Staunton, April 16 – It has become fashionable to call for liberals and patriots to compromise, to agree to “call the naked king ‘half-dressed,’”, as Russia’s latest attempt to build a state in which people live in freedom and sufficiency and one which enjoys the respect of the surrounding world has failed, Georgy Kunadze says. […]
Staunton, April 12 – Boris Slavin, an aide to former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev, says that in his “personal” view, “sooner or later the restoration of a state like the USSR will be achieved,” although he said that “of course, this will not be a unification in the style of the Soviet Union.” He says […]
Staunton, April 7 The only option Vladimir Putin has if he is to advance his policies in Ukraine is to use force because the majority of Ukrainians in every region of that country do not support him, do not believe what he says, and do not want what he wants, according to Russian economist Andrey […]
Pro-Russian protesters have stormed administrative buildings in Donetsk and Luhansk today, while other rallies have been held in Dnipropetrovsk. Yesterday, the Russian state news agency, ITAR-TASS reported that the Russian Foreign Ministry has received “sacks of letters” asking for protection from Russia. There have been many rallies and repeated, temporary occupations of government buildings in […]
Staunton, April 4 – Organizers have collected some 1500 signatures on an Internet petition calling for a referendum on the transfer of part of Russia’s Smolensk Region to neighboring Belarus, a step they say would correct an “historic injustice” because that area belonged to Belarus before World War II and one that echoes what Vladimir […]
Staunton, April 4 – Activists in Khabarovsk Territory, Tver Region, and Vologda Region are responding to Moscow’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea by calling for the central Russian government to “join” their territories to Russia so that they do can benefit from the center’s largesse, have higher living standards, and escape from local authoritarian rulers. These […]
Staunton, April 1 – By his actions of omission and commission, US President Barack Obama is allowing his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to strengthen and even legitimize Moscow’s occupation of Crimea, a bow to this violation of international law with far-reaching consequences, according to Andrey Illarionov. Illarionov lays out his case in four articles. In […]
Staunton, March 29 – Many have drawn parallels between what Vladimir Putin is doing and how the West is reacting with the Cold War or with the appeasement policies of Munich. But now that Putin has carried out the Crimean Anschluss, a far better analogy for today may be to “the phony war” between the […]
Staunton, March 17 – Russian nationalists claim that what the West did in the former Yugoslavia represents a precedent for what Moscow is doing in Ukraine now, but in fact, Yekaterinburg analyst Fedor Krasheninnikov says, there is no basis for such an analogy because “Crimea is not Kosovo” and Russia’s actions are in no way […]
The results of Crimea’s referendum were overwhelming in favor of joining Russia. The government in Ukraine, and most of the international community, does not recognize the referendum. With Russian and Ukrainian military forces digging in only kilometers from each other, the world waits to see what happens next. Yesterday’s liveblog can be found here. For an […]
