Staunton, September 6 – That Vladimir Putin has won another round in his invasion of Ukraine seems clear: he has forced Kiev to reach agreements with Moscow-backed secessionists, he has effectively taken his Anschluss of Crimea off the table of discussion, and he has further undermined Western unity concerning the imposition of sanctions. In all […]
Staunton, September 5 – From the very first moments of Vladimir Putin’s aggression against Ukraine, “optimists” in Russia and the West have deceived themselves and others and helped set the stage for Putin to go further, a pattern that shows no signs of abating anytime soon, according to Vitaly Portnikov. On the Grani.ru portal, the […]
Staunton, September 2 – With the Crimean Anschluss, a new “cultural type” has emerged, “Homo Crimeacus,” people who think “fundamentally differently than “’post-communist’ Russians” and who are pursuing a doomed effort to restore the “Homo Sovieticus” of the late USSR, according to Vladimir Pastukhov. In an essay posted on Polit.ru today, the St. Antony’s scholar […]
Staunton, September 2 – Russians are less enthralled about the annexation of Crimea than they were a few months ago, according to a Levada Center poll, an apparent result of information fatigue and growing recognition of the costs involved but a trend that appears to have prompted the Kremlin to organize druzhinniki to combat opposition […]
Staunton, September 1 – “Crimea never was pro-Russian – it did not know and could not know post-Soviet Russia,” Pavel Kazarin says. “Instead, over the course of the last quarter of a century,” the Ukrainian peninsula was “pro-Soviet,” something that is going to create problems for Moscow there in the near term. That confusion is […]
Staunton, August 21 – Ukrainian President Petr Poroshenko has named Mustafa Cemilev to the new position of plenipotentiary representative for Crimean Tatar affairs and charged him with “securing the observation of the constitutional rights of the Crimean Tatar people as an indigenous people of Ukraine.” Poroshenko’s decision institutionalizes the Verkhovna Rada’s vote on March 20 […]
Staunton, August 14 – Vladimir Putin’s current visit to occupied Crimea, his second, may not lead to the dramatic declaration of his plans that many expect, a Ukrainian political scientist says. Instead, the Kremlin leader may be using it to present himself as “a peacemaker” and to force the international community to recognize Moscow’s annexation […]
Staunton, August 12 – In the case of Sochi, the West demonstrated that it wasn’t prepared to boycott the Olympic Games despite what Vladimir Putin had done, but FIFA, the international football federation, may strip Russia of the right to hold the 2018 World Cup because of Moscow’s violation of that organization’s rules concerning Crimean clubs. […]
Staunton, August 7 – The Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia (FEOR) which unites the Hasidic Jewry in Russia, and the Russian Jewish Congress (RJC) which represents Reform Judaism, have been competing for influence on the estimated 15,000 Jews in Crimea since the Russian occupation of that Ukrainian territory. In the new issue of NG-Religii, […]
Staunton, August 1 – Sir Malcolm Rifkind, chairman of the Commons Defense and Security Committee, says that the difference between Crimea and Chechnya is that “Crimea wanted to be part of Russia and Chechnya did not” and that Russia “instantly” recognized the right of the first and used military force to deny that right to […]
