Staunton, July 9 – Recent events in Ukraine and especially the Kremlin’s decision not to intervene overtly in support of pro-Russian groups there has cost Vladimir Putin support among Russians, but Moscow commentators disagree about how much he has been hurt and how long the impact of this shift will last. Aleksandr Dugin, the Eurasianist […]
Staunton, July 8 – Both those Russians who continue to press Vladimir Putin to intervene militarily in eastern Ukraine and those who say that his policies in Ukraine have been a disaster are increasingly reviving an old Russian metaphor that cannot be encouraging to the current incumbent of the Kremlin. Ever since Nicholas II and […]
Staunton, July 8 – The death of Eduard Shevardnadze yesterday has sparked an outpouring of memoirs and praise about his contributions to ending the cold war and to helping Georgia escape from the chaos of the 1990s. But in many ways, his most important contributions in the transition from the Soviet world to the post-Soviet […]
Staunton, July 8 – Unless Moscow addresses and overcomes “super-high mortality rates” among young people and working-age Russians, the country will face population decline even if the Russian government is able to boost fertility rates, according to Abel Aganbegyan, a member of the Academy of Sciences and a Kremlin advisor. Indeed, the noted economist says, […]
Staunton, July 4 – The Izborsky Club, a group of intellectuals and writers put together by Aleksandr Prokhanov to promote Russian nationalist and traditionalist views, clearly has had a major influence on Vladimir Putin’s thinking and policies, including his annexation of Crimea and support for the idea of “a Russian world.” But now that Prokhanov […]
Staunton, July 4 – Moscow’s readiness to allow more Chinese firms to locate in Siberia and the Russian Far East and to allow more Chinese to come to Russia to operate them, together with some inflammatory coverage in the Moscow media, has sparked new concerns that Siberia and the Russian Far East are going to […]
Staunton, July 7 – The death on July 5 of Metropolitan Vladimir, the longtime head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, simultaneously highlights the failure of Moscow Patriarch Kirill in Ukraine, Russian commentators say, and likely accelerates a wholesale re-alignment of Orthodox bishoprics and congregations in Ukraine. Vladimir, who died at the […]
Staunton, July 7 – In Soviet times, Moscow’s nationality policy was based on the idea that the non-Russian nations should be “national in form but Soviet in content,” a goal intended to Sovietize them by playing up common social ideas and playing down the varieties of their cultures and one that many non-Russians saw as […]
Staunton, July 7 – What may become a central plank in Moscow’s propaganda about and policy toward Ukraine has now emerged with a Russian analyst arguing that the West should accept as final and legitimate Moscow’s annexation of Crimea because Vladimir Putin is showing such restraint elsewhere in Ukraine. Anton Chablin points out that the […]
Staunton, July 7 -The victorious advance of the Ukrainian military against the pro-Russian secessionists and the cries of despair from the latter are leading some to conclude that the Ukrainian crisis is over. But the intertwined fates of Vladimir Putin, Russia and Ukraine mean that such happy conclusions are at best premature and at worst […]
