Analysis

Staunton, July 12 – One of Moscow’s greatest propaganda successes has been its ability to convince even its opponents in Kyiv and Western capitals to speak of what Russia is doing in Ukraine as “a hybrid war,” as if by adding that adjective Vladimir Putin’s actions were somehow less appalling and illegal, Yury Feltshtinsky says. […]

Staunton, July 8 – “Unfortunately, Russia is different from present-day Ukraine in many ways,” Lilya Shevtsova says; and consequently, if a Maidan does occur there, it is likely to be different as well, violent rather peaceful, destructive rather than constructive, and divisive rather than unifying. In the course of an interview this week with Artyom […]

Russia is the unquestioned aggressor in Ukraine. It has built up powerful forces all along its borders with NATO members in Europe, to the point where it enjoys a very visible conventional superiority against them there. Recently, NATO’s new chairman said that the Russian military could overrun the Baltic States in just two days. Furthermore […]

Staunton, July 8 – Fifty-three percent of all books published in Russia last year were issued in print runs of under 1,000 copies, with the average tirage of the 112,100 books published there now standing at 4,330 copies, continuing downward trends of the last six years and isolating many of these works from their audiences […]

Staunton, July 8 – After a brief attempt to escape from its past in the 1990s, Russia under Vladimir Putin is “again returning to militarism…the model of existence in which Russia had existed for centuries” in order to prepare for war. No other such civilization exists in the world now, but Russia “cannot militarize as […]

Staunton, July 5 – Since the peoples of Altay learned that the elections staged to ratify the Kremlin’s choice of their governor showed that he failed to win in electoral districts dominated by the non-Russians, their leaders have been struggling to unite in order to put pressure on the government there in the name of […]

Staunton, July 5 – “Putin has finally decided” to block all of the ways out from “the dead end into which he has driven himself and Russia,” Andrey Illarionov says, prompting the West to oppose him more vigorously, creating a disaster for Russia, and setting the stage for the ultimate restoration of Ukrainian control over […]

The late Adam Ulam, one of the giants of Soviet and Russian studies, wrote in his biography of Stalin that while Russian history is tragic and glorious, it also is preposterous. Under Putin this quality has come to the fore as he and his trolls dutifully stoke what Henry Adams called the systematic organization of […]

Staunton, July 1 – A call by some Duma members for the Russian government to review and declare illegal the Soviet government’s recognition of Baltic independence in September 1991 has attracted widespread attention and concern as an indication of Moscow’s intentions but ultimately ridiculed as otherwise meaningless grandstanding. But there are other straws in the […]