Staunton, July 5 – Russia currently is confronted by five socio-cultural crises at one and the same time, and any effort to solve them quickly by force will lead to the disintegration of society and the state, much as such efforts have done elsewhere, according to Moscow commentator Yevgeny Ikhlov. Indeed, he suggests in an […]
Staunton, June 26 – Even as Vladimir Putin is being praised by some for having the Russian parliament rescind its authorization for the use of force in Ukraine, the Kremlin leader has admitted that he has done just that, left himself a variety of loopholes to do more, and promised to continue to “defend” ethnic […]
Staunton, June 23 – Vladimir Putin has no intention of ending his aggression in Ukraine, a series of actions intended to subordinate that country to the Kremlin or end its existence as an independent state, according to Andrey Illarionov. As a result, no diplomatic solution is possible, and other countries are likely to be drawn […]
Staunton, June 18 – The money the Kremlin is spending on Crimea and Ukraine more generally is exacerbating tensions between Moscow and hard-pressed regions, worsening the divide between well-off cities and their hinterlands, and leading some Russian nationalists to demand fiscal federalism as a first step toward creation of ethnic Russian republics. Three very different […]
Staunton, June 10 – Over the last several days, many in the West have professed to see Moscow pulling back from its subversive aggression against Ukraine and expressed confidence that the crisis Vladimir Putin’s actions there have caused is approaching an end that both Russia and the West will be able to live with, however […]
Staunton, June 6 – Despite its claims to the contrary, the Kremlin is rapidly reducing the size of the “Russian world” rather than increasing it because it is alienating its neighbors by the use of force rather than attracting them by the strength of its economy and of its universities, according to Yuliya Latynina. In […]
Staunton, June 5 – Despite the efforts of Moscow to suggest that the Cossacks are the unified advance guard of “the Russian world” and to create a wholly controlled Cossack establishment consisting of people with no links to the Cossack past, many Kuban Cossacks and especially the younger ones now support Ukraine against Russian aggression. […]
Staunton, 1 June – The Moscow Patriarchate is no longer in lockstep with the Kremlin on Ukraine, the result of the reactions of other Christian groups in Ukraine, its own corporate interests, and pressure from its own congregations who have a different view of the future than do many in the hierarchy, according to Roman […]
Staunton, May 28 – In what he describes as an act of “political bookkeeping,” Andrey Lipsky, the deputy chief editor of Novaya Gazeta describes what Russia has gained and what it has lost so far as a result of the Ukrainian crisis, thus providing a useful checklist of the balance now and its likely direction […]
Staunton, May 26 – Vladimir Putin “has lost the shortest cold war in history,” Yevgeny Ikhlov says. After having seized Crimea for Russia 12 weeks ago and effectively challenged the West to a contest, the Kremlin leader has backed away from his larger plan to counterpose a “Russian world” to everyone else. In a commentary […]
