Just as he has in the past, Vladimir Putin is counting on being able to exploit the latest horrific terrorist attack in Russia to boost his authority, and to tighten the screws on Russian society.
Russians are facing more hardship as wage arrears jump 12% in the last month.
MPs are proposing that with the upcoming 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, it’s time to bury Lenin.
The release of a few prisoners and “the stylistic softening of the Russian regime” has led some to suggest Vladimir Putin is promoting “a thaw” on the model of the 1950s, Sergey Shelin says, completely forgetting that such a move “does not contradict” either growing centralization of power or greater restrictions on the life of the population.
Although most observers recognize that Moscow is treating the Minsk Accords as a dead letter, few of them have focused on a more serious aspect of the Kremlin’s current policy in Ukraine: its effort to seize Mariupol and thus gain a land corridor to Russian-occupied Crimea.
Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, former head of the Moscow Patriarchate’s department for relations between church and society, has called for the creation of special death squads to hunt down and destroy emigres perceived as traitors to Russia.
Only two things motivate Russians today: their salaries and the fear of losing their jobs; this is why Russian officials seek to hide unemployment by cutting back hours and wages.
The most interesting aspect of Moscow’s retreat from its efforts to promote a civic Russian nation is that it represents a personal defeat for Vladimir Putin.
US-based Russian journalist Kseniya Kirillova recalls Aleksandr Shchetinin, the Russian-Ukrainian journalist behind the site Novy Region-2 who died in mysterious circumstances the day before Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was killed, and others who have died in the intervening period in what appear to be somewhat mysterious circumstances.
Protests are increasing around Russia for political as well as social reasons although they are nearly invisible, not covered in the state media or even in Western media.
