Staunton, August 12 – Russia’s misfortune lies not in that it is defending what it perceives as its interests, but that “it is doing so by attempting to realize the latest Russian utopia,” one directed not toward the future as in 1917 but toward the past, something that makes “a rational exit” from the current […]
Staunton, August 12 – Aleksei Levinson, a sociologist at the Levada Center, says that iron curtains like the one now being erected around Russia are a political strategy that reflects weakness rather than strength and that its appearance is not the end of the story but somewhere in the beginning. In an interview published in this […]
Staunton, August 12 – Usually when Russians or others talk about the Russian state as the successor to the Mongol Golden Horde, they do so from the perspective of those who believe Moscow hasn’t yet but should escape from that “yoke” and become a modern state. But there are exceptions, people who believe that Moscow […]
Staunton, August 12 – As a result of globalization, political and geographical borders “are losing their importance,” a Buryat anthropologist says, while “strategic borders,” those reflecting where a country has projected its economic and cultural influence, are becoming ever more important. With respect to China and Russia east of the Urals, Sayana Namsarayeva says, China’s […]
Staunton, August 12 – In the case of Sochi, the West demonstrated that it wasn’t prepared to boycott the Olympic Games despite what Vladimir Putin had done, but FIFA, the international football federation, may strip Russia of the right to hold the 2018 World Cup because of Moscow’s violation of that organization’s rules concerning Crimean clubs. […]
Staunton, August 11 – Not only has the Russian government reduced the number of hospital beds available to the Russian people and increased the amount they have to spend on health care, but it has failed to live up to its promises to pay medical personnel more, leaving ever more hospitals without staffs and transforming […]
Staunton, August 11 – The notion that the West has a strategy for Ukraine is “a myth of Kremlin propaganda,” Vladimir Pastukhov says. “What is happening in Ukraine is the result not so much of the application of a mistaken strategy by the West as much as it is the sad consequence of the absence […]
Staunton, August 10 – Seventy-one percent of Russians watch television almost every day, 43 percent regularly use the Internet, 26 percent read newspapers and journals, and 20 percent listen to radio regularly, while TV use is nearly constant, Internet use is growing rapidly, and radio and print media use are falling, according to a new […]
Staunton, August 10 – Now that the defeat of the Russian insurgents in eastern Ukraine is within sight and Western sanctions are beginning to bite, many commentators are arguing that Vladimir Putin must choose between sending in the Russian army as part of a full-scale invasion or suing for peace and an end of Western […]
Staunton, August 9 – Oleg Soskin, a Ukrainian political analyst, says that Vladimir Putin’s dismissal of 18 senior officers and other officials shows that he is preparing for a major war and does not want to listen to anyone who points to the dangers of that strategy, perhaps concerned that he might not be able […]
