Staunton, May 23 Only at first glance does the Ukrainian political system appear to be weak and its Russian counterpart strong, according to Sabidzhan Badretdinov, but a closer focus shows that the Ukrainian system has far greater chances for lasting over the long haul than does the Russian, a reality that may explain some of […]
Staunton, May 23 – Igor Strelkov, defense minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk Peoples Republic, has attracted attention because of his Moscow ties, but now a Russian news agency has suggested that he represents “an Orthodox Chekist at the head of a revolution” and asked the broader question — can an Orthodox oligarch carry out a […]
Staunton, May 22 – Occupation authorities rarely take good care of the environment of the territory they have seized, and the Russian Anschluss of Crimea is no exception, with the Russian ecological legislation and practice significantly less good than their Ukrainian counterparts, according to Volodimir Boreyko, head of the Kyiv Ecological-Cultural Center. Boreyko’s views on […]
Staunton, May 22 – “Wahhabism and religious fanaticism may become a real problem for Ekaterinburg already in a few weeks,” an URA.ru analyst says, not so much because of the actions of Islamist missionaries as some in the media have suggested but because Russian officials are closing a mosque and thus losing their ability to […]
Staunton, May 22 – Moscow is seeking to force the mufti of Crimea to break with the Crimean Tatar Mejlis or face the prospect that he and his Crimean Muslim Spiritual Directorate (MSD) will be “marginalized” by the authorities who will move to create “a more adequate centralized structure” for the Muslims of Crimea, according […]
Staunton, May 22 – What is taking place in Donetsk and Luhansk is not a civil war because it isn’t a struggle about the definition of the direction of all of Ukraine, Yevgeny Ikhlov argues. And it isn’t a fratricidal armed conflict because local elites are not providing the insurgent forces with support. Instead, he […]
Staunton, May 22 – For months, Moscow officials and commentators have complained about what they say is a double standard on the part of the West, arguing that Western governments and writers are condemning Russia for doing in Ukraine exactly what the US and the West more generally have done elsewhere. Such complaints are in […]
Staunton, May 21 – The Donetsk Peoples Republic is “a beautiful example for those who love to shout the slogan ‘Russia Without Putin’” because the situation there demonstrates, perhaps by the Kremlin’s design, what could happen in the Russian Federation as a whole if Putin were to be replaced, according to Aleksey Roshchin. In a […]
Staunton, May 21 – In 1920, Siberian writer Anton Sorokin made fun of the White Russian regime there with a story entitled “33 Scandals for Kolchak.” The scandals he identified were invented, but Cityboom, Moscow’s online newspaper has now posted six all-too-real “scandals of the year” in Russia showing “how racism and anti-Semitism have ceased […]
Staunton, May 21 – If Vladimir Putin had wanted to occupy part or all of Ukraine, he would have installed a different group of leaders in Donetsk and Luhansk, Yegeniya Albats says, a comment that provides an important clue to the Kremlin leader’s more general strategy with regard not only to Ukraine but to the […]
