Staunton, July 29 – The Russian government should reduce the attention it is paying to ethnic Russians and Russian speakers in the former Soviet republics – a group he calls “Russian World-II” – and expand its attention to ethnic Russians and those who feel an attachment to Russia elsewhere, a group he calls “Russian World-I,” […]
Staunton, July 28 – Moscow commentators like to talk about the existence of “two, three or even more Ukraines” and argue that Ukraine will disintegrate, Igor Losev says, but the reality is that there are far more ‘Russias’ than that, and the Russian Federation is thus at far greater risk of falling apart. In a […]
Staunton, July 29 – Most commentaries assume that the Moscow-backed secessionist “ Donetsk Republic” arose in response to the Maidan at the end of last year and the beginning of this. Now, Sobkorr.ru reports an online group promoting that idea appeared on Russian VKontakte pages as early as 2008. This prehistory is important for two reasons. On […]
Staunton, July 29 – As the Ukrainian military closes in on Moscow-backed forces in southeastern Ukraine, Russian commentators are scrambling to explain why the Russian-speaking population in that region have not flocked to the banners of the secessionists in Donetsk and Lugansk. Not surprisingly, these commentators have not focused on the fact that the population […]
Staunton, July 29 – Many in Moscow and the West, seeing the ways in which Russian television has mobilized Russians in support of Vladimir Putin’s aggression in Ukraine, believe that the Internet can transform Russians into opponents of the Kremlin. But the editors of Nezavisimaya gazeta warn that the web on its own does not […]
Staunton, July 28 – Russian businesses have little interest in working with Russian researchers in universities and institutes, an attitude that precludes “the innovative development of the economy,” according to scholars at the Moscow Institute for Statistical Studies and Economics of Knowledge. The experience of other countries shows that “close and effective interaction between enterprises […]
Staunton, July 28 – In part because they can get news not just from Moscow but from Ukraine and in part because they have close ties to both Russians and Ukrainians, Belarusians are now deeply split between those who back Russian policy in Ukraine and those who support the Ukrainian government. As important as this […]
Staunton, July 25 – Angered by the success Circassians had at the time of the Sochi Olympics in focusing international attention on the Russian genocide of their ancestors in 1864 and by the insistence of Circassians that their co-ethnics in war-torn Syria should be allowed to return to the North Caucasus, Moscow has adopted a […]
Staunton, July 28 – Vladimir Putin is ensuring himself ideologically against a nationalist challenge to himself if Russian militants fighting in Ukraine are forced to return to the Russian Federation where their popularity among many Russians, thanks to the Kremlin’s earlier ideological effort, remains extremely high, according to Yevgeny Ikhlov. The Moscow commentator says that […]
Staunton, July 25 – Russian prison officials are marking Ramadan in their own distinctive way by intensifying their longstanding discrimination against and active persecution of Muslim prisoners, according to a survey by Kavpolit.com’s Gulya Arifmezova of posts by the relatives and friends of these prisoners on the Internet. Because Islam requires fasting during the day […]
