While the US President, Barack Obama, is due to announce a new range of sanctions against Russia later today, the situation in Ukraine is rapidly getting worse. Russian-backed fighters still hold seven OSCE monitors and three SBU officers hostage, in addition to others including the Ukrainian journalist Irma Krat. Furthermore, the violence has spread further […]
Last night, the US Secretary of State, John Kerry, threatened further sanctions on Russia, apportioning full blame to them for the ongoing deterioration of the Ukrainian crisis. Warning of the economic damage that could be wrought by a Western response to Russia’s actions, Kerry said that: The window to change course is closing. If Russia […]
Staunton, April 24 – It is notoriously easier to spark a protest movement than to control its direction thereafter or to ensure that it does not become a model for others one does not want to be involved in. That risk is now on display in eastern Ukraine where pro-Moscow activists are not only seeking […]
Staunton, April 24 – Vladimir Putin has developed “a new kind of war” in Ukraine, one that has achieved many of his goals including the partial dismemberment of that country and the creation of a new region on the basis of his perception of “new international conditions,” according to Yuliya Latynina. In an article in […]
Staunton, April 23 – Several Russian nationalist portals have segments with the title “the new is the well-forgotten old.” That is certainly proving to be true with some of the ideological tropes that Russian commentators are trying out now. Much of what they say appears to be little more than an updated version of an […]
Staunton, April 23 – The best way to understand the events of the last several months, Stanislav Belkovsky argues, is to view them as a repetition of the August 1991 coup with only this difference: the leader of this coup is Vladimir Putin and the target of his radical shifts is the Putin of the […]
Staunton, April 22 – In what is becoming a defining feature of the Putin regime, the Russian authorities are saying things that many people want to hear at exactly the same moment that they are doing things that directly contradict what they say. Today, the victims of that are the Crimean Tatars, a Moscow commentator […]
Staunton, April 22 – Vladimir Pastukhov suggests that Ukraine now faces the choice of concluding a humiliating “Brest peace” with Moscow, in which it would yield an enormous portion of its territory and population to preserve itself in the hopes of recovering its losses in the future, or risk the possibility that it disappears altogether. […]
Staunton, April 21 – Latvia may be as prepared as any small country next to a very large one to defend itself against a military invasion. It has a modernized military, albeit one trained for peacekeeping rather than national defense, and it is a member of NATO, on whose Article Five Latvians rely. At least, […]
Staunton, April 21 – There is perhaps no better way to call attention to the way in which Vladimir Putin insists on one standard for his own country and a very different one for Ukraine and others than to imagine the position the Kremlin leader might have found himself in had he been asked what […]
