Staunton, May 25 — “The Ukrainian-Russian conflict is to a significant degree a conflict between the heirs of Kievan Rus [Ukraine] and the heirs of the Golden Horde” [Moscow], according to Andrey Piontkovsky, and one of its key results will be “an intensification of the swallowing of Russia by China.” In the course of a […]
Staunton, May 24 — The Russian government cannot afford to maintain its current levels of military spending for long because its shift of resources to the military sector is threatening the rest of the Russian economy and because its reserve fund will be insufficient to pay for this spending for more than another year or […]
On Saturday, May 23, as we reported on our Ukraine Live blog, Aleksei Mozgovoy, commander of the Prizrak (Ghost) brigade, a Russian-backed separatist leader was assassinated along with those traveling in three cars with him — his bodyguards, driver, and press secretary, Anna Avseyeva, the mother of three children — were all killed in Mozgovoy’s […]
Staunton, May 24 — Since Moscow’s annexation of Crimea and its continuing subversion of other parts of Ukraine, many have asked whether one or another of the Baltic countries might be Vladimir Putin’s next target, given that his strategic goal is clearly the breaking apart of Europe and the United States and discrediting or even […]
Staunton, May 25 — Given the recrudescence of Soviet institutions in the Russian-occupied Crimea and Donbass, ever more people are playing the game of “what if” – “what if” the August 1991 putsch or October 1993 clash in Moscow had ended another way or “what if” the anti-Bolshevik White Russians had defeated Lenin and returned […]
Staunton, May 25 — Dmitry Bukovsky of Kyiv’s “Delovaya stolitsa” continues his series, “The Top 5 Propaganda Myths, Fakes and Stupidities of the Kremlin for the Week.” And this week, Russia has really outdone itself with the very top item being a claim that Vladimir Putin was either Prince Vladimir who baptized Kievan Rus or […]
Staunton, May 23 — The EU’s Eastern Partnership program has proven incapable of being a buffer zone between Europe and Russia and must be radically reformed or scrapped altogether given that for foreseeable future, Moscow will dominate those states in the east which are not fully part of the European Union itself, according to Vitaly […]
Staunton, May 21 — Many in Russia and elsewhere have been horrified by the personal tragedy of the forced marriage of a young girl to a 57-year-old Chechen that Ramzan Kadyrov and some Russians have defended, but they should be more concerned about how this event sets the stage for a new Chechen war in […]
Staunton, May 21 — No nation more skillfully used an international event than did the Circassians during the Sochi Olympiad to call attention to the Russian-orchestrated genocide of their people 150 years earlier. Despite Moscow’s best efforts, few independent reporters talked about Sochi without talking about the continuing crimes against the Circassians. In the past […]
No sooner did John Kerry leave Sochi than did Moscow announce that it would not support an provision calling for an automatic re-imposition of sanctions on Iran should it violate the treaty now being negotiated with the P5+1 states. A Russian veto would mean that there is no “snapback” provision as President Obama called it. […]
