Staunton, May 21 – If Vladimir Putin had wanted to occupy part or all of Ukraine, he would have installed a different group of leaders in Donetsk and Luhansk, Yegeniya Albats says, a comment that provides an important clue to the Kremlin leader’s more general strategy with regard not only to Ukraine but to the […]
Staunton, May 21 – As Harvard historian Richard Pipes documented a half century ago, Stalin’s first great act of ethno-political engineering was the division of the Tatars and Bashkirs of the Middle Volga as part of a broader effort to weaken Kazan’s influence and that of the Muslim national communists led by Sultan-Galiyev. Now, that […]
Staunton, May 18 – Despite a ban on any demonstrations by the Russian occupation authorities and a decision by the Milli Mejlis not to hold a mass commemoration lest it become the occasion for a Russian provocation, thousands of Crimean Tatars have assembled in their homeland today to mark the 70th anniversary of their deportation […]
Updated Daily. Soccer fans angry at the murder of their fellow fan, joined by anti-migrant nationalists, rampaged in a Moscow suburb. Russian state propaganda has grown more aggressive and pompous, magnifying Russian imperialism and whipping up hatred of foreigners and dissidents. What are we measuring when we poll public opinion when people are mainly dependent […]
Staunton, May 15 – Having annexed Ukraine’s Crimea, Moscow is now finding it difficult to bring that region into the common Russian legal space. The situation there is now one of “legal chaos, the complete adaptation of the region legally will take another two or three years, and the echoes of this will last for […]
Staunton, May 13 – Even as Moscow continues to celebrate the annexation of Crimea and some Russians push for the absorption of even more Ukrainian territory, ever more commentators are pointing to the very real costs that Putin’s Crimean adventure are imposing on Russians as a people. Ukrainian commentator Oleg Leusenko provides a useful checklist […]
Staunton, May 10 – Speaking in Sevastopol in Russian-occupied Crimea, President Vladimir Putin called on all countries “to respect the right of Russians to self-determination,” but he failed to note, Boris Vishnevsky points out, that there is no such right for peoples on the territory of the Russian Federation. In an Ekho Moskvy blog post […]
Staunton, May 10 – The Pew Research Center this week released the results of a poll it conducted in the Russian Federation concerning Russian attitudes toward the independence of any region or republic in that country. It found that 48 percent said they would support such actions if they reflected the popular will and that […]
Updated Daily. Pussy Riot went to Washington to lobby for additions to the Magnitsky List of Russian official human rights violators. 6 May was the second anniversary of a major opposition demonstration in 2012 in Moscow, where dozens were arrested in clashes with police that activists say were staged by provocateurs. Police detained 13 today […]
Staunton, May 5 – By annexing Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula, Moscow appears more likely to have acquired “a second Dagestan,” the most unstable republic in the North Caucasus, than “a second Tatarstan,” the stable, wealthy and influential republic in the Middle Volga, according to Russian experts. In a survey of the parallels between Crimea and Dagestan […]
