Staunton, January 11 – The Ukrainian government will “encourage any public initiatives connected with cleansing Ukraine from monuments” to officials and others from the communist past, according to Ukrainian Culture Minister Vyacheslav Kirilenko. His words likely open the way for a new wave of dismantling and demolishing statues of Lenin and other Soviet figures. Ukrainian […]
Staunton, January 6 – Despite its much ballyhooed success in preventing any attack on the Sochi Olympics, the FSB has not had a good year in Ukraine, where its military competitor the GRU played the dominant role in the annexation of Crime and where its inability to predict developments in Ukraine constituted an intelligence failure […]
Staunton, January 5 – Following Vladimir Putin, who suggested Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown by a clutch of “nationalists, neo-Nazis, Russophobes, and anti-Semites,” commentators in Russia and sometimes in the West suggested that anti-Semitism was widespread in Ukraine. Indeed, they have made it a major theme in their presentations. But Boris Vishnevsky, a Yabloko deputy in […]
Staunton, January 5 – Three Russian experts with whom Russkaya Planeta spoke say that while declines in the standard of living of many Russians in the coming year as a result of the economic crisis may lead to some protests about economic issues, any such demonstrations are unlikely to focus on high politics. On the […]
Staunton, January 5 – Riga faces a dramatically expanded Russian media campaign to discredit it in the eyes of Latvians and the West and an increase in the activity of Russian special services against it, according to Maris Cepuritis, a researcher at the Riga Center for Research on the Politics of Eastern Europe. The analyst […]
Staunton, January 6 – Vladimir Putin’s aggression in Ukraine has largely disappeared from the front pages of Western newspapers and the lead stories of Western news broadcasts, a development reflecting the short attention span of many people but one that gives the Kremlin leader a victory because this lowers pressure on governments to oppose Russia’s […]
Staunton, January 1 – Russian Railways announced December 31 that it will end some 220 local train routes this month, effectively cutting off the residents of many rural areas from access to medical and other services available only in region capitals. But the corporation insisted that Moscow is not to blame: local governments have failed […]
Staunton, January 1 – Hector Alos i Font, a Catalonian linguist who has been working in Chuvashia, says that the Chuvash language has improved its position relative to Russian as measured by signs put out for the New Year’s holiday, but that the language of the titular nationality has a long way to go before […]
Staunton, December 31 – If as some are suggesting 2015 is going to be the year of Aleksey Navalny just as the past years have been those of Vladimir Putin, then it is extremely important that the opposition leader clearly state his positions lest Russians find in his case that they have given the power […]
Staunton, December 31 – Former Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk and former Prime Minister Yevgeny Marchuk have formed a new group to press Kyiv to apply now for membership in the Western alliance, a step that is possible now that the Verkhovna Rada has voted to end Ukraine’s policy of non-alignment. That action, Kravchuk and Marchuk […]
