On May 9, Russia will plunge into ritualized mass celebrations to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the victory over fascism in the “Great Patriotic War” (World War II). At the same time, on March 22, a few weeks before the celebrations, a Russian party with the presumably patriotic name “Motherland” (Rodina) held the International Russian […]
Staunton, April 3 — Russian military spending, even as officially given by the finance ministry, provides a remarkably accurate early warning indicator of Russian intentions, Andrey Illarionov says, and a dramatic increase in spending since January of this year thus suggests that Vladimir Putin is preparing for a larger war in Ukraine and/or elsewhere. Between […]
Staunton, April 1 — The overwhelming support Russians currently give to Vladimir Putin has less to do with approval of his policies than with their need to find a way to cope with the unpredictability and sense of powerlessness his regime and the world around them have produced, according to Marina Arutyunyan, a Moscow psychologist. […]
Staunton, April 1 — Because the Russian occupation authorities have refused to register it, the Crimean Tatar television channel ATR ended its broadcasts at midnight yesterday, its leaders unbowed, committed to continue, and proudly asserting that the Crimean Tatars will survive this just as they survived their deportation by Stalin in 1944. ATR managers said […]
In a recent documentary Vladimir Putin recounted that when planning the annexation of Crimea he even thought about calling a nuclear alert. Whether this remark is true or false, Putin undoubtedly was striving to impress upon the audience an image of the gravity of the crisis as he saw it and therefore to appreciate his […]
Staunton, March 30 – The announcement three weeks ago that Prague is prepared to transfer 360 hectares of territory to Poland in the Těšín Silesia area is the latest indication that the border changes in the former Soviet and Yugoslav spaces are sparking new questions about borders in the northern portion of Eastern Europe, according […]
Staunton, March 30 – Most analysts have suggested that sanctions and international isolation were a cost Vladimir Putin was willing to pay in order to get his way in Ukraine, but Andrey Lipsky, an editor of Novaya Gazeta, says that is exactly backwards: the Kremlin leader wanted isolation and launched his Ukrainian campaign to get […]
Staunton, March 30 – Leonid Reshetnikov, the obscurantist and imperialist former SVR [Foreign Intelligence Service] lieutenant general and head of the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies (RISI), says that his organization is “one of leading” organizations providing input to Vladimir Putin as the Kremlin leader formulates his foreign and domestic policies. In the course of […]
Staunton, March 29 – In its new 11,500-word report on the ways in which Russian officials are misusing the country’s anti-extremism laws, the SOVA human rights monitoring organization concludes that one of the most important trends of the last year is a dramatic increase in the role of the FSB in such actions. There are […]
Staunton, March 29 – The FSB continues to disseminate its version of the murder of Russian opposition figure Boris Nemtsov, one that links it to Ramzan Kadyrov, not out of any concern for getting at the truth but rather because of growing anger at the Chechen leader and the backing he continues to receive from […]
