Staunton, June 1 – Vladimir Putin is launching a new regional policy, one so deeply centralist that “the regions will in fact lose their title of subjects of the Federation and be converted into only objects of administration from the center,” according to Vadim Shtepa, one of Russia’s leading regionalist writers. In today’s Gazeta, Shtepa […]
Staunton, October 2 – Moscow appears to be acting on the principle that if there is no ministry, there is no problem, officials in the Urals say, but in fact, by destroying the regional affairs ministry, the Kremlin has not only destroyed “the fragile balance” between the center and the provinces but convinced many that […]
Staunton, September 29 – Vladimir Putin’s decision to end direct elections for mayors in the name of increasing central control will in fact have the opposite effect, Roman Revunov says, because it will allow governors to amass unprecedented power and be in a position to challenge Moscow or even lead their regions out of the […]
Staunton, April 10 – The continuing and in some places accelerating flight of ethnic Russians from non-Russian republics of the Russian Federation not only recalls a similar pattern from the union republics at the end of Soviet times but undercuts Vladimir Putin’s Russification program and is emboldening the titular nationalities. This general trend is highlighted […]
A prominent Russian businessman and former State Duma deputy Konstantin Borovoy writes this editorial for Echo Moskvy, a liberal online newspaper. At face value, it is an apocalyptic scare piece, but there is also insight about the geographical integrity of Russia. With the Russian economy sagging, there are now significant structural problems in many of […]
