Fragments of a blog
Fragments of a blog
Going back to Timothy Snyder’s piece, what about the top man in the Kremlin? Last December, Putin said this about Trump (in The Guardian‘s translation): He is a very colorful and talented man, no doubt about that… He says that he…
In his latest NYRB piece, Timothy Snyder lists a number of Russian “politicians” supportive of Trump. They turn out clowns of varying colors; none of them operators to be reckoned with. Particularly amusing is Snyder’s naming Alexander Dugin as “the leading Russian fascist ideologue and…
You bet. Not quite the way there were officially supposed to, but very much the way they were predicted to work. I’m talking about the import bans that Russia imposed in August 2014 on food produced in the EU? As…
Comparing the newly created Russian National Guard to the Praetorians of imperial Rome is too obvious to have explanatory value. I cannot recall Putin ever relying on the support of any group or organization to the exclusion of all others. He…
When The National Enquirer ran a story about Ted Cruz’s five (or eight?) alleged mistresses, the candidate called the leak “garbage” (that’s what tabloids peddle) and accused Donald Trump of planting the dirt (probably dug up by Rubio’s team). But…
Putin’s suggestions regarding the criminal justice procedure: He also proposed a change to jury service, saying jurors should judge a wider range of cases but their number be cut to between five and seven from the current 12 at each…
Putin is a demigod: his airstrikes help some Russians to live out, vicariously, their dreams of taking revenge on the mockingly cruel world. Putin’s lieutenants and footsoldiers are not octoroon-gods, however: their place is at the receiving end in the…
The more I read about the history of Hatay, Turkey’s appendage-like province disputed by Syria, the more I am convinced that its status remains a sore point for Ankara. Also, Turkey’s military is in solidarity with Erdogan on the need to…
The Russian speakers of Eastern Ukraine were not at risk of being killed by Ukrainian forces until Russia’s allies or puppets began the war in Donbass. The Turkomans of Syria have been at risk since the start of the civil…
The Russian government seems to be overreacting to the Su–24 crisis, threatening wide-scale economic sanctions against Turkey that are certain to hurt Russian consumers. (Bombing Voronezh in response, again.) Is this Putin taking personal offense – an ego contest between the…
Putin met with Pope Francis last week, but just before that… In a rare newspaper interview ahead of his state visit to Italy, Vladimir Putin has claimed he never makes mistakes because God “built his life so he’d have nothing…
Evil AmeriKKKans won’t let Sepp serve a fifth term! Brazen breach of international law! When would Putin’s own fifth term start, in 2018 or 2024? Either way, he would be younger than Blatter is now… if… But the more vigorous…