for the murder of Boris Nemtsov is essential; it is by no means the whole or possibly even the most important story. Nemtsov’s murder once again highlights a much more critical series of issues that any observer or politically active person in Russia must grapple with. Nemtsov’s murder shows that if […]
Staunton, April 12 – Russians laugh at any suggestion that the Ukrainian people came out to the Maidan to make history and insist that they were driven there by American political technologists, a reflection of the fundamental contrast between their country and that of the Ukrainians, Russian political analyst Andrei Okara says. That contrast – […]
Staunton, April 12 – Writing in Warsaw’s Gazeta Wyborcza a week ago, Wacław Radziwinowicz argued that Moscow’s victory in World War II has become “the new civic religion” in Russia, a suggestion that has provoked a strong negative reaction in that country with many Russians saying that the Polish journalist had insulted their national history. […]
Staunton, April 12 – Moscow’s new five-year plan for promoting patriotism among the young is not only better financed – spending will more than double – but far more militaristic than the program it replaces and than the Soviet-era projects in this sphere, according to an analysis by Anton Chablin, a commentator for Kavkazskaya Politika. […]
Staunton, April 12 – According to the Russian Interior Ministry, 1.15 million Muscovites – approximately ten percent of the Russian capital’s population — attended Easter services today. According to the Russian Orthodox Church, the actual figure was 1.5 million. But both agreed that the number this year, a record, is far higher than it was […]
Staunton, April 10 – A great deal of attention has been given to Chechens, Buryats and other non-Russians going to the Donbass to fight for the pro-Moscow “peoples republics” there, a flow that Russian propagandists have played up as evidence that support for Vladimir Putin’s “Russian world” is broader than just among ethnic Russians. But […]
Staunton, April 10 – Russian national culture is not the determinant of the country’s development that many now believe it to be, according to Emil Pain, a leading Moscow expert on ethnicity and culture. Instead, it may “shade” this or that political or economic arrangements found in a variety of places. At a Liberal Mission […]
Staunton, April 11 – Every year in the spring, groups of Muslims at the behest of the Council of Muftis of Russia (SMR) and the Muslim Spiritual Directorate (MSD) of Moscow visit the Muslim sections of the major cemeteries of the Russian capital to make sure that all is in order with the graves of […]
Staunton, April 11 – Moscow’s proposals to create a Russian foreign legion and to allow Tajikistan citizens to serve in the ranks of the Russian Army are “extremely timely” ideas, according to Shomurod Madamin. “Russians don’t want to serve in their own army,” but Tajiks have few good options and service in Russian ranks is […]
Staunton, April 11 – Pro-Putin activists have redirected their fire from people in Sverdlovsk Region who are opposed to the war in Ukraine to faculty and staff of the Urals Federal University who they accuse of transforming that institution into “’a center for the preparation of color revolutions,’” according to Kseniya Kirillova. Just as at […]
