Tag: Russia

Staunton, August 25 – The flow of ethnic Russian refugees from Ukraine is giving Russia “a truly historical opportunity to restore the ethnic balance in the North Caucasus Federal District” by reversing the decline in the share of the Slavic population there over recent years and thus defending Russia against the Muslim south, according to […]

Staunton, August 26 – The leaders of major Western countries declare that they are seeking to find an answer to the crisis in Ukraine, but in order to find an answer, it is important that they begin to ask the right questions. It is all too clear that many of them are not doing so […]

Staunton, August 24 – Russia has entered a new “smuta” or “Time of Troubles,” one in which there is no basis for confidence or any clear path forward and which unlike previous earlier analogues “threatens completely unpredictable consequences” for the country and its peoples, according to a Kazan academic. In the current issue of Zvezda Povolzhya, […]

Staunton, August 10 – Ever more people around the world want Vladimir Putin to leave the scene but very few have asked themselves what Russia will be like after his departure. Someone who has is Sergei Klimovsky, he suggests that Russia will either be a fascist state even worse than the current regime or a […]

Staunton, August 17 – An instructor at the Russian foreign ministry’s training academy told participants at a government-sponsored youth camp that “Zionism is a movement for the establishment of the world rule of Jewish bankers,” that it “finances pagans to destroy Orthodoxy,” and that it has so “Judaicized” Catholicism that “almost nothing remains” of that […]

Staunton, August 17 – Most Western commentators focus on the absence of genuine democracy in the so-called “hybrid” regimes but fail to notice that such regimes are also characterized by a lack of genuine dictatorship, according to Yekaterina Schulman, a Moscow legal affairs commentator. “It is easy to see that the democratic façade [of such […]

Staunton, August 14 – Ever more Russians are relying on private plots at their dachas or on farms for food as the sanctions regime tightens, a development that could serve as an indication that social clashes might occur. At the same time, ever more of them are pushing for setting up private and religious cemeteries […]

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 11 – Many observers are focusing on the impact Putin’s ban on imports from countries which have imposed sanctions on Russia will have on Russian consumers, but Vladislav Inozemtsev says that it will have more serious consequences for Russian entrepreneurs and their relationship with the Kremlin. Because the sanctions will hit the entrepreneurs’ […]

Staunton, August 12 – As a result of globalization, political and geographical borders “are losing their importance,” a Buryat anthropologist says, while “strategic borders,” those reflecting where a country has projected its economic and cultural influence, are becoming ever more important. With respect to China and Russia east of the Urals, Sayana Namsarayeva says, China’s […]