Staunton, June 5 – Russia is redirecting its trade flows away from Lithuania in order to punish Vilnius for its outspoken support of Ukraine and opposition to Russian aggression there, a shift that has cut the flow of oil through the Butinge terminal by more than a third from a year ago and is costing […]
Staunton, June 5 – Despite the efforts of Moscow to suggest that the Cossacks are the unified advance guard of “the Russian world” and to create a wholly controlled Cossack establishment consisting of people with no links to the Cossack past, many Kuban Cossacks and especially the younger ones now support Ukraine against Russian aggression. […]
Staunton, June 5 – The much-ballyhooed gas deal Vladimir Putin signed with Beijing will only have an “insignificant” impact on Russia’s economic development and state revenues, according to an analysis by experts at the Center of Development of the Moscow Higher School of Economics. Their 43-page report is available here. Its main conclusions are provided […]
Staunton, 4 June – Mustafa Cemilev, the Crimean Tatar leader, said in an interview to the Belarusian television channel Belsat that people close to Vladimir Putin are growing so angry at the Kremlin leader because of sanctions that they are ready to rise in revolt against him, an action that could lead to the disintegration […]
Staunton, 4 June – Moscow propagandists have criticized the plans of Ukrainian President-elect Petro Poroshenko to attend the 70th anniversary commemorations of the D-Day landings in Normandy suggesting that Ukraine was not one of the allied countries and that Ukrainians supported the Nazis. But those implications are untrue, Yury Shapoval, a member of the National […]
Staunton, 4 June – There are many ways to measure Russia’s demographic decline, but perhaps the most striking is a figure Ada Gorbacheva, a Nezavisimaya Gazeta commentator, offered yesterday: Over the last 10 to 15 years, the share of children in the Russian population has fallen from 25 percent to 16 percent. The number of […]
Staunton, 4 June – Vladimir Putin’s approach in Ukraine appears to be modelled on what he believes the West been doing in Syria, an approach that he hopes to use as the basis of a swap between Moscow and the G-7 but one that could transform what many in Russia continue to call “the near […]
Staunton, 4 June – Saying that it is a very good thing Russian environmental activists are “still free” to meet, Yeveniya Chirikova, a leader of the movement for the Ecological Defense of Moscow City and Region says that Moscow’s repressive actions have created the need for a new term analogous to “prisoner of conscience” –“prisoner […]
Staunton, 3 June – A petition calling for a ban on the operations of the Moscow Patriarchate on Ukrainian territory highlights in the religious sphere a dilemma Ukrainians face elsewhere as well: If Kyiv moves to protect itself, it will be criticized for violating human rights; if it doesn’t, it may be allowing Moscow institutions […]
Staunton, 3 June – In an echo of the success Abkhazians had in pressing for the ouster of their republic’s leader, 271 delegates to a May 31 meeting in Makhachkala calling itself “the Extraordinary Congress of the Peoples of Dagestan” has demanded that Moscow fire Ramazan Abdulatipov as republic head and replace him with one […]
