Staunton, April 8 – Russian President Vladimir Putin’s promise to secure the full rehabilitation of the Crimean Tatars, a promise made to obscure Russian aggression and to try to attract the support of some in that nation for his occupation of their homeland, is echoing not only among the larger and more organized of the […]
Staunton, April 7 – The domestic consequences of Moscow’s Crimean policy combined with Russia’s weakening economic prospects will drive ever more young Russians to seek work and possibly permanent residence abroad, an “exodus” that will hurt the country far more than any of the sanctions announced so far, according to Yevgeny Gontmakher. In today’s Moskovsky […]
Staunton, April 8 – The United States and the West must put in place an updated version of the non-recognition policy they applied to the Soviet occupation of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to underscore our outrage at the use of Russian brute force in Ukraine to annex part or all of a neighboring state and […]
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 6 – “Russianness” is a “synthetic category,” one in which the father of a family can be Mordvin, the mother a German, and the children ethnic Russians, a reflection of the floating quality of identity in that country, government policies, and personal choices, according to a leading Moscow ethnographer. In an interview with […]
Staunton, April 6 – Aleksandr Dugin, who appears to be increasingly influential in Kremlin circles, says that Moscow views Baku’s UN vote on Ukraine a “an unfriendly act,” that “the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan is in Moscow’s hands,” and that “an Azerbaijan hostile to Russia will instantly cease its existence.” Dugin, who describes himself as […]
Staunton, April 5 – Moscow’s occupation and annexation has already had many consequences, but one that is extremely important but that has not attracted much attention is the extent to which Crimea’s “transfer” from Ukraine to the Russian Federation threatens the fragile environment of the peninsula. That is because, as Andrey Ozharovsky of the environmental […]
Staunton, April 5 – Russian nationalists in Crimea and in Russia are expressing their outrage at and opposition to what they see as Vladimir Putin’s “Tatarization” of Crimea, a policy that they argue does not reflect the ethnic balance on the peninsula and that calls into question Moscow’s portrayal of itself as a defender of […]
Staunton, April 5 – The annexation of Crimea is already becoming “a powerful catalyst” for serious changes in Moscow’s nationality policy and even on the current principle of the national-territorial division of the Russian Federation, according to Margarita Lyange, head of the Guild of Inter-Ethnic Journalism. In an essay on the Nazaccent.ru portal yesterday, Lyang […]
Staunton, April 3 – In a move highlighting the demographic plight of ethnic Russians, Moscow has announced that it will now draft North Caucasians without the restrictions it had imposed on them in recent years, a move some in that region are welcoming but that others, including some Russian officers and the Soldiers’ Mothers Committees […]
