Staunton, April 19 – Yury Dolinsky, a Russian analyst who specializes on the Baltic countries, says that most residents of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, however much they say they are worried about the Russian threat, believe that their membership in NATO will keep Moscow from invading or force Moscow to withdraw if it does invade […]
Staunton, March 11 – The new cold war that has begun in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine does not have the formal ideological shape of its predecessor, but Vladimir Putin very much has an ideological vision, Igor Eidman says, and it is one that tragically makes it more likely that this cold war […]
Staunton, March 9 — Solvita Āboltiņa, chairman of the Latvian parliament’s security committee, says that the 100 NGOs in Latvia receiving money from Moscow are not “organizations concerned with the development of the culture and traditions of national minorities in Latvia.” Instead, the 100 Moscow-backed organizations the Security Police have identified are those which “are […]
Look at Ukraine and a few things become clear. The first is that Russia is willing to pledge bullets and troops to meet its goals. The other is that the West, and especially the EU, are more willing to fight with dollars and Euros rather than bullets. Since the early occupation of Crimea, sanctions and […]
Staunton, February 24 – Moscow’s “main goal” in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania at the present time is to convince portions of the population of these three countries that NATO will not defend them if Moscow uses the kind of hybrid war it has used against Ukraine and thus spark defeatist attitudes before any such attack […]
Staunton, February 23 – After the events in the Donbass, not all that many Russians or Russian speakers in Latgale would welcome any intervention by Moscow, Aleks Grigoryevs says, but a small fraction of 10 to 20 percent might be prepared to and, “if they were armed,” could create major problems for Latvia because the […]
Staunton, January 23 — Following the “tectonic” shifts in the world that Russia’s moves in Ukraine began, the leaders of the Baltic countries must recognize “the need to have a dialogue with Russia,” the head of the Moscow Institute for the Russian Abroad says. If they don’t, others who are ready to do so “will […]
Staunton, January 22 — “Post-Soviet Russian nationalism has been fatally flawed from the outset because it arose not from the word ‘nation’ but from the word ‘nationality,’” a reflection of the fact that a Russian “nation” in the normal of sense that term does not yet exist in Russia, according to Vadim Shtepa. In a […]
Staunton, January 19 – Twenty-five years ago today, on Mikhail Gorbachev’s order, Soviet troops invaded the Azerbaijani capital of Baku by land, sea and air, killing hundreds and enflaming ethnic hatreds, in an action the Soviet president five years after the events acknowledged was “the greatest mistake” of his political career. That event, known to […]
Staunton, January 15 – Federica Mogherini, the EU’s foreign policy chief, commenting on Russia’s annexation of Crimea, says that “we will never accept the change of borders by force. Neither now nor in this century nor in this millennium.” But she adds that there should not be any limitson political dialogue with Moscow concerning the […]
