Staunton, September 5 – Vladimir Putin’s plan to move several ministries from Moscow to Krasnoyarsk and to launch a massive investment program there reflects fears in the Kremlin that separatist attitudes in Russia east of the Urals are growing and that only such steps have the potential to quiet them, according to Anton Chablin. In […]
Staunton, August 7 – Leaders of the ethnic Ukrainian community in the Russian Federation are calling on Vladimir Putin to end the Ukrainophobic campaign in the Moscow media because many Ukrainians now feel that they put themselves at risk of attack if they identify as such. The open letter to the Kremlin leader was prepared […]
Staunton, August 4 – Moscow’s adoption of ‘imperial federalism’ as a strategy to extend its power over neighboring countries is sparking a variety of demands within the Russian Federation for moves toward making that country a genuine and not only a nominal federal system, according to Vadim Shtepa. In an article on Rufabula.com, Shtepa, one […]
Staunton, July 21 – Mikhail Degtaryev, a Duma deputy from the Liberal Democratic Republic of Russia (LDPR), is preparing legislation to replace the current administrative-territorial division of the Russian Federation in regions, territories and republics with the tsarist-era one of provinces (guberniya) and districts (uezd), an action he says would restore “historical justice” and end […]
Staunton, July 10 – In a move that recalls Kazan’s behavior during the 1990s, Farid Mukhametshin, the chairman of Tatarstan’s State Council, has called for the retention of the title of republic president and said that the Russian Duma had violated the Constitution and exceeded its authority by demanding that republics change that title to […]
Staunton, June 16 – In what might seem counter-intuitive but which in fact underscores the way Moscow media coverage of one thing may cause Russians to draw conclusions about others, 58 percent of Russians say that as a result of developments in Ukraine, they are more negative about nationalist groups in their own country, up […]
Staunton, June 14 – By his instrumental use of nationalist slogans in the current “chauvinistic storm” about Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has blocked the growth of a genuinely contemporary Russian nationalism and reduced it instead to a state-controlled ideology he will dispense with whenever he wants, according to Fedor Krasheninnikov. The Ekaterinburg commentator says that he […]
Staunton, June 14 – If Moscow does not win out in Ukraine, Maksim Kalashnikov argues, the Russian Federation will suffer its very own “’Ukrainian crisis,’” with “’true Russian nationalists’” in places like the overwhelmingly ethnic Russian Bryansk Region adopting separatist agendas and challenging the central government. According to the Russian nationalist commentator, the struggle for […]
Staunton, June 12 – Russian writers occasionally refer to the existence of the Zelyonyi Klin [“Green Wedge”] in the Russian Far East as an historical oddity, but now in the midst of the Ukrainian crisis, they have gone all out not only to blacken its reputation by linking Ukrainians there to foreign intelligence services but […]
Staunton, June 11 – Even as Vladimir Putin pursues what many see as an effort to restore an empire centered on Moscow, polls show that ever fewer Russians regret the end of the Soviet Union – something the Kremlin leader has said was “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century – and ever more […]
