Staunton, October 7 – Mustafa Cemilev, the leader of the Crimean Tatars, says that Moscow is worried about the impact of the Crimean Tatars on the Volga Tatars in the Middle Volga, fearful that developments on the Russian-occupied Ukrainian peninsula will affect the Turkic Muslim populations of the Middle Volga. But the Russian authorities would […]
Staunton, October 7 – Even as Western leaders try in almost every way to describe the Russian invasion of Ukraine as something other than what it is, most Ukrainians know that their country is at war with Russia and almost as many blame the Russian Federation for that reality, according to a new Razumkov Center […]
Staunton, October 13 – All major economic indicators in Russia have been in negative territory this year but popular support for Vladimir Putin remains at an all-time high, a situation that could be described as “’Putin’s scissors,’” Andrey Illarionov says, and one that highlights just how far Russia has fallen into an authoritarian “trap.” In […]
Staunton, October 10 – Older Tatars, who until two decades ago were the defining face of Islam in Moscow, are now retreating to self-organized prayer rooms to avoid having to interact with the far more numerous Muslim migrant communities from Central Asia and the Caucasus and from having religious services conducted in Russian rather than […]
Staunton, October 10 – Despite Vladimir Putin’s repeated insistence that the former Soviet republics are the focus of Russian foreign policy, when things get tough for the Russian Federation Russians as is now the case, ever more Russians look to China as an ally than they do to any of the CIS countries, including Belarus. […]
Staunton, October 10 – The state of Russia’s road system, which now ranks 136th out of 144 countries evaluated, is so bad that even Vladimir Putin, who recently has been given to upbeat statements about the country, has had to change his tone. But his comments in Novosibirsk yesterday suggest that he won’t or can’t […]
Staunton, October 10 – In 2011-2012, Emil Pain says, “a new elite Russian nationalism” concerned about the promotion of civil values and democracy emerged, but this “new nationalism couldn’t break itself away from its imperial foundations, and after the unification of Crimea, all its [positive] civil qualities disappeared from view.” As a result, the Moscow […]
Staunton, October 10 – While the Commonwealth of Independent States has never been a democratic union of equals, it is nonetheless true that “the CIS is not just Russia,” as Ukrainian parliamentarians point out, and that Russia’s loss of control of this group on an issue so important to it may hasten the demise of […]
Staunton, October 7 – Russia’s close connection with the Mongols has never been doubted either as victim of the Mongol Yoke or as the continuer of many the approaches first adopted by Chingiz Khan. But now a Duma deputy from Buryatia has added a new wrinkle by suggesting very publicly that even the name of […]
Staunton, October 7 – At the end of the Soviet era, a joke circulated in Moscow that appears to be having an echo today. According to the story, Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze met President Mikhail Gorbachev at the airport when the latter was returning from Estonia. “What have you done?” Shevardnadze supposedly asks. Gorbachev […]
