As More Women Join Post-Soviet Armies, ‘Babovshchina’ Joins ‘Dedovshchina’ as...
Paul Goble Staunton, June 7 – “Dedovshchina,” the informal system in which soldiers who have been in service longer or who have a higher rank, oppress their juniors by force or other means...
View ArticleFewer than Half of Ukrainians Blame Moscow Alone for War in the Donbass, New...
Paul Goble Staunton, June 8 – Forty-eight percent of Ukrainians blame Moscow for the war in the Donbas, while 33 percent blame both Moscow and Kyiv and nine percent blame only Kyiv,...
View ArticleOrdinary Russians Mistakenly Placing Their Hopes in Donald Trump, Bykov Says
Paul Goble Staunton, June 8 – That Vladimir Putin should express his admiration and support for presumptive Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is no surprise. Not only does Trump...
View ArticleRussians are Drinking Ever More Moonshine at Great Risk to Their Health,...
Paul Goble Staunton, June 8 – Moscow has trumpeted a decline in sales of alcohol as an indication that its policies are making Russians healthier and improving life expectancies, but in...
View ArticleMoscow’s Five Fears about Kazakhstan
Paul Goble Staunton, June 8 – Soviet authors invariably spoke of “Central Asia and Kazakhstan” rather than lumping the latter into the former category, a reflection of the special role that...
View ArticleKremlin’s Use of Tsarist Heirs Highlights Rather than Reduces Russian Divisions
Paul Goble Staunton, June 9 – The Kremlin has sought to use the Romanov dynasty and its surviving leader, Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirova, to symbolize “the overcoming of all the dramatic...
View ArticleWar in North Caucasus Not Over and Moscow’s Use of Force There Affecting All...
Paul Goble Staunton, June 9 – Given media attention to Vladimir Putin’s other military actions, many have forgotten that the war in the North Caucasus goes on, and they have failed to see...
View ArticleUkraine’s Forgotten Decentralization Problem: Amalgamating Local Governments
Paul Goble Staunton, June 9 – Decentralization “under Ukrainian conditions,” the editors of DSNews.ua say, is about two things: the decentralization of the system of power to regions and...
View ArticleA Real ‘Wedge’ Issue – Ukrainian Regions in the Russian Federation
Paul Goble Staunton, June 9 – Even though Moscow officials feel perfectly free to talk about ethnic Russian communities in other countries and the need to bring them under Russia’s umbrella...
View ArticleA Baker’s Dozen of Neglected Russian Stories – No. 35
Paul Goble Staunton, June 10 -- 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...
View ArticleAnother Regional Government Creating a Force Structure to Defend Itself...
Paul Goble Staunton, June 11 – Because of its economic importance as a center of Russian oil production, the Khanty-Mansiisk Autonomous District has been under constant pressure from Moscow;...
View ArticleA Russian ‘Guantanamo’ Found in North Caucasus
Paul Goble Staunton, June 11 – To hide certain kinds of high-value or impossible-to-release prisoners from society, Moscow has created a special detention center in the North Caucasus under...
View ArticleUkraine Quietly Fulfilling a NATO-Style MAP Albeit Under a Different Guise,...
Paul Goble Staunton, June 11 – In a commentary entitled “How Ukraine is Entering NATO without Unnecessary Noise,” Mikhail Samus argues that Kyiv is meeting the requirements of a Membership...
View ArticleRegionalism Threatens Russia Today the Way Ethnic Separatism Did the USSR,...
Paul Goble Staunton, June 11 – Since the Soviet Union disintegrated, Moscow has been extremely sensitive to the challenges any ethnic separatism poses to the territorial integrity of the...
View ArticleRefrigerator Now Defeating TV: High Standard of Living Better Mark of Great...
Paul Goble Staunton, June 11 – For the last few years, many have suggested that there is a battle going on between what Russians see on television and what they no longer see in their...
View ArticlePutin is Restoring Symbols of USSR but Not the USSR Itself, Oreshkin Says
Paul Goble Staunton, June 11 – Vladimir Putin is “a master of symbolic victories,” and his greatest fear is that rationalist thought about what he is in fact doing will spread through the...
View ArticleWest Must Again Shift from Containing Russia’s Leaders to Defeating Them,...
Paul Goble Staunton, June 12 – Just as was the case at the beginning of the 1980s, the United States must shift from a policy of containing Moscow, which the Kremlin viewed then and views...
View ArticlePutin’s New Moves to Make National Guard Totally Loyal to Himself...
Paul Goble Staunton, June 12 – Vladimir Putin’s creation of a national guard is, as Andrey Piontkovsky observed at the time (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=57160D978DF75), an effort by the...
View ArticleKyrgyz and Tajik Experts Deny Their Countries are ‘Failed States’
Paul Goble Staunton, June 12 – Many Russian and some Western commentators have suggested that Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are best understood as “’failed states,’” territories in which the...
View ArticleRussians Today Mark or Don’t Mark Their ‘Most Controversial State Holiday’
Paul Goble Staunton, June 12 – Twenty-six years ago, the First Congress of Peoples’ Deputies of the RSFSR adopted the Declaration of State Sovereignty of the RSFSR, an action the Russian...
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