Staunton, February 23 — A “new stage” has begun in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, one that involves terrorist actions like those in the Chechen wars but “with this important modification: in this case, a nuclear power is suspected of terrorism” or possibly its “incompletely controlled militants,” according to Ilya Milshteyn. “This in general […]
Welcome to our column, Russia Update, where we will be closely following day-to-day developments in Russia, including the Russian government’s foreign and domestic policies. The previous issue is here, and see also our Russia This Week stories ‘Anti-Maidan’ Launched by Nationalists, Cossacks, Veterans, Bikers and The Guild War – How Should Journalists Treat Russian State […]
In the last two days we have witnessed an incredible, rapid, steep, and perhaps unstoppable collapse in the value of the ruble. As of 9:15 AM Eastern today, the ruble is down more than 13%. By the time I publish this, that figure will be out of date. One look at today’s graph shows that […]
This year Time Magazine named the brave health workers and first responders who have been fighting the Ebola outbreak as its “Person of the Year.” One can understand why. These people are selflessly trying to fight one of the scariest viruses known to the human race, and have been doing it while also dealing with the […]
Staunton, December 5 – In 1969, Bertram Wolfe published his classic study, “Krupskaya Purges the People’s Libraries” in the London-based journal Survey, an essay in which he described the way Lenin’s wife began putting a straightjacket on intellectual life in the Soviet Union. Now, in yet another revival of the Soviet past, Vladimir Putin is […]
Staunton, December 3 – Prophets, it is sometimes observed, are ignored twice: the first time when they make their predictions and the second when those predictions come true and the full consequences of what they had said could happen begin to appear. That has happened to those who suggested in the 1990s that Russia was the […]
Staunton, November 30 – Seventy-five years ago, Moscow launched what became known as the Winter War against Finland. It used much the same propaganda and tactics it is using against Ukraine now. It faced far greater resistance than its vast disproportion of forces had led it to believe. And thanks to that resistance, it achieved […]
Staunton, November 24 – One of the most dangerous developments for which Vladimir Putin is responsible is that the lies he and his regime regularly employ, and the actions they take, have changed what would be unthinkable under normal conditions into a new normal, things which people would earlier have focused on into things which […]
Staunton, November 21 – On the first anniversary of the beginning of the Maidan demonstrations, Vitaly Portnikov says, it is important to understand that “Putin lost Ukraine even before the Maidan, before the dispersal of the students, before the bloodshed, before the occupation or Crimea and before the war in the Donbass.” He lost it, […]
Staunton, November 13 – Vladimir Putin is proposing the kind of grand bargain to Barack Obama that Hitler proposed to Neville Chamberlain and then to Joseph Stalin, in which the West would accept Russia’s annexation of Crimea in exchange for Moscow’s cooperation on Iran, according to Andrey Illarionov. Chamberlain rejected that bargain but Stalin did […]
