Staunton, November 11 – Failure to challenge Vladimir Putin about the Crimean Anschluss, “the cornerstone of today’s ‘Putin consensus,’” works to the benefit of the Kremlin leader whose uses the absence of objections to his actions to “create the illusion of moral justification” for what he has done, according to Aleksandr Skobov. And consequently, the […]
Staunton, October 20 – As Andrey Illarionov has wisely put it, the debate among Russian opposition figures concerning what should be done with Crimea is in fact a debate about the future of Russia or, as he puts it, “tell me what you think about Crimea, and I’ll tell you what you think about the […]
Staunton, October 11 Vladimir Putin’s Anschluss of Crimea has had many unintended consequences but one that may ultimately prove to be especially important is the way in which the illegal inclusion of the Crimean Tatars inside the Russian Federation has affected that country’s “linguistic map,” something likely to have political consequences as well. In a […]
Staunton, October 5 – The Russian occupation of Crimea has affected residents of the Ukrainian peninsula in large ways and small. Now, Novy Region-2 has published a list of 21 ways in which life has changed for all the residents of that region, establishing a useful checklist for all concerned. There are other, more high-profile […]
Staunton, October 2 – The underlying premise of Vladimir Putin’s seizure of Crimea is false: Crimea has not been part of Russia from time immemorial. Instead, it has had a complex history, one in which Russia’s role has been remarkably brief. As a result, it is important that the future of the peninsula be decided […]
Staunton, September 29 – Following the Crimean Anschluss, Russians have stopped focusing their anger on Nikita Khrushchev, who transferred Crimea from the RSFSR to Ukraine, as a primary source of their problems with Ukrainians and shifted attention to the role Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin played in creating the current tensions between the two nations. […]
Staunton, September 14 – The Russian occupation of Crimea has brought with it a return to “Soviet times in their most cynical manifestations,” one without freedom but with denunciations, according to Refat Chubarov, head of the Crimean Tatar Milli Mejis. Tragically, he says, the situation after today’s elections “will become still worse.” That is why, […]
Staunton, August 27 – After 20 years of assuming that Russia wanted to join the rest of the world and play by the rules (an assumption that was not without its own problems) many in the West now are governed by the opposite assumption: that Russia is capable of anything and therefore must be opposed, according […]
Staunton, August 24 – Russia has entered a new “smuta” or “Time of Troubles,” one in which there is no basis for confidence or any clear path forward and which unlike previous earlier analogues “threatens completely unpredictable consequences” for the country and its peoples, according to a Kazan academic. In the current issue of Zvezda Povolzhya, […]
Staunton, August 24 – Vladimir Putin’s Crimean Anschluss which was intended among other things to highlight or promote divisions among Ukrainians about the status of their country has had exactly the opposite effect: It has boosted the share of supporters of independent statehood from 83 percent to 90 percent, the highest ever. In reporting the poll […]
