The current and continuing demonstrations in Armenia over price hikes by the state electricity company contain many lessons for us and Russia. First, they highlight the continuing economic and political pathologies of the neo-Soviet or Putinist experiment where the state retains the controlling interest in the economy. Under these autocratic conditions state ownership remains a […]
Staunton, September 24 – The economic problems of the Russian Federation, some of which have been exacerbated by the sanctions and counter-sanctions regime, are now spreading to some Central Asian countries because of a fall-off in transfer payments home by labor migrants in Russia and by Moscow’s inability to pay for investment in that region. […]
Yesterday’s liveblog can be found here. For an overview and analysis of this developing story see our latest podcast. Please help The Interpreter to continue providing this valuable information service by making a donation towards our costs. View Ukraine: April, 2014 in a larger map For links to individual updates click on the timestamps. Below […]
Staunton, May 31 – Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev said this week that Armenia could join the Eurasian Union only as a country with the borders recognized by the United Nations, a statement that clearly shocked Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan by suggesting that the union won’t support his claims on Karabakh or other portions of Azerbaijan. […]
Staunton, May 3 – Despite Moscow’s promises and expectations, its Customs Union is “clearly insufficient for stimulating cooperation in the Russian-Kazakhstan border regions,” according to a Russian expert. For that to change, he says the two sides would have to develop something like the EU’s Euro-Region program — something they are very from doing. The […]
Staunton, May 2 – Two months ago, Mariya Snegova, a Russian sociologist at Columbia University, suggested that Vladimir Putin was drawing on Mikhail Yuryev’s 2006 novel, The Third Empire, as a guide to his moves against Ukraine and as a source for a new imperial ideology. Snegova’s conclusions about the impact of Yuryev’s thinking on […]
This article is co-written by Luke Rodeheffer and Devin Ackles. Admist the chaos in Ukraine, the leaders of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia recently convened in Astana as part of the Eurasian Economic Commission. Beyond the upbeat statements from the troika’s leaders, one topic that remains a source of anxiety is how effectively a common labor […]
Staunton, April 3 – In the wake of Crimea, Moscow is likely to increase pressure on Belarus to cooperate, but experts say there is little chance that the two countries will unite any time soon. Instead, Putin’s Crimean Anschluss is likely to make Belarus and other former Soviet republics even more leery than they already […]
Staunton, March 26 – Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea has not only opened a new divide between Moscow and the West. It has re-ordered relations among the former Soviet republics and that in turn has raised questions about the way such changes will affect the future of many unresolved conflicts there. In an article for Vestnik […]
Staunton, March 20 – Vladimir Putin may be seeking to restore a Russian empire, but his annexation of Crimea is destroying many of the things that had tied the former Soviet republics together and simultaneously allowed Moscow to be able to count on influence across that region and permitted outside analysts to speak of it […]
