Staunton, May 19 – Russian diplomats in Kyiv don’t speak Ukrainian and have not studied Ukrainian history or culture, a reflection of a general conviction among officials that they have no need to do so, according to Viktor Mironenko, the head of the Center for Ukrainian Research at the Moscow Institute of Europe. And those […]
Staunton, May 18 – Using subversion, Vladimir Putin has not been able to split Ukraine, to take control over Kharkhiv, Mykolayev, or Odessa, or create “’a Novorossiya,’” and that consequently, “without a massive Russian intervention,” he will succeed in detaching only Donetsk and Luhgansk and those only temporarily, according to a Moscow commentator. But what […]
Staunton, May 18 – Despite a ban on any demonstrations by the Russian occupation authorities and a decision by the Milli Mejlis not to hold a mass commemoration lest it become the occasion for a Russian provocation, thousands of Crimean Tatars have assembled in their homeland today to mark the 70th anniversary of their deportation […]
Staunton, May 17 – The head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk Peoples Republic told a press conference in that Ukrainian region’s capital today that “a single command” prepared the pro-Russian operations in Crimea and in other parts of Eastern Ukraine, acknowledging that he personally had “worked in Crimea” but refusing to say just whose project this […]
Staunton, May 17 Even though the issue of relations between Russians and migrant workers has largely disappeared from the Moscow media because of the Ukrainian crisis, it has not gone away and indeed may be more explosive than it was precisely because of the kind of violence that has taken place in eastern Ukraine. In […]
Staunton, May 17 – Many arguments about Ukraine have become a battle of analogies where advocates of various outcomes do so less by talking about what conditions are actually like in that country than by suggesting analogies with countries which also have significant regional tensions. One such case is an exchange between two commentators who […]
Staunton, May 17 – One of the most heinous and socially destructive aspects of Soviet policy was the Communist Party’s continuing efforts to encourage children to report on or even denounce their parents. That program may have helped the regime to stay in power but only at the cost of distrust and atomization of society. […]
Staunton, May 16 – – Russia has a great deal of boldness and nuclear weapons, but it doesn’t have a Peter the Great, Valeriya Novodvorskaya says. Instead, it has Vladimir Putin who instead of opening a window to Europe as the tsar did is playing the role of an Old Believer as in the Khovanshchina […]
Staunton, May 16 – – At the end of Costa Garves’ classic 1969 film “Z” – Greek for “He lives” – about the suppression of an investigation by a Greek junta, the screen goes blank and then follows a list of things that the junta bans, including chewing gum, mini-skirts, Plato, and democracy. That now-distant […]
