Staunton, December 31 – If as some are suggesting 2015 is going to be the year of Aleksey Navalny just as the past years have been those of Vladimir Putin, then it is extremely important that the opposition leader clearly state his positions lest Russians find in his case that they have given the power […]
Analysis
Ukrainian Group Wants Kyiv to Apply for NATO Membership Now
Staunton, December 31 – Former Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk and former Prime Minister Yevgeny Marchuk have formed a new group to press Kyiv to apply now for membership in the Western alliance, a step that is possible now that the Verkhovna Rada has voted to end Ukraine’s policy of non-alignment. That action, Kravchuk and Marchuk […]
Kadyrov Says Chechens Ready to Perform Special Tasks for Putin that Other Security Agencies Can’t
Staunton, December 29 – Speaking to a meeting of 20,000 Chechen volunteers in Grozny yesterday, republic head Ramzan Kadyrov said that he and they are ready to perform tasks for Vladimir Putin “which can be solved only by volunteers” and not by “the regular army, air force, navy or nuclear forces.” “Putin has helped [the […]
Moscow Red Cross Official Says Russia Used ‘Humanitarian’ Convoys to Ship Arms to Militants in Ukraine
Staunton, December 26 – Igor Trunov, the head of the Moscow city office of the Russian Red Cross, says that the Russian government used what it called “humanitarian convoys” to “most likely” ship arms to pro-Moscow fighters in Ukraine, in direct violation of international humanitarian law and practice. Trunov said December 25 that he doesn’t […]
Putin’s New Military Doctrine Says Russia Faces More Threats Abroad — and at Home
Staunton, December 27 – In the new Russian military doctrine Vladimir Putin signed December 26, the fourth a Kremlin leader has issued since 1991, the Russian president speaks about an increasingly threatening foreign environment that can produce problems at home but provides few specifics about the threats, their source, or how Moscow will counter them. […]
Putin’s Orthodox Jihad
Yesterday Russia announced a revised military doctrine, signed by President Vladimir Putin, that names NATO as the Kremlin’s main adversary and clarifies that Russia’s military reserves the right to respond to conventional threats with both nuclear and conventional weapons. This is no big change, since it only amplifies existing doctrine, but its explicit emphasis on […]
Beware Putin’s Special War in 2015
December 2014 is the month Putin’s Russia was plunged into undeniable crisis. Between the dramatic drop in oil prices and the collapse of the ruble, under Western sanctions pressure, Russians are going into the new year in a dramatically different, and lessened, economic situation than the one they enjoyed at the beginning of the year […]
The Menace of Unreality: How the Kremlin Weaponizes Information, Culture and Money
The Interpreter and the Institute of Modern Russia present a special report by Peter Pomerantsev, author of Nothing is True and Everything is Possible: the Surreal Heart of the New Russia, and our editor-in-chief, Michael Weiss, on the Kremlin’s weaponization of information, culture and money to achieve foreign policy goals and undermine opponents. In recent […]
Is a Top American Diplomat a Russian Agent?
November 3, 2014 – Today the Ukrainian news website GORDON ran an interview with the Russian businessman and sometime politician Konstantin Borovoy. A harsh critic of Vladimir Putin — he recently said Russia’s president is “mentally unstable” while a year ago he pronounced the collapse of Putin’s corrupt dictatorship to be “inevitable” — Borovoy is something of a gadfly. A parliamentarian of […]
Life of Bryan: How an RT Columnist Tries to Influence the Debate on Russia and Ukraine
This article was written by The Interpreter’s editorial staff and utilized the extensive research by independent journalist RobPulseNews of Ukraine: War Log. The Russian media landscape has changed dramatically in recent years, and much of that change has occurred only in the last eight months. Domestically, Russian-language print and broadcast media outlets have been dramatically […]