Staunton, June 4 – Having driven out or denied reentry to many Crimean Tatars, the Russian occupation forces have now employed another longstanding Moscow method of “reducing” the number of Crimean Tatars and thus the role of that nation on the Ukrainian peninsula: manipulating the census. Yesterday, Aleksandr Surinov, head of the Russian Federal State […]
Staunton, June 4 – There are few things more certain to provoke outrage among Russia’s “’kvas patriots’” than McDonald’s and its Big Macs, a Moscow journalist says; but such patriots should know the 500 McDonald’s restaurants now open in Russia provide more than 43,000 jobs directly and they purchases “almost 100 percent” of supplies from […]
Staunton, June 6 – Russian opposition leader Aleksey Navalny, like many others in Russia and abroad, says that referenda both past and future are the only basis for resolving the conflict over Crimea and that earlier votes in the Saarland provide a useful analogy on how to proceed. But Russian commentator Andrey Illarionov says that […]
Staunton, June 6 – Approximately one in four marriages in the Russian Federation involves people of different nationalities, but the number of ethnically mixed marriages varies widely among the country’s ethnic communities and between those living in their ethnic homelands and those living elsewhere. That pattern is not surprising given that the number of ethnically […]
Staunton, June 6 – The economic crisis is leading to the de-industrialization of parts of the North Caucasus and that in turn is contributing to the flight of ethnic Russians from the region, a departure that is fundamentally changing the ethnic balance in many republics in that region. That trend can be clearly seen in […]
Staunton, June 6 – The Kremlin’s remarkable ability to blame foreign “enemies” for the problems is a major reason that no one should expect a Maidan in Russia anytime soon, Kseniya Kirillova says. And this is not so much a reflection of any “imperial consciousness” among Russians as the identification Russians make between the state […]
Staunton, June 5 – The contrast between the support Russian officials are giving to refugees from Ukraine and the complete absence of such support for Circassians fleeing from Syria is leading to the intensification of anti-Russian nationalism among the Circassians in the North Caucasus, according to Irina Babich. Babich, a senior scholar at the Moscow […]
Staunton, June 3 – Yesterday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that Russia and the United States, despite their continuing differences over Ukraine and other matters, “are returning to normal relations” and are doing so because they each have interests that can be advanced only by cooperation. Igor Morozov, a member of Russia’s Federation Council […]
Staunton, June 2 – The West has been far more united and tougher about Russia’s intervention in Ukraine than anyone would have expected only a year ago, but “one must understand that the West having adopted a tactic about this conflict all the same has not yet elaborated a strategy,” according to Liliya Shevtsova. As […]
Staunton, June 1 – Many Ukrainians and their supporters abroad talk about the possibility of the peaceful return of Crimea to Ukrainian control at some point in the future, but such talk, while possibly understandable ignores the fact that Moscow is changing Crimea so dramatically that there will soon be no Crimea to return, according […]
