Putin Moves to Tighten State Control over Russia’s Religious Groups
Paul Goble Staunton, March 18 – Vladimir Putin’s call for a new agency to supervise inter-ethnic and inter-religious relations is part of his effort to tighten control over all religious...
View ArticlePutin’s Personality, Agenda and Nuclear Weapons Make Him ‘Most Dangerous’...
Paul Goble Staunton, March 18 – Vladimir Putin’s personality and governing style, his domestic and geopolitical agendas and his possession of and willingness to threaten the use of nuclear...
View ArticlePutin Not Threatened by a Coup Now but Russia is by Its Dependence on Him,...
Paul Goble Staunton, March 18 – Kyiv analyst Taras Berezovets says that there is no threat that Vladimir Putin will be overthrown by a coup, however much his underlings may fight among...
View ArticleA Green Light for Putin? Germans Say West hasn’t Found Way to Block ‘Hybrid’ War
Paul Goble Staunton, March 19 – Moscow has been encouraged not only by the failure of the West to do more than impose economic sanctions in response to its invasion of Ukraine but also by...
View ArticleFive Demographic Drivers in Russia
Paul Goble Staunton, March 19 – Demography is not destiny except perhaps in the long term, but demographic developments can represent serious constraints and direct challenges to any...
View ArticleRussian Web Surfers Get Their Views on Putin from Social Networks, Not News...
Paul Goble Staunton, March 19 – Many assume that Russians who turn to the Internet will form very different opinions about Vladimir Putin than do those who rely on state television because...
View ArticleKremlin Ever More Orwellian on Ukraine and the Crimean Tatars
Paul Goble Staunton, March 19 – Yesterday, Vladimir Putin said that “we in Russia have always considered that Russians and Ukrainians are one people,” and his press secretary Dmitry Peskov...
View Article‘Turkish’ Islam Said Growing Faster than ‘Iranian’ Islam in Azerbaijan
Paul Goble Staunton, March 19 – Many Azerbaijanis now refer to the basic divide within Islam not as being between the Shiia who form about two-thirds of its population and the Sunni who...
View ArticleIn the USSR, There Was No Sex; In Putin’s Russia, No Suicides from Medical...
Paul Goble Staunton, March 20 – In the USSR, it was sometimes said, there was no sex because that subject could not be addressed directly in the media. However that might have been, a new...
View ArticleUkrainians Fear Russia But Don’t Trust EU, New Poll Results Show
Paul Goble Staunton, March 20 – Since the Maidan, a new Kyiv poll shows, the share of Ukrainians favoring EU integration has risen from 41 percent to 47.2 percent since the Maidan, while...
View ArticleHatred of Americans and ‘Fifth Column’ has Deep Roots among Russians,...
Paul Goble 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...
View ArticlePatrushev Says Helsinki Stirring Up Nationalists in Karelia
Paul Goble Staunton, March 20 – Nikolahy Patrushev, head of the Russian Security Council, says Finnish nationalists are becoming increasingly active in Karelia and by recruiting local...
View ArticleRussia’s Treatment of Crimean Tatars Recalls Hitler’s Treatment of Jews...
Paul Goble Staunton, March 20 – Russia’s treatment of the Crimean Tatars since the Anschluss a year ago recalls that of Hitler’s Germany between 1933 and 1938 when the authorities did...
View ArticleCrimeans Find a New Way to Protest Russian Occupation -- via the Census
Paul Goble Staunton, March 21 – There are many ways that the powerless can protest their status – jokes, indifference and contempt, among them. But some residents of Russian-occupied Crimea...
View ArticlePutin No Longer Cares Whether His Lies are Plausible, Shevtsova Says
Paul Goble Staunton, March 21 – Vladimir Putin and the world have crossed a dangerous threshold: The Kremlin leader no longer cares whether his lies about Ukraine or anything else are...
View ArticlePutin’s Priorities – Propaganda over People and Even National Defense
Paul Goble Staunton, March 21 – Budget documents may seem dry reading most of the time, but they often provide clearer indications than anything else of what the priorities of rulers are....
View ArticleRussia Hosting Europe’s Neo-Nazis, Nationalists and Anti-Semites, Putin...
Paul Goble Staunton, March 21 – Even as Moscow denounces anything it views as a manifestation of fascism abroad and prepares to mark the anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany, the...
View ArticleBellona Environmental Group Becomes 48th Russian NGO to Be Classified as a...
Paul Goble Staunton, March 21 – Bellona-Murmansk, the Russian branch of the international environmental monitoring group, has been declared a foreign agent nominally because it receives...
View ArticleTatar Historian hasn’t Changed but Islam in Tatarstan Has
Paul Goble Staunton, March 22 – Rafael Khakimov, vice president of Tatarstan’s Academy of Sciences, former advisor to that republic’s first president Mintimir Shaimiyev, and a leading...
View ArticleAll ‘Chechen Versions’ in Nemtsov Murder Case Show Putin to Blame, Eidman Says
Paul Goble Staunton, March 22 – The Kremlin and its supporters in Russia and abroad along with those frightened by the implications of holding Vladimir Putin responsible for the killing of...
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