Staunton, March 30 – Most analysts have suggested that sanctions and international isolation were a cost Vladimir Putin was willing to pay in order to get his way in Ukraine, but Andrey Lipsky, an editor of Novaya Gazeta, says that is exactly backwards: the Kremlin leader wanted isolation and launched his Ukrainian campaign to get […]
Yesterday’s live coverage of the Ukraine conflict can be found here. An archive of our liveblogs can be found here. For an overview and analysis of this developing story see our latest podcast. Please help The Interpreter to continue providing this valuable information service by making a donation towards our costs. For links to individual […]
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 […]
Staunton, March 5 – The purpose of terrorism is to terrorize, to suggest that old rules and old expectations no longer apply and thereby increase uncertainty and fear. That explains why someone like Kseniya Sobchak has suggested that she is next on Putin’s list now that the Kremlin has killed Boris Nemtsov and why an […]
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, February 22 — Since the Crimean Anschluss, Russia has attacked Ukraine not only on the ground but also in cyberspace, Vladimir Gorbulin says. And Ukraine must respond both by building up its capacity to defend itself in this sector and also develop the capacity to take the battle back into Russia as well. On […]
Staunton, February 16 — If President Obama follows German Chancellor Merkel and doesn’t arm Ukraine, the US president will not only “be playing the role Putin has assigned to him” but he will also open the way toward an effort by Moscow to dominate the Baltic countries while threatening the world with first use of […]
I have called the year 2014 an annus horribilis, as opposed to the annus mirabilis 25 years ago that gave our part of the world the chance to opt for freedom and democracy. I hate numerology but it is really odd to see that a quarter of a century after the amazing flowering of democracy […]
Yesterday’s live coverage of the Ukraine conflict can be found here. An archive of our liveblogs can be found here. For an overview and analysis of this developing story see our latest podcast. Please help The Interpreter to continue providing this valuable information service by making a donation towards our costs. For links to individual […]
