Russian Businesses Oppose Putin’s Plan to Avoid Baltic Ports
Paul Goble Staunton, December 7 – Vladimir Putin said last week that Russian firms will use ports in the Russian Federation rather than those in the Baltic countries, but Russian businesses...
View ArticleWestern Weakness Not Russian Strength Key Problem in Turkish Crisis,...
Paul Goble Staunton, December 7 – Vladimir Putin will continue to escalate the conflict not because he is strong but because Western leaders are not only weak but have, with the possible...
View ArticleSaakashvili’s Loss of Georgian Citizenship – What It Means and What It Doesn’t
Paul Goble Staunton, December 7 – The constitution and laws of the Republic of Georgia do not allow dual citizenship, and consequently and not surprisingly, Mikheil Saakashvili’s decision to...
View ArticleTruckers’ Strike Won’t Lead to Political Change in Russia, Gontmakher Says
Paul Goble Staunton, December 7 – Pro-Kremlin writers have argued that the deteriorating economic situation will lead Russians to willingly tighten their belts, and opposition ones have...
View ArticleBeloveshchaya Pushcha is Not Just about the Past
Paul Goble Staunton, December 8 – Twenty-four years ago today at the Belarusian resort of Belovezhskaya Pushcha, the presidents of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine signed the document...
View ArticlePutin Majority Breaking Down But Elite Splits and Mass Protests Won’t Come...
Paul Goble Staunton, December 8 – The truck drivers’ strike and the seriousness with which the Kremlin has reacted to it show that “the Putin majority, the Putin consensus and Putin...
View ArticleInternet, Not TV, Now Moscow’s Main Propaganda Channel for Baltic Countries,...
Paul Goble Staunton, December 8 – Moscow now views the Internet as its primary propaganda channel in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania because that medium reaches the young whereas...
View Article‘Russian World’ Isn’t Propaganda; It’s Psychotherapy for Russians, Analyst Says
Paul Goble Staunton, December 8 – “Under the conditions of the specific Russian culture of today, the ‘Russian world’ fulfills an important role,” Maksim Goryunov says. “The myth of the...
View ArticleRISI Article Suggests New Russian Attacks in Ukraine Likely in Near Future,...
Paul Goble Staunton, December 8 – At the end of November, an article by Andrey Vadzhra for the influential Russian Institute for Strategic Investigations (RISI) repeated many of the themes...
View ArticlePutin Regime Unwittingly Trapped by Streisand Effect, Shtepa Says
Paul Goble Staunton, December 9 – Moscow’s efforts to censor the Internet are backfiring, producing in Russia what is known in the West as “the Streisand effect” when efforts to suppress...
View ArticleRussian Officials Move to Freeze Out Ethnic Minorities from Regional Legislature
Paul Goble Staunton, December 9 – Russian officials in the oil-rich Khanty-Mansiisk Autonomous District are moving to suppress a unique arrangement involving a three-mandate legislative...
View ArticlePutin’s Anti-Terrorism, like Stalin’s Anti-Fascism, All about Expanding...
Paul Goble Staunton, December 9 – Ever more people are drawing parallels between Vladimir Putin and Joseph Stalin, but there is one parallel that has attracted less attention than it should,...
View ArticleKyrgyz Young Not Going to Russia as Gastarbeiters but to Syria as ISIS Fighters
Paul Goble Staunton, December 9 – The economic crisis in Russia is feeding the growth of Islamist extremism in an indirect way: young people from Kyrgyzstan who had been going to Russian...
View ArticlePutin’s 86 Percent Approval Rating is True but Doesn’t Mean What Either His...
Paul Goble Staunton, December 9 – Many people now say that they do not believe the findings of pollsters that 86 percent of Russians approve of Vladimir Putin, Denis Volkov says; but in...
View ArticleTwo Russian Businessmen Denounce Policies of Government and Call for It to Go
Paul Goble Staunton, December 10 – Speaking at a section of the Moscow Economic Forum yesterday, two Russian businessmen issued stinging denunciations of the Russian government’s economic...
View ArticlePrivate Armies Said Reemerging in Russia
Paul Goble Staunton, December 10 – It sometimes seems that in today’s Russia, there is a race between the restoration of some of the worst features of Soviet times and some of the worst...
View ArticleMoscow Fears Kaliningrad Might Face a Crimea-Style Blockade
Paul Goble Staunton, December 10 – The Crimean blackout has forced Moscow officials to begin to think about how much of a threat of a similar energy blockade to Kaliningrad there may be and...
View ArticleRevolution in Russia ‘Inevitable and Necessary,’ Khodorkovsky Says
Paul Goble Staunton, December 10 – Yesterday, exiled Russian oligarch and opposition leader Mikhail Khodorkovsky gave an online press conference in which he said that a revolution in Russia...
View ArticleTurkey Can Create Real Problems for Moscow in North Caucasus -- But Not the...
Paul Goble Staunton, December 10 – In the current crisis, Turkey has the ability to create problems for Moscow in the North Caucasus but not the ones many Russian analysts have been...
View ArticleA Baker’s Dozen of Neglected Russian Stories – No. 14
Paul GobleStaunton, December 11 -- The flood of news stories from a country as large, diverse and strange as the Russian Federation often appears to be is far too large for anyone to keep up with. But...
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