By: ELENA HOLODNY Russia is experiencing another major brain drain. Although emigration trended downward from 1997 to 2011, there was a sudden spike in people leaving the country around the third term of President Vladimir Putin, according to Rosstat, Russia’s federal state statistics service. In 2012, almost 123,000 people left, and in 2013, more than […]
Putin’s elevation of Crimea to Russia’s Holy Land status baffles historians
President Vladimir Putin’s elevation of Crimea to the status of Russia’s Holy Land has prompted puzzlement and scorn from historians and commentators. Crimea for Russians is “like the Temple Mount in Jerusalem” for Muslims and Jews, Putin said, and would be regarded this way “from now on and forever.” Vladimir the Great was baptized in […]
Crumbling oil, Ruble makes Putin more dangerous: Expert
Russian President Vladimir Putin is being pushed “further into a corner” by falling oil prices, leaving him little option but to continue his aggression toward Ukraine and confrontation with the West, Eurasia Group President Ian Bremmer told CNBC on Tuesday. Putin has “gone all-in on an anti-U.S., must-keep-Ukraine nationalist engagement,” Bremmer said on “Squawk Box.” […]
Putin says he will not remain Russia’s president for life
Vladimir Putin says he will not remain Russia’s president for life, but will step down in line with the Russian constitution. Putin did not rule out running for a fourth term in 2018, which would extend his time in office through 2024. He said staying beyond that, however, would be “detrimental for the country.” Putin, […]
Moscow accuses West of seeking ‘regime change’ in Russia
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused the West on Saturday of trying to use sanctions imposed on Moscow in the Ukraine crisis to seek “regime change” in Russia. His comments stepped up Moscow’s war of words with the United States and the European Union in their worst diplomatic standoff since the Cold War ended. “As […]
Putin can’t afford a new Cold War , analysis
by Geoffrey Smith One of the axioms of global geopolitics is that a country can project power only as far as its economic might allows. There is good reason why the United States, by far the world’s largest economy, has been the dominant force in all things political and military for the past 60 years. […]
Russian nuclear talk is dangerous even if it may be a bluff
By:Gideon Rachman I never had much time for the Greenham Common women. As a mildly reactionary student of the 1980s, I regarded them – and their protest camp outside a British nuclear-weapons base – as silly and misguided. After all, decades of experience taught that nuclear deterrence worked. ThirtIy years on and the nuclear peace […]
Putin’s Loss of German Trust Seals the West’s Isolation of Russia
By: Simon Shuster Vladimir Putin has long had a soft spot for Germany. As an officer of the KGB in the late 1980s, he was stationed in the East German city of Dresden, where he developed a love of the language and, according to his memoirs, for the enormous steins of pilsner he drank at […]
Ukraine is ‘ready for total war’ with Russia says Petro Poroshenko
Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko claimed his country was “prepared for total war” as fighting continued around the pro-Russian rebel stronghold of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine. Fresh volleys of artillery fire were heard across many parts of Donetsk yesterday (local time), fuelling fears of a military build-up amongst rebel forces. The latest clashes come amid a […]
Putin walks out of G20 summit ‘to go to sleep’
Russian President Vladimir Putin has left the G20 summit in Brisbane early after he came under intense pressure from the West over Moscow’s alleged support for separatist fights in eastern Ukraine. The two-day summit, which gathered the leaders of the world’s largest economies in Brisbane, ended on Sunday evening, with Putin exiting the Australian city […]