Staunton, November 25 – Some draftees in the Russian army are inflicting injuries on themselves in order to avoid being sent to the fighting in southeastern Ukraine, an indication of their fears about what might happen to them there and of growing opposition to the Kremlin’s aggression, according to Elena Vasilyeva. Vasilyeva, a Russian human […]
Staunton, November 25 – The Circassians and Crimean Tatars are linking up as part of a broader plan orchestrated by Turkey and the West to undermine Russian influence in the Middle East and to challenge Russian control of the North Caucasus and occupied Crimea, according to Russian commentator Vladislav Gulyevich. Over the two years and […]
Staunton, November 25 – Yevgeny Vitishko, who is currently serving a three-year sentence in the Russian camps for exposing Moscow’s destruction of the environment around Sochi in the run-up to the Olympics, has continued his fight by releasing a new on-line book about the lives of prisoners and the fate of Russia’s much-despoiled environment. Vitishko’s […]
Staunton, November 25 – The Russian-Ukrainian war now going on could have begun in 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed. The fact that it didn’t says a great deal about the attitudes of Russian political leaders then and how much they have changed in the intervening period, according to Yevgeny Ikhlov. In a post on […]
Staunton, November 24 – Russians increasingly want to have the right to carry guns for the same reason many people in the United States say they do – their conviction that police are not willing or able to defend them and their belief that they must therefore be in a position to defend themselves. And […]
Staunton, November 24 – One of the most dangerous developments for which Vladimir Putin is responsible is that the lies he and his regime regularly employ, and the actions they take, have changed what would be unthinkable under normal conditions into a new normal, things which people would earlier have focused on into things which […]
Staunton, November 24 – Putinism is “a pseudo-religious and quasi-political cult” which has arisen over the course of the last year and which has “consolidated society around Putin,” including many who were at the level of political ideas opposed to the Kremlin leader, according to Fedor Krasheninnikov. The Yekaterinburg political commentator argues in an essay […]
Staunton, November 24 – No one can deny that Western sanctions and the declining price of oil have had a negative impact on Russia, but few recognize the other side of the coin: Western sanctions saved Vladimir Putin by allowing him the opportunity to shift blame for what has gone wrong in Russia away from […]
Staunton, November 24 – Loose talk by Vladimir Putin and others in Moscow about using nuclear weapons has not only united the West in ways that nothing else, including Russian aggression in Ukraine, could, but it is spreading fear among those near Putin about their future prospects in such a brave new world, according to […]
Staunton, November 22 – Under the impact of Moscow media, Russians have become accustomed to thinking that anti-Russian militants in the North Caucasus are bearded men who fight in the forests. But recent events in Dagestan suggest, Vladislav Maltsev says, that in that republic, they are now an urban street movement capable of fighting local […]
