Staunton, December 15 – Russia’s economic problems combined with Moscow’s insistence on extracting just as much money from the regions as it did before is exacerbating relations between the center and the republics and prompting the latter to reconsider their attitude toward Russia as a whole, according to a Tatar analyst. A Kazan analyst who […]
Staunton, December 15 – Even as Moscow appears to be reducing its military actions in southeastern Ukraine, a “reduction” that is at least in part a disinformation campaign, Putin is making Belarus into a base for attacking Kyiv. The appearance of more Russian “little green men” in Gomel last week prompted some Ukrainians to ask […]
Staunton, December 15 – Many have seen the statements of the leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church and the official hierarchies of that country’s Muslim community as an indication that they are moving toward greater mutual understanding and cooperation, according to Nezavisimaya Gazeta. But is a misreading of the situation, the paper suggests in a […]
Staunton, December 13 – The Kremlin has announced plans to make “ethno-politics” a course of study in three leading Russian universities and to quadruple the number of stipends for students in this field, an indication of Kremlin nervousness about nationality problems and of its interest in forming a new orthodoxy on how to address them. […]
Staunton, December 13 – Russians have been long accustomed to thinking that the North Caucasus is the main source of a terrorist threat to their country, but the situation has changed, Yevgeny Satanovsky says, and today, Russia faces a far greater terrorist threat from Central Asian migrants who have been penetrated and organized by Saudi […]
Staunton, December 13 – Four Russian analysts suggest that the six causes they identify as being behind the collapse of the USSR are again to varying degrees present in Russia today, but what is perhaps more interesting than the causes they do identify is the one that they don’t: the ways in which the six […]
Staunton, December 8 – Kyiv plans to launch satellite television broadcasting to the Russian Federation and Russian-occupied Crimea, an indication that Ukrainian officials understand that their country is engaged in an information war as well as a real one on the ground and that they are ready to engage in it just as vigorously. Anton […]
Staunton, December 6 – Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and the failure of the West so far to repel it has a longer-term consequence that few are prepared to face: The Kremlin leader’s actions will lead ever more countries to seek to build or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons as the only reliable means of self-defense. […]
Staunton, December 9 – Despite Vladimir Putin’s call for the federalization of Ukraine and Petro Poroshenko’s suggestion that he is prepared to oversee steps toward the decentralization of power in his country, nothing can be done toward either under the current crisis conditions, according to Moscow’s leading expert on Ukraine. Bogdan Bezpalko, deputy director of […]
Staunton, December 9 – The Russian government has never been pleased by the fact that it must now deal with more than 80 Muslim spiritual directorates (MSDs) rather than a single centralized one. Meanwhile, some Muslim leaders – most prominently Talgat Tajuddin of Ufa – have sought to form a Moscow patriarchate-style central leadership to […]
