Staunton, June 11 – Many regional experts say that Tajikistan is the Central Asian country ISIS forces are most likely to attack, not only because the population is likely to be receptive to its appeals against corruption and for social justice but also because the Tajikistan army is too weak and underfunded to be able […]
Staunton, June 11 – Much has been made of the fact that the US has become dependent on certain Russian rocket motors and Russian space vehicles to service the International Space Station, but Nikolay Testoyedov, a specialist on the Russian space program, says that the dependency is actually the other way around. According to him, […]
Staunton, June 11 – Novgorod oblast was technically in default earlier this year because of poor management and because Moscow paid the region what it owed a month after debt payments became due, Natalya Zubarevich says, but she suggests that there won’t be a series of defaults. What there will be is something worse – […]
Staunton, June 11 – The attempt by Varvara Karaulova, a Russian who became a Muslim and sought to join ISIS, has sparked a new wave of hysteria about Islam in the Russian media, with speculations about the number of ethnic Russian Muslims, the prospects for a Muslim majority in the Russian population, and the possibility […]
Staunton, June 11 – The reduction in the role of non-Russian languages and their being driven out of many public spaces even in their homelands is “no accident and no indication that a multi-lingual society cannot be built but rather evidence of the existence of an intentional state policy for building a Russian nation state,” […]
Staunton, June 10 – Picking up on the increasingly alarmist rhetoric of Kremlin outlets about the possibility of war, a Urals blogger who openly flaunts his ties with the FSB yesterday posted three commentaries in which he said that Russians must prepare for a major war with the West, according to Kseniya Kirillova. Sergey Kolyasnikov, […]
Staunton, June 9 – Russian actions in Crimea and the Donbas “have weakened Russian arguments about the change of power in Kyiv” at the time of the Maidan and thus cost Moscow support in European and other Western capitals, according to a lead article in Nezavisimaya Gazeta today. In his interview with Corriere della Sera, […]
Staunton, June 9 – It has become almost commonplace to assert that Russians under Boris Yeltsin had a positive view of the world and that they began their search for enemies only under his successor, Vladimir Putin. That such feelings have intensified under Putin is beyond doubt, but it is important to remember that they […]
Staunton, June 8 – Muscovites believe that migrants are taking away jobs from local people, that they are overburdening the health care system, and that they choose to remain unregistered and illegal. But none of these things are true, according to Yuliya Florinskaya, a researcher at the Institute of Demography of the Moscow Higher School […]
Staunton, June 8 – Krymnash [CrimeaOurs] arose as a serious meme in March 2014, an expression of the patriotic pleasure Russians felt in taking Crimea and demonstrating the power of their country. But since then, it has become an ironic expression, one that recalls Soviet times, and people use it as almost a throw-away line […]
