On Monday, February 15, the EU Council took a decision to lift sanctions on 170 people and 3 companies in Belarus. Not for the first time, the EU is lifting sanctions on a dictator — and not for the first time “the last dictator in Europe” (as Alyaksandr Lukashenka is known) is being pardoned for […]
Staunton, February 25 – For Vladimir Putin, Belarus is “the key to the Baltic countries” as a military-strategic outpost and thus quite possibly Minsk will turn out to be “much more important for the Russian system than Ukraine is, according to Liliya Shevtsova, a Russian commentator now at the Brookings Institution. In an interview to […]
Welcome to our column, Russia Update, where we will be closely following day-to-day developments in Russia, including the Russian government’s foreign and domestic policies. The previous issue is here, and see also our Russia This Week story The Kremlin’s Policy-Making on Ukraine is ‘A Mess’ and special features ‘Managed Spring’: How Moscow Parted Easily with […]
Yesterday’s liveblog can be found here. For an overview and analysis of this developing story see our latest podcast. Please help The Interpreter to continue providing this valuable information service by making a donation towards our costs. View Ukraine: April, 2014 in a larger map For links to individual updates click on the timestamps. For […]
Staunton, July 9 – Even though the West has imposed sanctions and Russia has promoted ties, Alyaksandr Lukashenka “fears Russia more than he fears the West,” according to Andrey Vardomatsky, a Belarusian sociologist who says this reflects a general inclination among his countrymen to overestimate Russia’s importance relative to that of the West. And that […]
Staunton, June 17 – No Russian is surprised to learn that Soviet-era archives are more accessible in Belarus, which the West routinely calls “the last dictatorship in Europe,” than they are in Russia, a reflection of underlying weaknesses in Russian society that mean it will not become part of Europe for at least a generation, […]
Staunton, July 1 – Alyaksandr Lukashenka is the brutal ruler of Belarus, “the last dictator in Europe” to use the phrase often employed by Western diplomats and human rights activists. He has falsified elections to keep himself in power, he has imprisoned and exiled his political opponents, and he has trampled on the rights and […]
Staunton, May 2 – Two months ago, Mariya Snegova, a Russian sociologist at Columbia University, suggested that Vladimir Putin was drawing on Mikhail Yuryev’s 2006 novel, The Third Empire, as a guide to his moves against Ukraine and as a source for a new imperial ideology. Snegova’s conclusions about the impact of Yuryev’s thinking on […]
