LIVE UPDATES: With Iran’s appearance on the oil market the price of energy is plummeting to record lows, and the ruble is following suit. Welcome to our column, Russia Update, where we will be closely following day-to-day developments in Russia, including the Russian government’s foreign and domestic policies. The previous issue is here. Recent Translations: […]
Staunton, January 12 – Vladimir Putin does not have a well-developed ideology, however much people want to find one. Rather, his eclectic cynicism provides him with the flexibility to keep himself in power, is congruent with a consumerist Russian society skeptical of any broader systems, but points to a horrific totalitarian future for Russia and […]
Staunton, December 15 – Russia’s economic problems combined with Moscow’s insistence on extracting just as much money from the regions as it did before is exacerbating relations between the center and the republics and prompting the latter to reconsider their attitude toward Russia as a whole, according to a Tatar analyst. A Kazan analyst who […]
Staunton, December 4 – President Vladimir Putin’s speech to the Federal Assembly is the subject of intense interest for the light it will shed on where the Kremlin leader is headed next. But there is one question Russians are asking that he cannot possibly answer without calling into question whether he should be the person […]
Staunton, June 5 – Russia is redirecting its trade flows away from Lithuania in order to punish Vilnius for its outspoken support of Ukraine and opposition to Russian aggression there, a shift that has cut the flow of oil through the Butinge terminal by more than a third from a year ago and is costing […]
Staunton, April 16 – The Komi, one of the Russian Federation’s numerically small nations of the north, are demanding that that country’s oil giant, Lukoil, stop its destructive exploitation of oil reserves in the Izhemsk district of their republic – and, what may be even more significant, local officials are supporting the people rather than […]
Staunton, April 8 – Many in both Moscow and the West believe that the US destroyed the USSR by driving down oil prices and could do the same thing with the Russian Federation now, but in fact, the West did not deploy the oil weapon that effectively in the past and could not do so […]
The Assad regime in Syria is broke. That was the consensus of every expert, and resident, more than one year ago. American officials noted that the regime was struggling to find a way to print currency, and that by July of last year the regime had spent more than half of its sovereign wealth fund. […]
Russia’s trade wars are showing no signs of ending any time soon. In fact, despite signs that the Kremlin has fired a man who has been the face of Russia’s isolationist and exclusivist policies, a development which some said was a sign of change, Russia is now increasing its threats to Ukraine by making them […]
