Staunton, February 16 – By his bombast and aggression, Vladimir Putin has destroyed “what was even a year ago called the post-Soviet space, an area which even then existed largely by inertia as an appendage of Russian ambitions” rather than as an expression of the desires of the countries included within that designation, according to […]
Staunton, January 7 – Ukrainians and others increasingly recognize that Russia will change its approach to Ukraine only when Russia itself changes, a conclusion that has led many to consider how Russia might change and reflect on what Ukraine must do until its eastern neighbor has become very different from what it is today. Unfortunately, […]
Staunton, December 14 – Vyacheslav Nikonov, chairman of the Russian Duma education committee and head of the Russian World Foundation, told a Muslim forum in the Russian capital that “Moscow is not only the largest Islamic city in Russia but also the city with the largest Muslim population in Europe.” Speaking to the 10th International […]
Staunton, November 25 – The Circassians and Crimean Tatars are linking up as part of a broader plan orchestrated by Turkey and the West to undermine Russian influence in the Middle East and to challenge Russian control of the North Caucasus and occupied Crimea, according to Russian commentator Vladislav Gulyevich. Over the two years and […]
Staunton, October 15 – Migrantophobia in Russian society is not the same thing as either xenophobia or ethnophobia and must not be confused with them, according to a Moscow sociologist. Instead, it reflects the reaction of Russians to people who have come to work in Russia but who are not adapting to social norms because […]
Staunton, October 5 – The gold standard of Stalin-era claims that Russians had been responsible for everything positive in the world was that “Popov invented baseball.” But now under Vladimir Putin, some Russian writers, one hesitates to call them scholars, have surpassed that with claims about the role of Russia before it even existed in […]
Staunton, September 6 – This month marks the 15th anniversary of the 1999 apartment bombings in Russia that sparked the rise of Vladimir Putin to the Russian presidency and the opening of a new Russian war against Chechnya. Moscow’s failure to investigate fully what happened means that suspicions about the authorship of these terrorist acts […]
Staunton, August 25 – The flow of ethnic Russian refugees from Ukraine is giving Russia “a truly historical opportunity to restore the ethnic balance in the North Caucasus Federal District” by reversing the decline in the share of the Slavic population there over recent years and thus defending Russia against the Muslim south, according to […]
Staunton, April 17 – If current trends continue, half of the population of the Russian Federation in its current borders will consist of immigrants, according to a new Moscow study, a conclusion clearly intended to feed anti-immigrant feelings and, more speculatively, designed to promote a discussion of what can and should be done, including the […]
Staunton, April 16 – Putin’s Anschluss of Crimea is having an impact on Russian public opinion in a way few might have expected: A new Levada Center poll finds that in the wake of the Kremlin leader’s moves in Ukraine, more Russians have a positive view of developments in the North Caucasus and fewer believe […]
