Staunton, June 29 – Andranik Migranyan, who became infamous for his suggestion that Hitler would have been a second Bismarck if the Nazi leader had stopped before invading Poland, is going back to Moscow because his Institute for Democracy and Cooperation in New York, which Vladimir Putin created in 2007, is closing down. According to […]
Staunton, June 28 – Many of the hopes that some Russians in Crimea had for their homeland after the Russian Anschluss have not been realized, and as a result, polls show, and occupation officials concede, that “the majority of young Crimeans” regardless of nationality “do not consider themselves to be patriots of Russia.” In Novyye […]
Staunton, June 28 – Many Russian analysts have suggested that the Kremlin views what is going on in Armenia as a color revolution because it is incapable of thinking about any protests in the former Soviet republics as anything but the actions of foreign governments in general and the United States in particular. But Yuliya […]
Staunton, June 26 – In the age of the Internet, it isn’t enough for an authoritarian ruler to control what appears in newspapers and on television. If he really wants to isolate his opponents, he must try to intimidate journalists into not covering those the leader doesn’t like lest they post their reports online and […]
Staunton, June 26 – Vladimir Putin has made the Russian language a key element in his definition of “the Russian world” he wants to create, but his actions in pursuit of that goal are destroying any possibility that Russian speakers will be united, according to Olga Irisova, a Russian associate of Warsaw’s Center for Polish-Russian […]
Staunton, June 25 – Vladimir Putin and his fellow siloviki [power ministers] are again showing in the case of Armenia as they have in Ukraine the limitations of their worldview, according to Igor Eidman. They simply cannot imagine that people can and do protest on their own, and consequently, he and they are always seeking […]
Staunton, June 24 – Many Russian analysts (e.g. SVPressa.ru ) are hurrying to suggest that this week’s protests in Yerevan and their suppression by the Armenian government are the opening round of a new Maidan, an anti-Moscow action that is being promoted and exploited by the West as part of a broader geopolitical struggle. But […]
Staunton, June 22 – Seventy-four years ago today, Hitler turned on his ally Stalin and invaded the Soviet Union, an action that continues to echo in the post-Soviet states with Moscow now routinely but falsely accusing Ukraine of having become fascist while Vladimir Putin’s Russia is rapidly on its way to becoming exactly that, according […]
Staunton, June 22 – Because Moscow has so centralized revenues and decision making and radically lowered the quality of those who head the federal subjects, the Russian Federation faces something worse than disintegration along their borders: it faces radical destabilization as Moscow cannot pay and regional officials cannot hold the line, according to Vladimir Golyshev. […]
According to Vladimir Putin, Russia has escaped a major economic crisis and has the “inner strength” to prevail over the current one that he believes has already stabilized. Putin, of course, is famous for living in his own hermetically-sealed mental universe, but this statement of confidence appears to be particularly misplaced. Unless this is a […]
