Tag: Russian world

Staunton, April 14 – Vladimir Putin believes that he can dominate the Baltic countries and destroy NATO not by a direct invasion which the Western alliance is prepared to counter but rather by threatening to use nuclear weapons against them and the Europeans, something that would lead the West not to come to their aid, […]

Staunton, March 30 – Most analysts have suggested that sanctions and international isolation were a cost Vladimir Putin was willing to pay in order to get his way in Ukraine, but Andrey Lipsky, an editor of Novaya Gazeta, says that is exactly backwards: the Kremlin leader wanted isolation and launched his Ukrainian campaign to get […]

Staunton, February 18 – Vladimir Mamontov, head of the Moscow Speaks radio station, says that the creation of a Transdnistria-like entity in eastern Ukraine “should not be considered a victory” for Russia, a statement that has at least three possible meanings, none of which should be ignored. First of all, Mamontov’s words could be what […]

Staunton, February 16 – By his bombast and aggression, Vladimir Putin has destroyed “what was even a year ago called the post-Soviet space, an area which even then existed largely by inertia as an appendage of Russian ambitions” rather than as an expression of the desires of the countries included within that designation, according to […]

Staunton, February 14 – Despite his success in intimidating some European governments into inaction or even willingness to come to terms with the results of his aggression, Vladimir Putin in fact is having to cope with an ever-shrinking Russia world as his insistence on Minsk as a venue for talks about Ukraine shows. Indeed, had […]

Staunton, January 23 — Following the “tectonic” shifts in the world that Russia’s moves in Ukraine began, the leaders of the Baltic countries must recognize “the need to have a dialogue with Russia,” the head of the Moscow Institute for the Russian Abroad says. If they don’t, others who are ready to do so “will […]

Yesterday Russia announced a revised military doctrine, signed by President Vladimir Putin, that names NATO as the Kremlin’s main adversary and clarifies that Russia’s military reserves the right to respond to conventional threats with both nuclear and conventional weapons. This is no big change, since it only amplifies existing doctrine, but its explicit emphasis on […]

Staunton, December 21 – Putin’s opposition to Europe and the US “is acquiring the aspects of a real holy war, not at the level of metaphor as in the old Soviet song but in the completely literal religious sense,” but except for its core belief in Russian imperial statehood, the new faith on which it […]

Staunton, December 21 – The collapse of oil prices and the ruble along with Western sanctions have destroyed any basis for the grand bargain that the Kremlin had made with the Russian people – economic growth in exchange for political passivity – and raised the question as to whether there can be a new one […]