Tag: European Union

Staunton, September 11 – Despite a hard-won and well-deserved reputation for being able to outsmart Western leaders in pursuit of his goals, Vladimir Putin, as a result of his own recent actions, has left himself with only bad options for his next move in Ukraine, according to Vitaly Portnikov. In a commentary on Liga.net, the […]

Staunton, September 4 – Many Soviet and Western analysts treated the Soviet space as something which was more unified than in fact was the case and thus failed to predict that it would disintegrate as it did. And even now, many of them assume that “a common post-Soviet space” exists, but that is not the […]

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 […]

The offices at VTB headquarters in Moscow’s burgeoning new financial district, which lays a short hop away from the Kremlin, were eerily quiet. No one was talking as every employee was gathered around the TV waiting for President Obama to announce the first series of sanctions against Russian and Crimean officials in response to Russia’s […]

Staunton, July 2 – Moscow should consider the problems that overly ambitious expansion has brought to both the European Union and NATO and not seek fall victim to the notion that it must expand the Eurasian Union as quickly and as far as possible, according to Aleksandr Krylov, a leading Russian specialist on the Caucasus. […]

Staunton, June 25 – In 1940, consistent with the principle that territorial changes achieved by force alone would not be recognized, the US took the lead in articulating a non-recognition policy concerning the Soviet occupation of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and for the next 50 years, it maintained that policy until the Baltics recovered their […]

Staunton, June 8 – There are few place names more disturbing to those who live between Europe and Moscow and to those who care about human freedom more generally than Yalta, the site where near the end of World War II, Western leaders agreed with Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin on the division of post-war division […]

Staunton, May 20 – No one should be surprised that “Vladimir Putin is finding a common language with that segment of European politicians who are playing on the sharpening of national feelings” both to strengthen their own domestic position and to promote myths about their nation’s pasts. But Yaroslav Shimov argues in Novaya Gazeta there […]

Russia says imperialism is the reason why Western governments, and the Western media, back the ‘coup’ in Kiev and paint Russia in such a negative light. This week, Boston College Professor Matt Sienkiewicz and Interpreter Magazine’s managing editor James Miller discuss imperialism, propaganda, NATO expansion, and, ultimately, moral equivalence. See our Ukraine front page for […]

Staunton, April 29 – Vladimir Makey, the Belarusian foreign minister, continued to distance Minsk from Moscow by saying that his country seeks a “balance” between Europe and Russia, a statement to a Prague paper that underscores the concerns of Belarus about its own fate in the wake of Moscow’s Crimean Anschluss and Minsk’s new efforts […]