Staunton, July 25 – Despite the horrors Vladimir Putin’s regime continues to inflict on Ukraine, increasingly frequent calls in Moscow for the Kremlin leader to conduct a Stalinist-style crackdown and his disposition to follow them could very well mean that the citizens of the Russian Federation will in the end be the greatest victims of […]
Staunton, July 25 – The way in which many in Russia and elsewhere view Stepan Bandera and his anti-Soviet movement during World War II is “an example of the big lie of the Soviet system” and its influence in post-Soviet times, according to Andrey Zubov, the MGIMO historian who was dismissed from his post for […]
Staunton, July 25 – Vladimir Putin’s increasing authoritarianism has sparked a new round of suggestions in Russia and elsewhere that “Russians are organically incapable of democracy and European values.” But such views ignore the history of the Novgorod Republic which, until Moscow occupied it, was among the most democratic parts of Europe for four centuries. […]
Staunton, July 24 – Bishop Grigory Lyurye, a leading specialist on Orthodoxy who is affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church, says that the Moscow Patriarchate has no future in Ukraine and that, as a result, has only a restricted one in the Russian Federation and internationally. Lyurye, an internationally recognized scholar, in an article […]
Staunton, July 24 – The central Russian narrative on the emergence of the three modern nations of Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians, a narrative on which Vladimir Putin relies, is that there was a single Russian nation a millennium ago and that Ukrainians and Belarusians were byproducts of Russian ethnogenesis, the result of outside interference. That […]
Staunton, July 23 – Vladimir Putin has repeated the two chief mistakes of Yury Andropov – invading a neighboring country and shooting down a civilian aircraft – but he doesn’t have the Soviet-era KGB and CPSU chief’s options anytime soon of a return to totalitarianism or a shift to officers in the organs who can […]
Staunton, July 23 – Europe will do everything it can to avoid taking a hard line against Vladimir Putin even after the shooting down of the Malaysian airliner lest that lead to a break with Russia and in a remarkably short time, the governments and publics in the West will forget about this crime, Vladimir […]
Staunton, July 23 – Those with access to Putin’s ear must convince him to change course now, before he crosses a line from which there is no return, because if such people who are now called an elite prove to be only a bunch of “greedy and frightened” people and do not do so, they […]
Staunton, July 23 – To the dismay of some and the surprise of others, Vladimir Putin used the Russian Security Council meeting July 22 to signal that he has no intention of changing course on Ukraine but instead will continue to maneuver, now stepping up his aggression and now portraying himself as a peacemaker, according […]
Staunton, July 22 – Provoking a further deterioration in relations with the West will have “catastrophic” consequences “not for those who take these decisions but for the Russian economy” because Russia is far too dependent on the West to act as independent superpower, according to Vladislav Inozemtsev. In an article posted online July 22 in […]
