Staunton, August 7 – During the Cold War, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists rated the level of danger of a nuclear war in terms of the number of minutes the clock was running before midnight. Now, Russian historian Yuri Feltshtinsky has told a Polish newspaper that Vladimir Putin has set the world’s clock back […]
Staunton, August 4 – Many members of the Russian intelligentsia are repeating the mistake their predecessors made a century ago, engaging in what can be called an updated version of the ‘Change of Signposts’ movement to justify collaboration with an authoritarian regime, according to Livejournal blogger Kitty Sanders. In a post yesterday, she noted that […]
Staunton, August 4 – Moscow’s adoption of ‘imperial federalism’ as a strategy to extend its power over neighboring countries is sparking a variety of demands within the Russian Federation for moves toward making that country a genuine and not only a nominal federal system, according to Vadim Shtepa. In an article on Rufabula.com, Shtepa, one […]
Staunton, August 4 – Despite the expectations of many in the West and the past behavior of the Russian government, politics, not economics are the driving force behind Vladimir Putin’s policies now: his Russia must now pursue survival rather than growth and thus “victory or death,” according to Konstantin Gaaze. In a commentary on Slon.ru […]
Staunton, August 2 – On August 1, the Russian government forced Slon.ru to remove an interview with a leader of the Siberian regionalist movement only to have it appear on other sites almost instantly. On the one hand, the ban reflects Moscow’s nervousness about the announcement of plans by Siberian regionalists to hold “a march […]
Staunton, August 1 – Sir Malcolm Rifkind, chairman of the Commons Defense and Security Committee, says that the difference between Crimea and Chechnya is that “Crimea wanted to be part of Russia and Chechnya did not” and that Russia “instantly” recognized the right of the first and used military force to deny that right to […]
Staunton, August 1 – Thirty-nine years ago today, the leaders of 35 governments signed the Helsinki Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, an event that Soviet officials viewed as a triumph but one that in fact put in motion forces that triggered the end of communism and the disintegration of […]
Staunton, August 1 – In order to weaken the Crimean Tatars by muddying the water about them, the Russian occupation authorities are backing a new group that would combine Azov Greeks, Don Armenians and Crimean Tatars into a single group representing what its organizers call the “older resident” communities on the peninsula. These disparate groups, […]
Staunton, July 31 – Many have been transfixed by the size of the US $50 billion judgment by the international court in the Hague against Moscow in the YUKOS case, but the real threat to Russia lies not from that vast sum but rather in the principle that the international court has articulated, according to […]
Staunton, July 31 – Moscow is directing predominantly ethnic Russian refugees from the fighting in southeastern Ukraine into non-Russian republics of the Russian Federation in a transparent effort to change the ethnic balance in those republics and further Russianize them, according to Marat Kulsharipov, a historian at Bashkortostan State University. In an interview to RFE/RL’s […]
