Tag: Baltic countries

The Incredibly Shrinking Russian World in the Post-Soviet Space

December 21, 2015

Staunton December 21 — Even as Vladimir Putin continues to talk about the Russian world and the importance of reuniting it after the demise of the Soviet Union, the number and share of ethnic Russians in all former Soviet republics and occupied Baltic countries have declined, in many cases precipitously and with no sign that […]

Belarus, ‘Key to Baltics,’ Perhaps Even More Important for Moscow than Ukraine, Shevtsova Says

February 26, 2015

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 […]

Putin’s Moves in Ukraine Isolating Moscow More than Soviet Occupation of Baltics Did, Savostyanov Says

January 18, 2015

Staunton, January 18 – Even as some in the West are thinking about how to rebuild their relationships with Moscow, Yevgeny Savostyanov, the former head of the Moscow FSB, says that what Vladimir Putin has done in Ukraine will have a far deeper, longer-lasting and more negative impact on relations between Russia and the West. […]

Stalin’s Annexation of Western Ukraine a Major Error, Russian Historian Says

August 26, 2014

Staunton, August 24 – Stalin made “an error” in annexing Galicia to the Ukrainian SSR via the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact because what Moscow needed with war on the horizon was “the establishment of buffer states on the border of the USSR and not their being pulled into the Union itself,” with all the border changes that […]

Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova Now on ‘Baltic Path’ to the West, Russian Analyst Says

June 30, 2014

Staunton, June 29 – Like most Westerners, Russians have always made a distinction between the three Baltic countries and the former Soviet republics, but now a Russian analyst says that by turning to Europe, Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova are following the Baltic path, an indication of Moscow’s diminishing influence and thus of its likely policies […]