Fragments of a blog
Fragments of a blog
I’m all in favor of Russian as Ukraine’s official language and, possibly, of more power to Ukraine’s regions. What I’m opposed to is the Kremlin’s attempted partition or takeover of Ukraine under these pretexts. These are strictly Ukrainian issues and…
The Russian invasion of Eastern Ukraine has begun. Via February 31st.
The Russian deputy PM Igor Shuvalov has been accused of insider trading, that is profiting from the pending abolition of the two-tier market in Gazprom shares in 2005-6. Now Shuvalov is strongly suggesting that Russian companies delist from Western stock…
A Pro-Russian mob has attacked the wrong building in Kharkiv. To quote from the tweets: “Kharkiv residents” stormed Opera Theater, thinking it was mayor’s office… A comment from a Czech follower: When they came to us in 1968, they sieged…
Anne Applebaum has tweeted: “Russia, which denied having troops on the Ukrainian border, has now announced they will be withdrawn,” linking to this BBC report. Sounds familiar. The Soviet press was silent about the missiles in Cuba during the 1962…
Yanukovich failed to appear in public last Friday, sending an open letter to the Ukrainians instead calling for regional referenda. Some time between his first and second press-conferences in exile, there were reports of his death, then speculation that his…
Victor Yanukovich is expected to speak in Rostov-on-Don today. It could be yet another asinine press conference but the alarmist in me feels otherwise. What if Yanukovich asks – “as the legitimate president, I hereby request” – Putin to “restore the…
The feisty, libertarian-leaning Ekho Moskvy commentator Yulia Latynina draws attention, once again, to Putin’s March 18 speech; to the Duma and the Senate. Putin explained how in his eyes, Nikita Khruschev’s transferring Crimea from Russia to Ukraine was “unconstitutional” –…
Nicholas Shaxson says almost everything I feel I’ve wanted to say, and much more, about the London-centered offshore network and its side effects. In the first section of his long, well-structured article, Shaxson surveys responses to Ben Judah’s recent NYT piece,…
My feeling, based on the pro-Russian provocations in Donetsk and Lugansk, is that Russia is about to invade these regions of Ukraine, and possibly the whole of Southern and Southeastern Ukraine. Much as Edward Luttwak hypothesized in the TNR and…
Senator McCain speaking: Russia is a gas station masquerading as a country… It’s kleptocracy, it’s corruption. It’s a nation that’s really only dependent upon oil and gas for their economy. And so economic sanctions are important. Get some military assistance…
Lucien Kim writes in Slate: Crimea’s actual conflict isn’t ethnic; it’s the split between the suspicious, fearful sovok, or Soviet, mentality and a new generation of free minds. It’s little surprise that tearing down statues of Vladimir Lenin, founder of the…