Staunton, April 8 — During the first years of Soviet power, a Moscow newspaper published an article telling its readers how easy and potentially profitable it would be for them to form a national republic. According to the paper, they didn’t need a nation or anything like a set of institutions: they needed only paper […]
Staunton, April 2 — No Crimean Tatar media outlet could ever do as much harm to Russia’s reputation and its ability to attract any members of that nation to its side as Moscow’s decision to shut down ATR and other Crimean Tatar broadcasters and publications already has, according to Anatoly Baranov, a Moscow commentator who […]
Staunton, March 30 — “The longing for ‘former greatness’” that many Russians feel is “playing a bad joke” on them, Olga Idrisova writes in Moskovsky Komsomolets today, because it has led them to don “thick rose-colored glasses” and engage in deep denial about reality, “subconsciously blocking out” anything which doesn’t fit with their preferred imagery. […]
Staunton, March 23 — Not all, but “the overwhelming majority of Germans sincerely believed” what Hitler said, just as not all but the overwhelming majority of Russians sincerely believe what Vladimir Putin says, according to Semyon Gluzman. But when the Kremlin leader falls, most Russians will say as the Germans did in 1945: “’We didn’t […]
Staunton, March 20 — Since the Maidan, a new Kyiv poll shows, the share of Ukrainians favoring EU integration has risen from 41 percent to 47.2 percent since the Maidan, while the share of those backing integration with Moscow has fallen from 35 percent to 12.3 percent. At the same time, the portion of Ukrainians […]
Staunton, March 12 – When Vladimir Putin decided a year ago to annex Crimea, he and his supporters expected that this would be “the first event in a chain of unending victories which would show the world the dangerousness of ‘ignoring’ Moscow’s appetites and instead convert the Russian Federation into the Soviet Union of the […]
Staunton, March 5 – Budapest has announced that it has handed out Hungarian citizenship papers to 94,000 people in Trans-Carpathia in Western Ukraine in expedited fashion. The Hungarian official responsible for nationality policy says that this is part of a broader effort to boost the size of the country’s population and points out that two-thirds […]
Staunton, February 24 – The conflict in Ukraine is not one conflict but three: it is a conflict between the eastern and western portions of Ukraine, it is a conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and it is a conflict between Russia and the West, Vladimir Pastukhov says. And to resolve all three will require a […]
Staunton, February 24 – Both those who support Vladimir Putin and those who oppose him overestimate the Kremlin leader, Vitaly Portnikov says, with the former assuming there is nothing he cannot do and the latter explaining away their own shortcomings and failures by making the same assumption. As a result, the former assume that whatever […]
Staunton, February 23 — A “new stage” has begun in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, one that involves terrorist actions like those in the Chechen wars but “with this important modification: in this case, a nuclear power is suspected of terrorism” or possibly its “incompletely controlled militants,” according to Ilya Milshteyn. “This in general […]
