After yesterday’s violence in Donetsk and the shooting of Kharkiv Mayor Gennady Kernes, the situation is extremely volatile in south-east Ukraine today. The European Union and Canada have followed the United States in announcing new waves of sanctions against Russian and Ukrainian officials involved in both the annexation of Crimea and the destabilisation of south-east […]
While the US President, Barack Obama, is due to announce a new range of sanctions against Russia later today, the situation in Ukraine is rapidly getting worse. Russian-backed fighters still hold seven OSCE monitors and three SBU officers hostage, in addition to others including the Ukrainian journalist Irma Krat. Furthermore, the violence has spread further […]
After OSCE Monitors were kidnapped by Russian-backed gunmen in Slavyansk, and after Russian aircraft have repeatedly violated Ukrainian airspace, both the G-7 and the EU say they have come up with plans for new sanctions against Russia. Yesterday’s liveblog can be found here. For an overview and analysis of this developing story see our latest […]
Staunton, April 23 – Russians want to live well in a strong state, according to discussions at the Valdai Club last fall. But an economist says Moscow’s failure to modernize the economy could soon force a choice between guns and butter – or even put Russia at risk having less of both. That Russians should want […]
Staunton, April 17 – Some see the rising tide of anti-Americanism and anti-Western attitudes in Russia as a recrudescence of the Cold War, but in fact, the attitudes that the Putin regime is promoting now are very different and much worse than those which his Soviet predecessors sponsored, according to Georgy Mirsky. In Soviet times, […]
Staunton, April 14 – Given memories of Soviet times, Russians today especially value their right to travel abroad and are not “prepared” to give up that right, even though many are not in a position to exercise it and even if they accept some of Moscow’s warnings about the risks such travel may involve, according […]
Staunton, April 8 – Many in both Moscow and the West believe that the US destroyed the USSR by driving down oil prices and could do the same thing with the Russian Federation now, but in fact, the West did not deploy the oil weapon that effectively in the past and could not do so […]
Staunton, April 7 – The domestic consequences of Moscow’s Crimean policy combined with Russia’s weakening economic prospects will drive ever more young Russians to seek work and possibly permanent residence abroad, an “exodus” that will hurt the country far more than any of the sanctions announced so far, according to Yevgeny Gontmakher. In today’s Moskovsky […]
Staunton, April 3 – In the wake of Crimea, Moscow is likely to increase pressure on Belarus to cooperate, but experts say there is little chance that the two countries will unite any time soon. Instead, Putin’s Crimean Anschluss is likely to make Belarus and other former Soviet republics even more leery than they already […]
Staunton, March 31 – Moscow’s denunciation of the accords it had with Ukraine on the naval base in Sevastopol following Russia’s seizure of Crimea has attracted a great deal of attention, but a Ukrainian response, one that creates serious problems for the Russian military so far has not. In response, Vladimir Mukhin writes in today’s […]
