Staunton, June 8 – There are few place names more disturbing to those who live between Europe and Moscow and to those who care about human freedom more generally than Yalta, the site where near the end of World War II, Western leaders agreed with Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin on the division of post-war division […]
Staunton, June 7 – In yet another example of the Kremlin’s shamelessness about its plans to use its power across the former Soviet space in what constitutes an updated but geographically smaller Brezhnev doctrine, FSB head Aleksandr Bortnikov says his agency will react quickly and harshly to any attempt to overthrow existing regimes in the […]
Staunton, June 7 – Unless Moscow gives territorial autonomy to ethnic Russians and ends as much as possible inter-regional transfers of government spending, the Russian Federation “in the near future” will explode in “a civil war analogous to the Ukrainian one” and “inevitably “disintegrate,” according to Mariya Butina. In a post on Ekho Moskvy, the […]
Staunton, June 7 – Russians of various kinds who are fighting on Moscow’s behalf in eastern Ukraine and who are heroes in the eyes of many Russians at home face a future they don’t expect: When Moscow does resolve the Ukrainian crisis, the Kremlin will disown and arrest them lest they become a threat to […]
Staunton, June 6 – Vladimir Putin has adopted the rhetoric of national self-determination and federalism in Ukraine, but a leading Russian regionalist site says that this is “hypocrisy and a farce” which should deceive no one and especially not regionalists and federalists in Russia because it is only “a cover for an aggressive imperial policy.” […]
Staunton, June 6 – Said Ismagilov, the head of the Kyiv-based Muslim Spiritual Directorate (MSD) of Ukraine, said that Muslims in other countries should not come to Ukraine because those who do so will be fighting against a government that has treated the Islamic community well and continues to do so. In an appeal on […]
Staunton, June 6 – Despite its claims to the contrary, the Kremlin is rapidly reducing the size of the “Russian world” rather than increasing it because it is alienating its neighbors by the use of force rather than attracting them by the strength of its economy and of its universities, according to Yuliya Latynina. In […]
Staunton, June 6 – Many have blamed Moscow’s state-controlled television for whipping up anti-Ukrainian attitudes among Russians, but Aleksey Levinson, a Levada Center sociologist, argues that what the broadcasts have done is not to create something out of whole cloth but rather to shape and exacerbate it. In an interview with Andrey Lipsky of Novaya […]
Staunton, June 6 – Moscow officials say that an increasing number of Ukrainians are seeking refuge from the turmoil in their country by moving to the Russian Federation, and experts note that unexpectedly for the central Russian government, many of them are seeking to settle in the Russian Far East. But as Ulyana Ivanova points […]
Staunton, June 5 – Vladimir Putin has more support in the predominantly Muslim republics of Tatarstan and Chechnya than he does in Orthodox Christian Moscow, a reflection of the reality that “in terms of its content, Putin’s policies are Asiatic” rather than Christian, according to Rashit Akhmetov, the editor of Kazan’s Zvezda Povolzhya. The Russian […]
