Staunton, November 10 – The primitivism in the thinking of Vladimir Putin and his entourage reflects the fact that he and they are members of the generation that was “the most Soviet of all those who arose after 1917,” cut off from those who could remember pre-1917 conditions and fully socialized in the communist system, […]
Staunton, November 10 – Sixty-eight percent of Russians say they do not want their sons to fight in southeastern Ukraine on the side of pro-Moscow militants, according to a new Levada Center poll. Only one in seven – 13 percent – would support doing so, and one in five – 19 percent – refrained from […]
Staunton, November 8 – What Russians now have in the Russian Federation is a Soviet system without communism and its administrative arrangements, and what they dream of is “a Soviet empire without communists,” an entity not equivalent to the tsarist empire as some think but one that reflects their memories of the USSR. That is […]
Staunton, November 11 – Failure to challenge Vladimir Putin about the Crimean Anschluss, “the cornerstone of today’s ‘Putin consensus,’” works to the benefit of the Kremlin leader whose uses the absence of objections to his actions to “create the illusion of moral justification” for what he has done, according to Aleksandr Skobov. And consequently, the […]
Staunton, November 11 – Even as Moscow and the Russian occupation authorities continue their efforts to disorder and oppress the Crimean Tatars, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlyut Cavushoglu in the course of a meeting in Kyiv with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in November said Ankara will continue to work with Kyiv to defend that nation. Cavushoglu, […]
Staunton, November 8 – Ever more people equate Vladimir Putin with Russia, something that for most Russians is a positive, but that for others is a negative thing, the editors of Gazeta say, noting that this “personification” entails “a serious danger “not only for the powers that be but also for the country as a […]
Staunton, November 8 – Vladimir Putin’s moves to silence Ekho Moskvy, the Russian capital’s last independent radio station, and thus establish a virtual monopoly over the broadcast media in Moscow demand a US response, something Washington can and must do if it is to effectively counter the Kremlin leader’s aggressive course. That response should at […]
Staunton, November 10 – The fighting in the Donbass is a clash between two types of nationalism, civic Ukrainian nationalism of a Western type and “a unique crusade” against that kind of nationalism that is powered by a Russian “flight from freedom” Erich Fromm described in his classic 1941 book on the rise of fascism […]
Staunton, November 7 – Russians who voted online for the title “Mrs. St. Petersburg” complained that one of the 25 competitors was a Buryat and charged her with Russophobia, a accusation Viktoriya Maladayeva denied. Organizers said this was the first such situation in the five years of the competition and awarded her the consolation title […]
Staunton, November 7 – Both Kazakhs and Russians are reacting with annoyance to an article posted online three weeks ago that Moscow might send in “polite people” into eastern Kazakhstan to create an Ust-Kamenogorsk Peoples Republic on the lines of what the Russian government has done in southeastern Ukraine. Kazakhs viewed this article as an […]
