Staunton, June 18 – Many people have focused on the ways in which Moscow television’s distorted, tendentious, and openly false broadcasts have affected Russian speakers in Ukraine, but fewer have focused on another aspect of Russia’s information war: the spreading of rumors among the population by political operatives with ties to the Kremlin. In a […]
Staunton, June 18 – Responding to suggestions that the possibilities for the promotion of an “enlightened” Russian nationalism” have been undermined by Vladimir Putin’s policies in Ukraine, Aleksandr Khramov says that the real problems lie with Russian liberals who behave in ways that alienate the population and make cooperation with nationalists almost impossible. Last week, […]
Staunton, June 18 – The money the Kremlin is spending on Crimea and Ukraine more generally is exacerbating tensions between Moscow and hard-pressed regions, worsening the divide between well-off cities and their hinterlands, and leading some Russian nationalists to demand fiscal federalism as a first step toward creation of ethnic Russian republics. Three very different […]
Staunton, June 18 – Depending on the assumptions made, projections of Russia’s population growth over the next two generations range from a small amount of growth to a significant decline. But they all agree that working-age Russians will form a smaller percentage of the population than they do now and thus have to support more […]
Staunton, June 17 – Just as Ukrainians as a nation are already more European than are the Russians, so too Ukraine’s Muslims today are more like their fellow Muslims in Europe than they are like the faithful in Russia and other post-Soviet states, according to Abdulla Rinat Mukhametov, a Russian Muslim analyst. “The very development […]
Staunton, June 17 – Given how heavily armed the population of Dagestan remains, the authorities in that North Caucasus republic have launched a gun buy-back program in which citizens can turn in illegal weapons for cash. But experts doubt that many Dagestanis will do so because the amount of money offered is so small and […]
Staunton, June 17 – In the course of an interview conducted by Ani Ayvazyan, Aleksandr Genis, who has become prominent as a Russian émigré writer and commentator for some Moscow outlets, makes five observations which cast a bright light on some of the darker developments in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. They include: · Genis says his […]
Staunton, June 17 – In the corridors of the Russian foreign ministry, commentator Ruslan Gorevoy says, people are saying that Moscow would hardly have annexed Crimea if other separatist movements had not appeared elsewhere in Ukraine that Moscow could use as leverage against Kyiv and block its turn toward the West. In the new issue […]
Staunton, June 16 – In what might seem counter-intuitive but which in fact underscores the way Moscow media coverage of one thing may cause Russians to draw conclusions about others, 58 percent of Russians say that as a result of developments in Ukraine, they are more negative about nationalist groups in their own country, up […]
Staunton, June 16 – Attacks in Russia on gastarbeiters from Central Asia and the Caucasus are a major reason for a 20 percent decline in the number of such immigrants over the last year, and human rights experts predict that the rising tide of xenophobia there will increase the frequency and possible violence of such […]
