Tag: RISI

Russian officials are dramatically underestimating the threat of Islamist groups now pose to the country, according to Galina Khizriyeva.

Most commentators have dismissed as overblown suggestions that Moscow is preparing to occupy Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania because they are members of NATO and the EU and because such a Russian action would lead to a major military conflict between Moscow and the West.

Staunton, December 8, 2015 At the end of November, an article by Andrey Vadzhra for the influential Russian Institute for Strategic Investigations (RISI) repeated many of the themes that have become commonplace in Russian commentaries about Ukraine, but it also contained a serious warning: “a new phase of war” is now “inevitable. Vadzhra’s article, Kseniya […]

Staunton, June 10 – Picking up on the increasingly alarmist rhetoric of Kremlin outlets about the possibility of war, a Urals blogger who openly flaunts his ties with the FSB yesterday posted three commentaries in which he said that Russians must prepare for a major war with the West, according to Kseniya Kirillova. Sergey Kolyasnikov, […]

Staunton, May 23 – Rostislav Ishchenko, a commentator for Russia Today who gained notoriety for arguing that Moscow should “preventively occupy” the Baltic countries, says that Russia today “is in a state of war with the United States and that each of its citizens is on the front lines regardless of whether he is fighting […]

Staunton, March 30 – Leonid Reshetnikov, the obscurantist and imperialist former SVR [Foreign Intelligence Service] lieutenant general and head of the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies (RISI), says that his organization is “one of leading” organizations providing input to Vladimir Putin as the Kremlin leader formulates his foreign and domestic policies. In the course of […]

Staunton, February 1 – There are denials, “non-denial denials,” and then denials that have the effect of confirming exactly what those doing the denying are seeking to disown and providing additional information as well. A classical example of the last is provided by the head of a Kremlin think tank who was trying to undercut […]

This is turning out to be a bad week for Europeans hoping to resist the advance of Putinism. Ukraine continues to dither, rather than fight Russian invasion seriously. While Kyiv at last termed Moscow’s violence against their country “aggression,” they demurred from calling it a war, which it is, seemingly not realizing that if Ukraine […]

Staunton, April 29 – Despite Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s comment four days ago that he “hadn’t heard” about any South Ossetian calls for that republic to follow the example of Crimea, a conference organized by the influential Russian Institute for Strategic Studies says that South Ossetia will be part of the Russian Federation by […]