Staunton, March 30 — “The longing for ‘former greatness’” that many Russians feel is “playing a bad joke” on them, Olga Idrisova writes in Moskovsky Komsomolets today, because it has led them to don “thick rose-colored glasses” and engage in deep denial about reality, “subconsciously blocking out” anything which doesn’t fit with their preferred imagery. […]
Staunton, March 23 — Many people around world have been focusing on and been horrified by the meeting of representatives of extreme right, even fascist parties in St. Petersburg over the weekend, but fewer have paid attention to another aspect of Moscow’s outreach — to separatists around the world whose efforts may help Vladimir Putin […]
Staunton, March 20 — It has become a commonplace to blame Kremlin-controlled media for the upsurge in anti-Americanism and hatred of a supposed “fifth column,” but two Russian sociologists say that hatred has been on the rise among Russians for a long time and at most this generalized hatred is now being channeled by the […]
Staunton, March 11 – The new cold war that has begun in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine does not have the formal ideological shape of its predecessor, but Vladimir Putin very much has an ideological vision, Igor Eidman says, and it is one that tragically makes it more likely that this cold war […]
Staunton, March 5 – On the 62 anniversary of his death today, Stalin continues to cast an ever darker shadow over Russia, sparking debates about how he should best be remembered. But beyond these symbols, the influence of Stalin on the thinking of Vladimir Putin and his regime is increasingly obvious and strong, as Moscow […]
Staunton, February 18 – The head of the FSB in Crimea says that “anti-Russian risings do not yet threaten” the peninsula but that Western intelligence services are creating the basis for them, a claim that the Russian security services are likely to invoke as justification for a sweeping new crackdown. And one commentator with whom […]
Staunton, February 16 — If President Obama follows German Chancellor Merkel and doesn’t arm Ukraine, the US president will not only “be playing the role Putin has assigned to him” but he will also open the way toward an effort by Moscow to dominate the Baltic countries while threatening the world with first use of […]
Staunton, February 4 — The exodus from Russia of Central Asian labor migrants and even the recent decline in the number of Ukrainians who fled to Russia last year after the start of the conflict there have attracted a great deal of attention, but outflow, this of people from Western countries, has attracted much less […]
Staunton, February 4 – Many in the West fear that providing military assistance to Ukraine would open the way for disasters ranging from the potential loss of an American helicopter as happened in Somalia to a possible nuclear exchange between Russia and the West as Vladimir Putin has threatened. But such arguments, as emotionally compelling […]
Staunton, January 27 — Many people are operating under the misapprehension that nuclear weapons make war impossible: they don’t. Rather they simply change the way in which war is conducted, with each side employing as weapons many things that no one would have called weapons before, according to Dmitry Yuryev. Indeed, the Moscow analyst says, […]
