General Sergey Afanasyev, deputy chief of the GRU, the Russian military’s intelligence service, says that approximately 4,500 people in Central Asia have sworn allegiance to the Islamic State.
Staunton, May 12 – People of decency and good will around the world have been horrified by Vladimir Putin’s defense this week of the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact which made Hitler and Stalin allies, opened the way to World War II, and allowed the Soviet Union to occupy Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, portions of Poland and Bessarabia […]
Staunton, April 13 — Vladimir Putin by his aggressiveness and bluster has convinced many in his country and elsewhere that he and his system are extremely strong, but in addition to the obvious comparisons many make with the often pathetic response of Western leaders, Putinism suffers from serious and incurable weaknesses, according to Kseniya Kirillova. […]
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, November 30 – The ethnonym “Tatar” has a long a complicated history, one that reflects both the understanding and confusions of investigators and officials and that highlights both real links and imaginary ones, according to Pavel Gusterin, a specialist on Central Asia and the Middle East at the Russian Institute for Strategic Research. In […]
