Staunton, May 8 – Despite the declaration in the 1993 Constitution that the Russian Federation is a multi-national country, an expert at the influential Russian Institute for Strategic Studies (RISI) argues that in fact it is not that but rather a nation state of Russians with a few ethnic minorities. Ilya Anosov, the head of […]
Staunton, May 8 Failed states come in a variety of shapes and sizes, one of Russia’s leading regionalist writers says, but on at least one important dimension, the Russian Federation is an example of a failed state while Ukraine, despite all its problems and Russian attacks, is a remarkably successful one. In a commentary on […]
Staunton, May 7 – Two days ago, the Russian government unilaterally suspended its 2001 confidence building agreement with Lithuania and declared that Moscow no longer felt any requirement to inform Vilnius about its military deployments in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. According to the Lithuanian defense ministry, Russian émigré historian Yury Felshtinsky reports, the two […]
Staunton, May 7 – Vladimir Putin decided to go on the offensive now and in such a bold fashion because he believes that the international situation has never been as favorable to Moscow as it is now and may never be as favorable again several years in the future, according to a Moscow analyst. In […]
Staunton, May 7 The Chechen government of Ramzan Kadyrov almost certainly at the behest of Moscow is using threats and torture to get Chechens to go to Ukraine to fight for Russian separatist forces. A few have gone as losses have been reported. But resistance to this program is high. Oleg Leusenko, a Russian blogger, […]
This week, Boston College Professor Matt Sienkiewicz and Interpreter Magazine’s managing editor James Miller discuss Right Sector, neo-Nazis, concentration camps and media wars, the battles in Slavyansk, the role of the Russian Orthodox Church, and public opinion on whether eastern Ukrainians want to become part of Russia. Articles discussed in this podcast: How Russia Conquered […]
Staunton, May 6 – When Ukraine and Moldova declared their intention to sign association agreements with the European Union, Vladimir Putin reacted by speeding up his timetable for the creation of his own Eurasian Union, but that change in schedule may have the unexpected result of delaying or even undermining the formation of that Moscow-led […]
Staunton, May 5 – By annexing Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula, Moscow appears more likely to have acquired “a second Dagestan,” the most unstable republic in the North Caucasus, than “a second Tatarstan,” the stable, wealthy and influential republic in the Middle Volga, according to Russian experts. In a survey of the parallels between Crimea and Dagestan […]
Staunton, May 5 – Ostensibly at the insistence of parental demands and despite Russian President Vladimir Putin’s declaration that there are three official languages on the peninsula, Russian is replacing Ukrainian as the language of instruction in schools there, according to a report in Izvestiya today. The Moscow paper says that parents in Sevastopol, Simferopol, […]
Staunton, May 5 – Because Russian is the Russian Federation’s state language, because educational examinations are given only in Russian, and because Russian is the most widely used language in that country, many non-Russian parents want their children to study in Russian rather than in their native language. At the same time, many non-Russians are […]
