Staunton, April 10 – The majority of Russians support the annexation of Crimea but do not understand the implications of that action and are “not willing to suffer the consequences,” according to Lev Gudkov, the head of the Levada Center, the leading independent polling group in the Russian Federation. In a report issued this week, […]
Staunton, April 9 – Pro-Moscow groups in Bishkek are actively promoting the idea that “Kyrgyzstan is tired of being independent,” that the West is the source of all its problems, and that it is time “to sign everything that is required” in order to have once again a comfortable life, according to Edil Baysalov, an […]
Staunton, April 9 – After Crimea, and apparently fearful that Vladimir Putin might target northern Kazakhstan as its next “Crimea,” Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev has slowed down if not entirely stopped his efforts to require all officials in that country to speak the national language. Until very recently, Igor Rotar says in a Rosbalt.ru commentary, […]
Staunton, April 9 – Russia has dispatched a large number of marginal, even extremist, nationalists to Ukraine to whip up nationalist sentiment among ethnic Russians there, but these groups have succeeded only because of the destructive role that Russian television is playing among Russian speakers there and elsewhere, according to Nikolay Mitrokhin. In almost every […]
Staunton, April 9 – It is now common ground that Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea represents a revision of the 1991 settlement involving the end of the USSR, with some portraying this as an indication that “Russia is back” and others viewing it as the kind of revanchism that inevitably threatens the international system. But […]
Staunton, April 9 – A major reason the crisis in Ukraine is now so dangerous, Georgy Mirsky says, is that “neither [Russian President Vladimir] Putin nor [US President Barack] Obama wants to go into history as the politician who ‘lost’ Ukraine, although [that country] does not belong to either the one or the other.” Crimea […]
Staunton, April 8 – Many in both Moscow and the West believe that the US destroyed the USSR by driving down oil prices and could do the same thing with the Russian Federation now, but in fact, the West did not deploy the oil weapon that effectively in the past and could not do so […]
Staunton, April 8 – Muslims are quite comfortable living in Ukraine and have no interest in having the regions where they live be annexed to the Russian Federation where relations between Muslims and others are known to be far worse, according to a Daghestani native who has been living 35 years in Luhansk. Seyfulla Rashidov, […]
Staunton, April 8 – Russian President Vladimir Putin’s promise to secure the full rehabilitation of the Crimean Tatars, a promise made to obscure Russian aggression and to try to attract the support of some in that nation for his occupation of their homeland, is echoing not only among the larger and more organized of the […]
Staunton, April 7 – The domestic consequences of Moscow’s Crimean policy combined with Russia’s weakening economic prospects will drive ever more young Russians to seek work and possibly permanent residence abroad, an “exodus” that will hurt the country far more than any of the sanctions announced so far, according to Yevgeny Gontmakher. In today’s Moskovsky […]
