Staunton, October 17 – Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the frequently outrageous leader of the wildly misnamed Liberal Democratic Party of Russia who nonetheless often serves as a bellwether of Russian politics, says that Russia should dispense with direct elections for the Russian presidency because “the democratic costume is too tight for Russia.” In remarks to the Second […]
Staunton, October 17 – Now that Aleksey Navalny has said that he won’t return Crimea to Ukraine and Mikhail Khodorkovsky has added that “only a [Russian] dictator” could do so, other “representatives of Russian democratic society have hastened” to assure Russians that they won’t either as they live in “a democracy” in which “all issues […]
Staunton, October 15 – Three demographic developments in the Russian Federation reported by media outlets there — the dying out of predominantly Russian areas, labor migrants coming out of the closet in Moscow, and the possibility that a Ukrainian region will re-emerge inside Russia in the Far East — have obvious and potentially destabilizing consequences. […]
Staunton, October 15 – Few things are more horrific than watching a child with an incurable illness suffer, and few things are more unforgiveable than a medical system which is not organized to ensure that at least their suffering is reduced as much as possible. Tragically, that is not the kind of system that is […]
Staunton, October 16 – Citing the 1947 Paris Peace Treaty between Moscow and Helsinki, Russia took control of a 1.78 hectare undeveloped parcel of land in Finland’s Aaland Islands in 2009 and transferred it to Vladimir Putin’s office, according to Jarmo Ratia, a former Finnish official who said he was talking now because of “changes […]
Staunton, October 16 – Aleksei Orlov, the head of the Kalmyk Republic says that Russians like all the other peoples who were deported by Stalin should be compensated, a proposal that some will see as an act of simple justice given how many ethnic Russians in fact suffered but that others will view as a […]
Staunton, October 16 – Since at least the time of the Russian Civil War, it has been common ground among many observers in Moscow and the West that Russian liberalism “ends at Ukraine,” a notion for which Alexey Navalny’s statement that Russia will retain Crimea whatever happens appears to provide fresh evidence. But Navalny’s own […]
Staunton, October 15 – Migrantophobia in Russian society is not the same thing as either xenophobia or ethnophobia and must not be confused with them, according to a Moscow sociologist. Instead, it reflects the reaction of Russians to people who have come to work in Russia but who are not adapting to social norms because […]
Staunton, October 12 – Pavel Felgengauer, one of Russia’s most widely respected independent defense and security analysts, says that as a result of Moscow’s actions in Ukraine, a new Cold War has begun and Russia, all of Moscow’s bombast notwithstanding, has “already lost it.” In remarks to a meeting of the School of Civic Leaders […]
Staunton, October 12 – On October 11, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate said that Russian special services are planning provocations against that denomination on October 14th, a reminder if one is need that Vladimir Putin is following the Soviet provocation model first developed by Cheka founder Felix Dzerzhinsky. On its website, the […]
