Tag: Russia

Updated Daily. Kremlin propagandists have targeted the State Department’s spokesperson for ridicule in a social media campaign, but it’s not clear if it has genuine resonance. Surveillance of Internet users and particularly bloggers will increase under new Russian laws, although Putin claims he is just “thinking of the children.” Russian independent media has tracked the […]

Staunton, June 12 – Many commentators have pointed out that Russia’s strategy and tactics in Ukraine are a more or less complete copy of the ones Hitler used against Poland and Stalin used in the Baltic countries. But if one looks beyond Ukraine, it is entirely possible that Vladimir Putin will copy another Nazi operation. […]

This week on The Interpreter podcast Boston College Professor Matt Sienkiewicz and Interpreter Magazine’s managing editor James Miller discuss the latest news from Ukraine. Can Ukraine’s new president broker a peace with Russia? Is Ukraine losing in the east? Are things actually getting worse, not better, despite the media narrative? What is NATO’s role, is […]

Staunton, June 10 – Over the last several days, many in the West have professed to see Moscow pulling back from its subversive aggression against Ukraine and expressed confidence that the crisis Vladimir Putin’s actions there have caused is approaching an end that both Russia and the West will be able to live with, however […]

Staunton, June 9 – “Russia is part of Europe but it never will be part of the West,” a psychological pattern that has remained “unchanged” over the course of the last 500 to 600 years and one whose continuity leads to the modification of any system it has adopted to fit the Russian mentality, according […]

Staunton, June 8 – Much of the public support in Russia for Vladimir Putin reflects the fact that his actions allow Russians to believe if only for a time that their country is once again a great power even though they fully understand that Russia is not in a position to be one the equal […]

Staunton, June 7 – In yet another example of the Kremlin’s shamelessness about its plans to use its power across the former Soviet space in what constitutes an updated but geographically smaller Brezhnev doctrine, FSB head Aleksandr Bortnikov says his agency will react quickly and harshly to any attempt to overthrow existing regimes in the […]

Staunton, June 5 – Despite the efforts of Moscow to suggest that the Cossacks are the unified advance guard of “the Russian world” and to create a wholly controlled Cossack establishment consisting of people with no links to the Cossack past, many Kuban Cossacks and especially the younger ones now support Ukraine against Russian aggression. […]

Staunton, June 5 – The much-ballyhooed gas deal Vladimir Putin signed with Beijing will only have an “insignificant” impact on Russia’s economic development and state revenues, according to an analysis by experts at the Center of Development of the Moscow Higher School of Economics. Their 43-page report is available here. Its main conclusions are provided […]

Staunton, 4 June – Vladimir Putin’s approach in Ukraine appears to be modelled on what he believes the West been doing in Syria, an approach that he hopes to use as the basis of a swap between Moscow and the G-7 but one that could transform what many in Russia continue to call “the near […]