Staunton, August 9 – Russia’s economy was already in trouble before the West imposed sanctions and in time these sanctions could have led to the collapse of the Putin regime. But the Russian president’s decision to respond to these sanctions with a total economic confrontation with the West” will significantly “speed up” this scenario, Vladimir […]
Staunton, August 8 – “No state or regime goes to war firmly convinced that it will lose it,” Andrey Piontkovsky says, and Vladimir Putin is no exception: if he goes to war with NATO and even if he escalates that conflict by using nuclear weapons, he will be acting on the basis of a belief […]
Staunton, August 8 – Moscow has moved to block the March for the Federalization of Siberia because of its fears that its own “federalization” campaign in Ukraine will provoke similar demands inside the Russian Federation, but even if the march is blocked, it has already achieved its goal by sparking Russian discussions of federalism, Artyom […]
Staunton, August 7 – Prior to Vladimir Putin’s Anschluss of Crimea and his interventionist actions in Ukraine, Russians were far more concerned about illegal immigration and ethnic crime than they were about the mistreatment of ethnic Russians in Ukraine, about which so much was said in the media over the last six months. Now, there […]
Staunton, August 7 – “Paradoxically,” Vatslav Lisovsky says, ethnic Russians who have come to Ukraine are often viewed much more favorably by Ukrainians than the residents of the Russian capital are seen by the rest of the population of the Russian Federation. A reflection of both history and current behavior. In a blog post, Lisovsky […]
Staunton, August 8 – Only two of the twelve venues in Russia for the 2018 World Cup are ready, three others are slated for massive reconstruction, and seven have not even been started. This pattern is starting to raise concerns about Moscow’s ability to host the games even as some groups are calling on FIFA […]
Staunton, August 8 – Putinism, Igor Eidman says, is “a combination of the practice and ideology of the authoritarian regime of Putin, which operates on a corrupt bureaucratic oligarchy and is in many respects close to a fascist dictatorship,” with its “aggressive annexationist foreign policy, state-monopoly capitalism, force structures, and chauvinism and traditionalism” promoted by […]
Staunton, August 8 – One of the “paradoxes” of Russian patriotism, Sergei Chernyakhovsky says, is that Western sanctions on Moscow for its actions in Ukraine have driven up Vladimir Putin’s popularity to unprecedented heights. Russians see Putin as standing up to the West and thus performing as they think a leader should. Chernyakhovsky, a professor […]
Staunton, August 7 – The Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia (FEOR) which unites the Hasidic Jewry in Russia, and the Russian Jewish Congress (RJC) which represents Reform Judaism, have been competing for influence on the estimated 15,000 Jews in Crimea since the Russian occupation of that Ukrainian territory. In the new issue of NG-Religii, […]
Staunton, August 7 – Leaders of the ethnic Ukrainian community in the Russian Federation are calling on Vladimir Putin to end the Ukrainophobic campaign in the Moscow media because many Ukrainians now feel that they put themselves at risk of attack if they identify as such. The open letter to the Kremlin leader was prepared […]
