Three to five days is all the Russian military would need to overrun Ukrainian resistance in the east and south of the country if the decision was made to invade. Within 12 hours of ordering an invasion, Russian troops described as: “a very large and very capable and very ready force” could be across the […]
Sergei Ryabkov, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, has given an interview to Interfax on Russia-US relations following the Crimean annexation. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs published it on their own website (in Russian) and translated below. – Ed. Question: Relations with the US are going through perhaps the worst period in the last 20 years. Washington […]
Ukraine has arrested members of the disbanded Berkut riot police that the Interior Ministry says are guilty of shooting protesters during the five-day Euromaidan revolution in February. Yesterday’s liveblog can be found here. For an overview and analysis of this developing story see our latest podcast. Please help The Interpreter to continue providing this valuable […]
This week, Boston College Professor Matt Sienkiewicz and Interpreter Magazine’s managing editor James Miller discuss the impact of Russia’s annexation of Crimea on geopolitics. Will we see a new Cold War? A Russia-China alliance? Russia isolated on the world stage? Perhaps this crisis will mean that the world’s superpowers, locked in an unending struggle, lose […]
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, April 3 – Many Russians and some in the West believe that the Russian military could overrun Ukraine because of its superiority over Ukrainian forces, but such views ignore both the enormous challenges that any occupier of Ukraine would face and the reality that the Ukrainian military is in fact a far more serious […]
Staunton, April 2 – Vladimir Putin is driven less by the “imperial syndrome” some are pointing to than by his own sense of the weakness as a result of his continuing reliance on the export of natural resources and his opposition to “the internal West” which wants Russia to modernize, according to Kirill Rogov. As […]
Staunton, April 1 – Aleksandr Dugin, a Eurasianist who is close to the Kremlin, has told ethnic Russians in Ukraine that they must not cooperate with Kyiv in any way, that they must be ready to “act radically,” even to the point of sparking a civil war in that country, and that Moscow will support […]
Staunton, April 1 – By his actions of omission and commission, US President Barack Obama is allowing his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to strengthen and even legitimize Moscow’s occupation of Crimea, a bow to this violation of international law with far-reaching consequences, according to Andrey Illarionov. Illarionov lays out his case in four articles. In […]
Obviously, the world will never be the same after the events in the Crimea. By its unprecedented actions, in terms of international norms, Russia is forcing the West to make a decision – to accept it into the club of developed nations as an equal member, or push it away for once and for all, […]
