Staunton, September 28 – The Russian occupation authorities not only have imposed “systematic discrimination” against the Crimean Tatar people but have conducted mass searches against them and their institutions and organized or looked the other way in cases of kidnaping and disappearances, according to Refat Chubarov, the head of the Crimean Tatar Mejlis. Russian officials […]
Staunton, September 28 – Given that Russians increasingly have “ceased to believe” in scholarship and turned to conspiracy theories of one kind or another, Boris Kagarlitsky says, it is perhaps not surprising that many of them including many in the Russian government have accepted the latest example of such theories, that of “administered chaos.” And […]
Staunton, September 28 – The referendum in Scotland in terms of both the way in which it was conducted and its outcome has important lessons for Dahestanis and the government of the Russian Federation, according to a Makhachkala commentator, lessons that neither has yet assimilated but that both should. On the one hand, Eduard Urazayev […]
Staunton, September 27 – On September 27, a group of Volga Tatar nationalists demonstrated in Kazan against Russian persecution of Crimean Tatars, an action that not only reinforces the ties between the two Turkic peoples but also highlights the way in which what Moscow is doing in Crimea is increasingly resonating among non-Russians inside the […]
Staunton, September 27 – Moscow continues to receive support from some left-wing parties in Europe largely “as a result of inertia” from Soviet times, but the Kremlin gets most of its backing now from right-wing parties, at least some of whom evidence suggests the Kremlin is “generously financing their leading structures,” according to Sabirdzhan Badretdinov. […]
Staunton, September 27 – Vladimir Putin has accumulated all the power he could possibly need to move in almost any direction, but despite that, “it is impossible to define with any precision what in fact [he] wants to do” because he does not appear to have any medium or long-term plan, according to Tatyana Stanovaya. […]
Staunton, September 27 – Aleksandr Dugin, the source of Vladimir Putin’s notions about “Novorossiya,” is rapidly losing his influence in the Kremlin because of his misreading of the amount of support in Ukraine for Russia and the amount of support for massive military intervention there in the Russian capital, according to Vladimir Abarinov. The Moscow […]
Staunton, September 27 – No one in Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania should be sleeping peacefully given the threat that Vladimir Putin poses to all three and the failure of the West to stand up to the Kremlin leader in Ukraine or adequately prepare to defend the three Baltic NATO member countries, according to Andrey Illarionov. […]
Staunton, September 27 – Russia does not face any prospect of disintegrating in the way that the Soviet Union did – Moscow has changed the situation too much for that to happen – but it needs to form a new relationship among it regions and between them and the center if it is to avoid […]
Staunton, September 26 – Rashit Akhmetov, the editor of the Kazan weekly Zvezda Povolzhya, says that Vladimir Putin’s promotion of the idea of a “Russian world” is the death knell for a civic Russian identity and that this, combined with his authoritarian and great power chauvinist approach, is exacerbating ethnic identities of Russians and non-Russians […]
