Staunton, January 21 – Since Moscow’s Anschluss of Crimea almost a year ago, many in Russia, Ukraine and the West have asked not only why Vladimir Putin has chosen the path of aggression, but also why he has chosen it now rather than at some other time and what his timing says about his broader […]
Staunton, January 14 – Ukraine’s drive to become a European country is forcing Russians to recognize that their country isn’t one, a reflection that helps to explain why many Russians are so angry at Ukraine and so willing to accept the Kremlin’s version of events there, according to Artemy Troitsky. In a commentary in Novaya […]
Staunton, January 11 – Ten months after the Anschluss of Crimea, the Russian occupation authorities have succeeded in changing that Ukrainian peninsula to such an extent that Crimea now resembles Belarus, a place where one can live “in sufficient comfort” as long as one doesn’t have “any need to have any contact with the state,” […]
Staunton, December 3 – Both before and after the Anschluss, the Crimean Tatars have been the most consistent opponents of the illegal Russian annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula that is their homeland. As a result, the occupation authorities have treated them badly, radicalizing a fundamentally pragmatic group rather than intimidating its members. In a 5800-word […]
Staunton, November 3 – Vladimir Putin has a very clear strategy in Ukraine: first, sow panic among Ukrainians and the West and then wait, then provoke Ukrainians into doing things that distance them from the West, and then wait; invade when both Ukrainians and the West are off balance; and then repeat the process. Such […]
Staunton, October 29 – Vladimir Putin’s nuclear bluster reflects his conviction that the world is still as it was before he annexed Crimea: that Western governments will tolerate anything he says or does because their foreign policies are driven by fundamental business interests which want to make a profit in Russia, according to Mikhail Fishman. […]
Staunton, October 21 – The Russian occupation authorities have announced plans to create a new Crimean Tatar public movement by the end of this year, the latest step in their efforts to isolate, discredit and undermine the Crimean Tatar Mejlis which is committed to a Crimean Tatar future within Ukraine rather than in the Russian […]
Staunton, October 17 – Now that Aleksey Navalny has said that he won’t return Crimea to Ukraine and Mikhail Khodorkovsky has added that “only a [Russian] dictator” could do so, other “representatives of Russian democratic society have hastened” to assure Russians that they won’t either as they live in “a democracy” in which “all issues […]
Staunton, October 3 – Since the Anschluss, 18 Crimean Tatars have “disappeared,” three of them in the last week alone, Crimean Tatar leader Mustafa Cemilev told a meeting of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe yesterday, a reflection of increasing oppression and growing illegality by the Russian occupiers. Two youths, Isyam Dzhepparov and […]
Staunton, September 28 – The Russian occupation authorities not only have imposed “systematic discrimination” against the Crimean Tatar people but have conducted mass searches against them and their institutions and organized or looked the other way in cases of kidnaping and disappearances, according to Refat Chubarov, the head of the Crimean Tatar Mejlis. Russian officials […]
