Staunton, January 15 – Many in Russia and the West are celebrating Yevgeny Primakov’s argument presented at the Mercury Club this week that hyper-centralization, a policy associated with Vladimir Putin, is a threat to the Russian Federation and its economic recovery and his call for devolving more powers to the regions of the country. But […]
Staunton, August 30 – Vladimir Putin is often accused of wanting to restore the Soviet system or at least its core values, but in fact, the Kremlin leader is interested in promoting the its “imperial-militarist” element and not its “revolutionary” component, a pattern that has the effect of limiting Russia’s ability to deal with the […]
Staunton, August 10 – Ever more people around the world want Vladimir Putin to leave the scene but very few have asked themselves what Russia will be like after his departure. Someone who has is Sergei Klimovsky, he suggests that Russia will either be a fascist state even worse than the current regime or a […]
Staunton, August 4 – Moscow’s adoption of ‘imperial federalism’ as a strategy to extend its power over neighboring countries is sparking a variety of demands within the Russian Federation for moves toward making that country a genuine and not only a nominal federal system, according to Vadim Shtepa. In an article on Rufabula.com, Shtepa, one […]
Staunton, July 28 – Moscow commentators like to talk about the existence of “two, three or even more Ukraines” and argue that Ukraine will disintegrate, Igor Losev says, but the reality is that there are far more ‘Russias’ than that, and the Russian Federation is thus at far greater risk of falling apart. In a […]
Staunton, June 6 – Vladimir Putin has adopted the rhetoric of national self-determination and federalism in Ukraine, but a leading Russian regionalist site says that this is “hypocrisy and a farce” which should deceive no one and especially not regionalists and federalists in Russia because it is only “a cover for an aggressive imperial policy.” […]
Staunton, 3 June – The Ukrainian crisis and Moscow’s insistence on the federalization of that country have “awakened the interest of Russian society in federalism,” with some predominantly ethnic Russian regions and territories now as committed to achieving real federalism in Russia as any of the non-Russian republics. And if Moscow does not agree to […]
Staunton, April 24 – The Russian language and Russian culture are today “the main unifying factor[s]” for the citizens of the Russian Federation, unlike history which continues to be a source of divisions given that different groups have different understandings of past events, according to the Valdai International Discussion Club. The Moscow Higher School of […]
Staunton, April 24 – In a comment that many non-Russians in the Russian Federation are certain to see as a threat to the existence of their groups and some Russians may view as a danger to Russian-ness as well, Vladimir Putin said yesterday that “it is not so important what is written in the ‘nationality’ […]
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 […]
