Staunton, July 29 –– Because they are latecomers to a market economy and have not adjusted to it, Russians, “however paradoxical it may seem,” feel themselves “more comfortable” now that the situation is worse than they did when the economy was growing and the gap between what they want and what they can have was […]
Staunton, July 31 –– Konstantin Borovoy, an outspoken Russian opposition politician and commentator, says Ukrainians are making a big mistake if they assume there is going to be any change in Russia soon either from above or below. And he insists that they must instead be prepared for more war and the need to fight […]
Staunton, July 30 – “The Russian special services have controlled” the flow of Islamist radicals from Russia to Syria “from the very beginning,” according to Elena Milashina of Novaya Gazeta. They haven’t interfered, and sometimes have assisted it, seeing “a threat to state security only in those who try to return from this war.” In […]
Staunton, July 26 – A group of Duma deputies want to make “anti-Russian” statements and actions a crime analogous to “anti-Soviet” ones in the time of the USSR, lawyer Genri Reznik says, and while they haven’t worked out the terminology completely, they have decided on a penalty – up to ten years in prison, the […]
Staunton, July 26 – Ilya Frank, a Jewish linguist whose approach has defined how Russians study foreign languages for more than a decade, has decided he and his family must leave Moscow for Israel because of what he describes as “a Nazi-like atmosphere” there, one he quickly identified because of his familiarity with German writings […]
Staunton, July 19 – Moscow has disbanded two of the agencies it created to integrate occupied Crimea – the Ministry for Crimean Affairs and the Commission for the Social-Economic Development of the Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol – but in its place, it has decided to dispatch Russian officials as new “commissars” to run the […]
Staunton, July 19 – An article in the current issue of Sovershenno Sekretno asks whether there is a line between Russian Orthodox Church activists and those who engage in pogrom-like violence. It concludes sadly that there is not — and that church activists and those engaged in attacks on other groups are increasingly one and […]
Staunton, July 18 – By including in the Ukrainian constitutional provision specifying that Kyiv will come up with a new law governing certain portions of Donetsk and Lugansk Regions, the Verkhovna Rada has in effect adopted “a pro-Putin constitutional model for Ukraine” and given the Kremlin leader three dangerous victories over Kyiv, according to Andrey […]
Staunton, July 18 – For the last 12 years, the FSB has maintained a list of those organizations which Russian courts have identified as terrorist. There are now 23 on the list, but it is arbitrary, incomplete and fails to provide any indication of the relative threat posed by these groups to Russia and the […]
Staunton, July 19 – The trade-off US President Barack Obama made with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to get a deal on Iran “is acquiring new and, in our time, somewhat unexpected aspects,” Andrey Illarionov says, colors that unfortunately suggest “Russia, the US, Iran and the EU are together, together without Ukraine,” even “together against […]
