(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, May 21, 2014) If Vladimir Putin had wanted to occupy part or all of Ukraine, he would have installed a different group of leaders in Donetsk and Luhansk, Yegeniya Albats says, a comment that provides an important clue to the Kremlin leader’s more general strategy with regard not only to Ukraine but […]
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(Business New Europe – bne.eu – COMMENT – Ben Aris in Moscow – May 21, 2014) Hitler has followed me to Russia and won’t leave me alone. The cover of the Daily Mail on May 21 has a shock-sensation banner headline: “Charles: Putin is behaving like Hitler.” Before I go any further let me say for the record that Hitler […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, May 19, 2014) Putin’s Russia is “already almost a totalitarian state,” one in which “citizens are losing their individual rights” and “government propaganda is stupefying people,” according to a declaration of 52 leading human rights activists, opposition political leaders, and commentators, who collectively form the December Roundtable. Among those who signed it […]
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MOSCOW. May 19 (Interfax) – The Ukrainian events and the neo-Nazi rampage demonstrate how dangerous the attempts to revise and distort history can be, Russian President Vladimir Putin said. “We have been encountering attempts to revise and distort history with increasing frequency,” Putin emphasized in an interview with leading Chinese media outlets before his visit to China. “Consequences can be […]
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(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Halia Pavliva and Ksenia Galouchko – May 19, 2014) President Vladimir Putin’s planned China visit this week is helping spark the longest rally in OAO Gazprom since 2006 as speculation mounts the Russian leader will return with a long-sought gas supply agreement. Gazprom, the world’s largest natural-gas producer, has climbed for nine days, rallying 16 percent […]
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(RFE/RL – rferl.org – May 13, 2014) In a tacit admission that the situation in the North Caucasus differs radically from that elsewhere in the Russian Federation, President Vladimir Putin has made a series of personnel appointments clearly intended to strengthen Moscow’s control over developments there. Putin has dismissed Aleksandr Khloponin, whom then-President Dmitry Medvedev had appointed in January 2010 to head the new […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, May 12, 2014) A government’s priorities and plans are most clearly shown in its budget, and over the last four years, the budgets Vladimir Putin has proposed and imposed are those of a leader preparing for war rather than someone concerned about the needs of the Russian people, according to Boris Nemtsov. […]
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(Business New Europe – bne.eu – May 7, 2014) The Kremlin launched a new initiative to outlaw the use of non-transparent trust funds for the holding of shares, Vedomosti reported on Tuesday. One of the biggest problems investigators face in Russia is the widespread use of trust funds to own shares in companies. Trust funds to not have to declare […]
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(Interfax – May 7, 2014) President Vladimir Putin has a confidence rating of 78.3% in Russia, and Russian society is drifting toward conservatism, according to the country’s Civil Society Development Foundation (FoRGO). “There exists demand for conservative policy in practically all strata of Russian society despite allegations by liberal critics of Russian President Vladimir Putin,” FoRGO said in a report […]
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MOSCOW. May 7 (Interfax) – Russian citizens characterize Russian President Vladimir Putin as competent and focused, the All-Russia Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM) sociologists said. According to the poll results released on Wednesday, 21% of respondents consider Putin to be competent, decisive and focused (20%), while last year such responses were given by 10% and 14% respectively. Twelve percent said […]
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MOSCOW, May 6 (RIA Novosti) – Tuesday marks the second year of Vladimir Putin’s third term as President of the Russian Federation, an anniversary that comes amid a turbulent time of tensions in Ukraine, a tightening pressure on Russia from the West and soaring approval ratings for Putin at home. Putin’s career at the helm of the Russian government kicked […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, May 4, 2014) Had Vladimir Putin accepted the Maidan’s ouster of discredited Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich and agreed to accept the results of the upcoming elections, nothing that has occurred in Ukraine since that time would have happened, according to a Ukrainian commentator. “Thousands of people would not have suddenly discovered in […]
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(RIA Novosti – Slovyansk, May 3, 2014) The Russian president’s special envoy Vladimir Lukin has commented on an audio recording, posted online by the Security Service of Ukraine [SBU], which, according to the SBU, was Lukin’s telephone conversation with leader of the Slovyansk defence forces Igor Strelkov. According to Lukin, this conversation did take place but its content has nothing […]
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(Interfax – May 3, 2014) Moscow considers the position the USA and a number of European countries have taken regarding the bloodshed in Odessa to be the “deepest cynicism”, and in approving Kiev’s “punitive operation” in southeast Ukraine, the West shares responsibility for what is happening, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitriy Peskov has said. He was speaking to journalists on 3 […]
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MOSCOW. May 3 (Interfax) – Russian President Vladimir Putin receives round-the-clock updates on what is happening in southeast Uykraine, his spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. “The president gets reports from intelligence and other relevant agencies, he also receives information from media reports,” Peskov told reporters on Saturday. “Essentially, we now realize how justified and right were the actions of president Putin, […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Anna Dolgov – May 2, 2014) Former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky has said his surprise release from prison last December was facilitated by an agreement made with President Vladimir Putin to stay away from politics, but added that the deal expires in August. When asked about his abstention from political life since his surprise presidential […]
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(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – Vsevolod Pulya, RBTH – April 28, 2014) The Russian search engine was actually registered in the Netherlands and received its first investments from foreign investors. Nevertheless, it believes that this is “common practice for any internet startup.” Russian search engine Yandex has responded to comments by Russian President Vladimir Putin about foreign influences […]
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(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Indira A.R. Lakshmanan, Ilya Arkhipov and Kasia Klimasinska – April 29, 2014) The latest U.S. penalties against Vladimir Putin’s inner circle may provoke the Russian president into escalating the Ukraine crisis without crippling key sectors of his nation’s economy. The sanctions imposed by the Obama administration yesterday on seven officials and 17 companies won’t go unanswered, […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, April 28, 2014) Many in Russia and the West have speculated that the combination of Vladimir Putin’s policies against Ukraine, Moscow’s increasing isolation internationally, and deteriorating economic conditions at home will eventually lead to a Maidan-style challenge to his rule. That is possible, of course, but a man identified as a former […]
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(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Henry Meyer, Irina Reznik – April 28, 2014) Outside a Moscow stadium one night in 2006, deputy central bank chief Andrei Kozlov was walking to his car after playing soccer when two men opened fire, pumping bullets into his head and neck and killing his driver. Days before the murders, the man leading Russia’s fight against […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Christopher Brennan – April 25, 2014) President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that the Internet was a CIA project and that Russia’s most popular search engine Yandex had been subject to Western influence when it started out. The president told a media forum that the Internet “emerged as a special project of the U.S. CIA and […]
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MOSCOW, April 25 (RIA Novosti) – Russia is not discussing on a practical level sending an international peacekeeping force to Ukraine, Russian Presidential Aide Yury Ushakov told journalists Friday. Responding to a comment on a suggestion by Russian politicians to send an international peacekeeping force to Ukraine, Ushakov said it “wasn’t discussed on a practical level.” Earlier on Friday, Valeriy […]
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ST. PETERSBURG. April 24 (Interfax) – The Kyiv authorities are not disarming radicals but are legalizing them, contrary to the agreements signed recently in Geneva, Russian President Vladimir Putin said. “We took part in the meeting in Geneva and signed certain agreements there, which stipulate that people need to be disarmed on both sides, administrative buildings vacated, and so on. […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – April 21, 2014) Only one in eight Russians think that President Vladimir Putin represents the interests of “ordinary people” in the country, a recent poll showed, even though a vast majority have said that they “trust” their leader. The most popular choice in a question that allowed for multiple answers was that Putin represented the […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – April 22, 2014) President Vladimir Putin has signed into law a bill that requires foreigners to prove their ability to speak Russian while also giving his seal of approval to a separate bill that will make it easier to grant citizenship to Russian-speakers in former Soviet states. The new immigration rules for foreign citizens, published […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – John Freedman – April 21, 2014) Did this actually happen or am I imagining it? It’s no big event or turning point, that is for sure. But it did feel for a moment last week that the temperature of the flames burning around us dipped just a little. In recent times we have grown accustomed […]
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(Eurasia Daily Monitor: Volume 11, Issue 73 – Pavel Felgenhauer – Jamestown Foundation – jamestown.org – April 17, 2014) The Ukrainian crisis and the “reunification” of Crimea with the rest of Russia dominated President Vladimir Putin’s almost four-hour-long televised national phone-in-an annual PR performance that had been previously dominated by discussion of pensions, utility payments, inflation, wages and other internal “bread […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Ivan Nechepurenko – April 17, 2014) Breaking his tradition of publicly tongue-lashing opponents at home and abroad, President Vladimir Putin assumed a non-predatory stance Thursday to diffuse fears of escalation of the ongoing rift with the West over the Ukraine crisis during his annual live call-in show broadcast on national television and online. “I believe […]
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[“Is Vladimir Putin Another Adolf Hitler?” – Forbes – Paul Johnson – May 5, 2014] Forbes recalls the aggressive expansion of the Third Reich and draws parallels with the ideology and policies of today’s Putin-led Kremlin. … Had the Allies stopped Hitler at the beginning, when he was remilitarizing the Rhineland, he’d have been overthrown and World War II avoided. But the only one […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, April 17, 2014) Given the Kremlin’s promotion of traditional family values and Russian interest in all things Putin, a distant relative of the Kremlin leader has put out a second edition of his genealogy of the family, the presentation of which in Moscow this week speaks volumes about Vladimir Putin’s real family […]
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MOSCOW, April 17 (RIA Novosti) – Russia and Ukraine have grounds for dialogue, Russian political scientists said after analyzing President Vladimir Putin’s comments during a live question and answer session with the public on Thursday. “These words give hope that dialogue is still possible,” Alexei Makarkin, an analyst and deputy director at the Center for Political Technologies in Moscow said. […]
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MOSCOW. April 17 (Interfax) – Russian President Vladimir Putin said U.S. President Barack Obama would save him if he was drowning because he is a decent and courageous person. When asked by six-year-old Albina, whether Obama would save him if he was drowning, Putin said: “I can not say that we have some special personal relations with the U.S. president. […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, April 15, 2014) Vladimir Putin, in his effort to save his rule by intervening militarily in Ukraine, is pushing the world not toward a new cold war as many say but rather to something far worse and more dangerous, one in which one or another side may in fact view the use […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, April 14, 2014) The Kremlin’s insistence that ethnic Russians and Russian speakers in southeastern Ukraine are acting on their own rather than under the direction of Moscow as seems to be the case could blow up in Vladimir Putin’s face by leading Russians in Russian regions to ask the same questions about […]
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US Department of State Russian Fiction the Sequel: 10 More False Claims About Ukraine Fact Sheet Office of the Spokesperson Washington, DC April 13, 2014 “No amount of propaganda can make right something that the world knows is wrong.” – President Obama, March 26 Russia continues to spin a false and dangerous narrative to justify its illegal actions in Ukraine. […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, April 11, 2014) Despite Moscow’s protestations that it wants a resolution in Ukraine, Yevgeny Kiselyev says, Vladimir Putin in fact doesn’t need or want “stabilization” there anytime soon and that is in fact pursuing a policy based on the Leninist principle that “the worse things are [in Ukraine], the better [for the […]
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(RFE/RL – rferl.org – Robert Coalson – April 10, 2014) In recent weeks, the Russian government has articulated what might be called the Putin Doctrine, a blanket assertion that Moscow has the right and the obligation to protect Russians anywhere in the world. Speaking on Russian television last month, Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for President Vladimir Putin, said that “Russia is the country on which […]
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(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Daria Marchak and Jake Rudnitsky – April 10, 2014) Ukraine is reducing gas imports and halting payments for natural gas imports from Russia over price “aggression” before the world’s biggest exporter of the fuel cuts supplies, raising the risk of disrupted flows to Europe. Ukraine won’t buy gas to pump into underground storage for the heating […]
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NOVO-OGARYOVO. April 9 (Interfax) – It is hoped that the current Ukrainian authorities will not take any irreparable actions, Russian President Vladimir Putin said. “I hope that those temporarily carrying out the duties [of Ukrainian authorities] will not do anything that can not be corrected,” Putin said at a meeting on energy dialog with Ukraine.
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, April 9, 2014) A major reason the crisis in Ukraine is now so dangerous, Georgy Mirsky says, is that “neither [Russian President Vladimir] Putin nor [US President Barack] Obama wants to go into history as the politician who ‘lost’ Ukraine, although [that country] does not belong to either the one or the […]
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(Interfax – April 8, 2014) Vladimir Putin would win a convincing victory were presidential elections to be held next Sunday, the Levada center pollster told Interfax. Forty-six percent of respondents and 77 percent of those who have made up their minds already would vote for Putin, it said. The poll was conducted on March 21 to 24 in 130 urban […]
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(Kremlin.ru – April 7, 2014) Vladimir Putin took part in an expanded meeting of the Federal Security Service board. The meeting reviewed the results of the FSB’s activities in 2013 and set the priorities for 2014. —– PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA VLADIMIR PUTIN: Good afternoon, At this expanded meeting today, we will discuss the Federal Security Service’s results over the recent […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Peter Spinella – April 7, 2014) President Vladimir Putin is expected to hold his annual call-in show on April 17, Russian media reports said Monday. The question-and-answer session will be broadcast on national television and radio stations and is expected to cover “Crimea, the international situation, the domestic economy and the ruble,” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov […]
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MOSCOW, April 7 (RIA Novosti) – Russian President Vladimir Putin said Monday the country will not allow the activities of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to be used toward destructive ends as has recently happened in Ukraine. “Modern Russian legislation creates all of the conditions for the transparent and free activity of non-governmental social organizations, but we will never allow them to […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, April 7, 2014) The only option Vladimir Putin has if he is to advance his policies in Ukraine is to use force because the majority of Ukrainians in every region of that country do not support him, do not believe what he says, and do not want what he wants, according to […]
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(Business New Europe – bne.eu – Ben Aris in Moscow, editor-in-chief – March 31, 2014) When he first assumed power in 2000, the press corps spent the first six months asking the same question: “Who is Vladimir Putin?” At first the media speculated he was merely a puppet of the oligarchs because he had clearly been handpicked by oligarch Roman […]
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(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Mark Silva – April 4, 2014) President Vladimir Putin, left, greets President Barack Obama during an official welcome of G20 heads of state and government, heads of invited states and international organizations at the G20 summit in St. Petersburg on Sept. 5, 2013. Photographer: Guneev Sergey/Host Photo Agency via Getty Images As international tension was rising […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Oleg Sukhov – April 3, 2014) One of President Vladimir Putin’s relatives, Roman Putin, has spoken out against alleged corruption at Russian Railways, a state company headed by one of the president’s closest allies. The criticism by Roman Putin, who has been accused by some of capitalizing on the president’s reputation by founding the Putin […]
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NOVO-OGARYOVO. April 1 (Interfax) – President Vladimir Putin said that the issue of Crimean Tatars’ rehabilitation would be given due attention and that he could meet with activists of Crimea’s Tatar community. Earlier, President of Tatarstan Rustam Minnikhanov, urged Putin to have the Law on the Rehabilitation of the Peoples that Suffered from Political Reprisals applied to the Crimean Tatars. […]
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(Window on Eurasia – Paul Goble – Staunton, March 29, 2014) Many have drawn parallels between what Vladimir Putin is doing and how the West is reacting with the Cold War or with the appeasement policies of Munich. But now that Putin has carried out the Crimean Anschluss, a far better analogy for today may be to “the phony war” […]
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