Staunton, May 23 – The Kazakhstan authorities have brought criminal charges against Aleksandr Belov, the lead of “The Russians” national movement for recruiting and training ethnic Kazakh nationalists as part of a plan to destabilize the political system in that Central Asian republic. Belov’s alleged actions, interesting as they are in their own right, are […]
Staunton, May 23 Only at first glance does the Ukrainian political system appear to be weak and its Russian counterpart strong, according to Sabidzhan Badretdinov, but a closer focus shows that the Ukrainian system has far greater chances for lasting over the long haul than does the Russian, a reality that may explain some of […]
Staunton, May 23 – Igor Strelkov, defense minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk Peoples Republic, has attracted attention because of his Moscow ties, but now a Russian news agency has suggested that he represents “an Orthodox Chekist at the head of a revolution” and asked the broader question — can an Orthodox oligarch carry out a […]
Staunton, May 22 – Occupation authorities rarely take good care of the environment of the territory they have seized, and the Russian Anschluss of Crimea is no exception, with the Russian ecological legislation and practice significantly less good than their Ukrainian counterparts, according to Volodimir Boreyko, head of the Kyiv Ecological-Cultural Center. Boreyko’s views on […]
Staunton, May 21 – If Vladimir Putin had wanted to occupy part or all of Ukraine, he would have installed a different group of leaders in Donetsk and Luhansk, Yegeniya Albats says, a comment that provides an important clue to the Kremlin leader’s more general strategy with regard not only to Ukraine but to the […]
Staunton, May 21 – It is now common ground that Vladimir Putin’s Anschluss of Crimea and subversion of southeastern Ukraine have done more to boost and solidify the national identity of Ukrainians and their commitment to taking the steps necessary to be part of the West than have the actions of anyone else. But it […]
Staunton, May 19 – Russian diplomats in Kyiv don’t speak Ukrainian and have not studied Ukrainian history or culture, a reflection of a general conviction among officials that they have no need to do so, according to Viktor Mironenko, the head of the Center for Ukrainian Research at the Moscow Institute of Europe. And those […]
Staunton, May 17 – The head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk Peoples Republic told a press conference in that Ukrainian region’s capital today that “a single command” prepared the pro-Russian operations in Crimea and in other parts of Eastern Ukraine, acknowledging that he personally had “worked in Crimea” but refusing to say just whose project this […]
Staunton, May 17 – Many arguments about Ukraine have become a battle of analogies where advocates of various outcomes do so less by talking about what conditions are actually like in that country than by suggesting analogies with countries which also have significant regional tensions. One such case is an exchange between two commentators who […]
