Window on Eurasia

Staunton, September 11 – Despite a hard-won and well-deserved reputation for being able to outsmart Western leaders in pursuit of his goals, Vladimir Putin, as a result of his own recent actions, has left himself with only bad options for his next move in Ukraine, according to Vitaly Portnikov. In a commentary on Liga.net, the […]

Staunton, September 11 – “’Rossiyane’ is a much broader category than ethnic Russians, and our compatriots,” Sergey Arutyunov says, are not only Russians in Canada or Argentina but Tuvins in Xinjiang, Buryats in Shemekhen and Circassians in Syria or the United Arab Emirates — at least as long as they want to consider themselves to […]

Staunton, September 11 – Moscow’s earnings from the export of oil and gas, a figure that reflects both world prices and domestic production, are likely to continue to decline until new fields in the Far East come online two to four years from now, given that world prices are soft and Russia’s production is falling. […]

Staunton, September 11 – Vladimir Putin wants to impose a North Korean-type of control over the Internet, according to Russian blogger Anton Nosik; but the costs such closure will impose on the Russian economy, the ability of Russian surfers to work around his actions, and, last but not least, the linguistic diversity of the country […]

Staunton, September 9 – Nurlan Turekhanov, a Kazakh designer, has updated German Pastor Martin Niemöller’s explanation for why Hitler was able to pick off one group after another and why groups whose members think they are beyond being victimized should not be so certain. In a poster that has gone viral in the Kazakh, Russian […]

Staunton, September 9 – In his latest update on Stalinism as “effective management,” Vladimir Putin has disbanded Russia’s Regional Affairs Ministry, yet another sign of his drive to further centralize the country, eliminate any serious discussion of Russia’s regions and their problems, and thus undermine any chance that Moscow will have an effective nationality policy. […]

Staunton, September 9 – As a result of Moscow’s intervention in Ukraine, Russia faces three large sets of problems with the outside world, with Ukraine, and with itself that will take decades if not generations to overcome and limit its ability to develop as many of its citizens had hoped, according to Ivan Kurilla, a […]

Staunton, September 7 – Even though there is every indication that the ceasefire has already been broken and that Vladimir Putin had no intention of living up to its promise of a move toward peace, Ukrainians are confronted with the challenge of considering how best to use the time it may give them to strengthen […]

Staunton, September 7 – German Chancellor Angela Merkel has observed that Vladimir Putin lives in “a different reality” than do Western leaders, Andrey Piontkovsky notes, but these Western leaders have not yet acted in a way that reflects that understanding but rather on the false assumption that Putin sees the world and calculates about it […]

Staunton, September 8 – Anyone watching Moscow television would conclude that “there is no more important news than the situation in Ukraine and the intrigues of NATO,” Olga Filina says in today’s Ogonyok, but those who follow Russia’s labor market say that “the most important news” involves the spread of protests by workers who haven’t […]