Donbas ‘Tail’ Now Wagging Russian ‘Dog’ in Ukraine, Sutyagin Says
Paul Goble Staunton, August 18 – Igor Sutyagin, a Russian analyst based in London, says that Vladimir Putin and the pro-Moscow separatists in eastern Ukraine appear likely to continue their...
View ArticlePutin Says Those Pushing Crimean Tatar Cause are Doing It Only for the Money
Paul Goble Staunton, August 18 – Reflecting his longstanding view that leaders but not peoples make history and that the rights of any ethnic group except those Russians who support him can...
View ArticleRuble’s Slide Reducing Number of Hajis from Russia
Paul Goble Staunton, August 18 – Fewer Muslims make the haj this year than in the recent past not only because they must now travel by air and because the Saudis cut the Russian quota but 20...
View ArticleUkrainians Will Need a Generation to Overcome Trauma from Russian War, Émigré...
Paul Goble Staunton, August 18 – Madlen Rozenblum, an émigré psychotherapist who has been helping Ukrainians with Skype consultations and training sessions, says that Ukrainians are going to...
View Article24 Years On, Russia has Not Moved beyond Putsch as Chief Means of Leadership...
Paul Goble Staunton, August 19 – Two centuries ago, Madame de Stael observed that Russia was an autocracy mitigated by the occasional assassination. Now, 24 years to the day after the failed...
View ArticlePutin's Propaganda Works to Convince Unhappy Russians They’re the Exceptions,...
Paul Goble Staunton, August 19 – “The chief secret of Russian propaganda” is its “main task,” Alfred Kokh says, and that is to convince Russians that they are as happy as it is possible to...
View ArticleDespite Pro-Russian Attitudes Now, Crimea is Not Lost to Ukraine, Kirillova Says
Paul Goble Staunton, August 19 – An increasingly common theme in many commentaries about Crimea and the Donbas is that Ukrainians should not want them back pro-Russian attitudes in the those...
View ArticleIs Moscow Likely to Face a Pan-Regional Fronde?
Paul Goble Staunton, August 19 – Russia today does not face the kind of general disintegration that led to the end of the USSR, but it may lose the North Caucasus and several other republics...
View ArticleOrthodox Radicals Now Doing for the Kremlin What OMON Officers Did in the Past
Paul Goble Staunton, August 19 – In a disturbing echo of how the tsarist authorities used nominally independent Orthodox nationalist black hundreds organizations to go after opponents of the...
View Article‘Good Tsar-Bad Boyar’ Argument May Not Be Working for Putin, Kotsyubinsky Says
Paul Goble Staunton, August 20 – Throughout Russian history, Russian rulers have benefited from the perception among the population that the tsar is good and would do the right thing if he...
View ArticlePutin’s Comments on Foreign Threats to Crimea Point to Increased Repression...
Paul Goble Staunton, August 20 – Vladimir Putin’s suggestion in Stavropol yesterday that “external forces” threaten to destabilize the situation in Crimea by playing the nationalist card or...
View ArticleForeign Financing of United Russia Candidates -- and Other Curiosities of the...
Paul Goble Staunton, August 20 – In the latest manifestation of the Orwellian principle that “all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others,” some candidates from the...
View ArticleAbsent Radical Change, Russia Can’t Recover from Current Crisis as It Did...
Paul Goble Staunton, August 20 – Many Russians, encouraged by the Kremlin, believe that the Russian economy can bounce back from the current crisis the way it did after earlier crises in...
View ArticleRussia Doesn’t Control Its Domestic Airspace, Opening the Way to Accidents...
Paul Goble Staunton, August 20 – The Russian authorities exercise “far greater control over the country’s roads than they do over its airspace,” according to a Moscow analyst, who points out...
View ArticleThe United States Saved Georgia in 2008 and Can Save Ukraine Now, Shishkin Says
Paul Goble Staunton, August 17 – The United States saved Georgia from destruction when Russia attacked that country in 2008, and it can do the same for Ukraine now that Moscow has launched...
View ArticleLike Gorbachev, Putin Said Ready to Violate Ethnic Quota System in...
Paul Goble Staunton, August 17 – A few months before he became the leader of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev declared that competence rather than ethnicity should be the basis of all...
View ArticleSeventeen Years On, ‘Shadow of Default’ Still Hangs over Russia
Paul Goble Staunton, August 17 – Seventeen years ago today, on August 17, 1998, Russia defaulted on its international payment obligations, an event many Russians view as emblematic of what...
View ArticlePutin Alienating Kremlin Elites with His Nuclear Blackmail Threats, Borovoy Says
Paul Goble Staunton, August 17 – Many have suggested that many in Vladimir Putin’s entourage are upset with him because his policies have sparked Western sanctions that have reduced their...
View ArticleFive Years Ago, Russians Said They Were For Democracy, Something They...
Paul Goble Staunton, August 17 – Many people assume that the high levels of support that Russians express for the Putin regime now shows them to be by nature authoritarian. Others, citing...
View ArticleRussian Regions Can’t Afford Ballot Boxes or Even Ballots
Paul Goble Staunton, August 18 – At the end of Soviet times, a bitter joke circulated in Moscow. A Russian visited one store and there was no toilet paper, he visited a second and there was...
View Article