Fragments of a blog
Fragments of a blog
Sergei Belyakov reminding the reader of the more or less obvious: Minor Russians dominated in the Kherson governorate as well. In the second half of the 1870s they made up more than 70%, followed by Moldovans (17.9%) and Greater Russians…
Radio Liberty reported from Moscow on Wednesday: Yevgeny Urlashov — a former Yaroslavl mayor and rare example of a Russian opposition politician in public office — has been sentenced to 12 1/2 years in prison on corruption charges he says…
Maxim Trudolyubov writes in The Moscow Times and on the Kennan Institute blog: I don’t know whether the Kremlin even has a favorite in the U.S. elections, but I do know what Russia’s ruling politicians love to watch. They love seeing others…
The Moscow Times on the latest gubernatorial appointments in Russia: In a matter of hours, Putin replaced four governors, four envoys and an ambassador with men with security services backgrounds. It would have been major news 15 ago. By 2016,…
The media is anxious to find evidence of Trump’s deals with Russian oligarchs to prove Putin’s influence over the candidate. Since Russian oligarchs are but Putin’s puppets – so the logic goes – the man in the Kremlin can either…
Smart and sophisticated? Paranoid and deluded? Incompetent and occasionally dumb? Looking at Team Kremlin, I can never be sure. I suppose that’s one of their strong sides: you can lose your mind trying to pin them down. Now on to…
I have argued that some of Trump’s views on allies, trade, and the USSR/Russia, can be traced to his opinions shared with the media 25-30 years back. He’s not as volatile as mainstream opinion has it but he can improvise moves…
As far as Ukraine is concerned, the Kremlin’s propaganda has been surprisingly well-received in diverse quarters, as evidenced by comments both at the left-leaning Crooked Timber and on pro-Trump sites. The same probably applies to Moscow’s Syrian narrative, but I…
I’ve seen suggestions that “Russian government hackers” (sic) are responsible for the latest big digital break-in, that of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). I don’t know much about hackers, but how do you make one into a “government hacker” –…
If one must play a game of “geopolitics” with Moscow, being able to make unpredictable moves could be the winner. So far, it’s worked like this: “OK, I’ve broken the rules again. Whatcha gonna do?” “Sanctions.” “Go ahead. But if you cut Swift off,…
Consider this alt-history passage: Ivan the Terrible once said: “I’m guilty of my son’s death because I didn’t hand him over to the doctors in time” when they were on the road and he [the son] fell ill. They were…
I learned of Robert Amsterdam when he was representing Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Yukos as their international lawyer. Amsterdam’s relentless criticism of Russia’s legal system, which he witnessed in action at the first Yukos trial in 2003-4, was spot on but…