The Russian leader’s invasion is a both a pursuit of his Hitlerian obsession to rectify his nation’s humiliation, and a bet that the West’s decline is permanent.
country: Russia
Stay updated with comprehensive news on Russia from Worldcrunch. Discover insights on Russian politics, economic strategies, societal issues, and cultural landmarks with translations from top international sources. Highlights include Moscow, Russian history, and events like the Moscow International Film Festival.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine that began Thursday morning on multiple fronts was meant to quickly overrun the outnumbered defensive positions. Kyiv-based Livy Bereg reports that it hasn’t turned out that way.
Vladimir Putin’s claims that NATO threatens Russia’s security, and that the only way Russia will back down is if NATO promises never to admit Ukraine, is a bait and switch. His long-term dream is to erase the idea of a Ukrainian nation on the road to his wider tsarist conquests.
War is upon us. But many in the West have sleepwalked through two decades of rising tensions with Russia. The situation in Ukraine can only be understood in the context of Vladimir Putin’s view on Boris Yeltsin, NATO’s eastward expansion, wars in the Balkans and Iraq, and beyond.
Categories
Ukraine, A Guidebook For Our Survival
Faced with a massive invasion by its far more powerful neighbor, Ukrainians must be conscious of the stakes at play and the means that Vladimir Putin is prepared to employ.
Faced with a $32 billion drop in their wealth this year, Russian oligarchs are looking for assets to allow them to overcome sanctions that will increase with the invasion of Ukraine. Familiar with crises, they see bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as an escape from the hegemony of the dollar, and a way to diversify their holdings.
Moscow’s large-scale attack launched on Ukraine erases any lingering doubts about where Russia’s president wants to go. Vladimir Putin is taking back part of the Soviet empire and attacking the European post-War order. Europe and NATO must respond, by arming the eastern flank.
Exclusive: New details emerge of a would-be forced evacuation last week of pro-Russian civilians from the Donetsk and Luhansk territories that Vladimir Putin has used to justify Thursday’s invasion of Ukraine. Locals call the operation a “farce.”
Russia’s president is neither clearly right-wing nor left-wing. As his dubious allies around the world suggest, he simply hates Western liberal democracy and seeks to expand his personal power, at home and abroad, by sowing unrest and conflict.
The situation in eastern Ukraine is highly explosive. What will happen after the recognition of the self-proclaimed “People’s Republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk as independent states? Will Putin hunker down or double down? Instant analysis from German foreign policy thinkers on what happens next.
It’s not the presence of Western weapons that scares Moscow, it is the idea of freedom. And yet by threatening Ukrainians with invasion, his neighbors and rivals in the West rally around that same idea. Has the would-be strategic mastermind in the Kremlin finally painted himself into a corner? Unfortunately, that’s a dangerous place.
Over the past two months, as tensions rose in Ukraine, Russian has launched new missiles from the contested islands north of Japan. Kyiv and Tokyo have made it clear that they are firmly aligned with each other and with Washington. Moscow’s eastern flank opens major strategic questions, including China’s role.
The United States expects Germany to put a halt to the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in the event of a Russian invasion of Ukraine. But the Americans are not mentioning the fact that they themselves import plenty of oil from Russia.
Categories
Welcome To The Age Of Instability
As Russia and China push their way to the top of the power heap, and the United States balks at playing global police force, expect fundamental changes to accepted norms governing international affairs.
A resurgent, ambitious Russia has taken the West by surprise, just when the United States was pivoting and bracing itself to face down China.
Russia’s role in in Iranian affairs goes to the highest levels of its military and security structures. But will anyone in Iran dare question Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, in spite of the grave risks to the country’s national security?
As with Ukraine and Belarus, Kazakhstan is falling under the grip of Moscow as a response to disorder and threats to align with the West.
Gone are sweet Soviet wines, forgotten is the “dry law” of Gorbachev, Russian viticulture is now reborn.
Lockdowns can be justified on an ethical basis to achieve an important public health benefit, even though they restrict individual freedoms. Whether selective lockdowns are justified, though, depends on what they are intended to achieve.
Russia has decided to cut off relations with the Western military alliance. But Moscow says it was NATO who really wanted the break based on its own internal rationale.
Fishing nets, industry and other human-caused dumping are poisoning Russia’s Lake Baikal, the world’s largest, deepest (and oldest) lake. Bigger than all the North American Great Lakes combined, it’s at risk after 25 million years of life.
Russian sushi delivery Yobidoyobi removed an advertisement with a Black man and apologized for offending the Russian nation, while a grocery chain was attacked for featuring an LGBTQ couple.
The prices of oil, copper and aluminum are all on the rise, and on paper at least, that’s great news for Russia. Leading economists, nevertheless, predict stagnation, and say Putin’s system is to blame.
The Russian president’s article on the 80th anniversary of Nazi Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union can be read on multiple levels. But one thing is sure, his mind is fixed on the future.
In Moscow daily Kommersant, a long and fiery response from Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to the U.S. and European tactics during and after this month’s Putin-Biden summit.
BERLIN — It was late May, as 10,000 spectators arrived at Barthélemy Boganda Stadium in Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic, for a special film premiere. There was a red carpet for the VIPs arriving for the film “Tourist” — a feature that glorifies the use of Russian mercenaries, who heroically defend the […]
In a recent government meeting, the Russian strongman once again showed off his trademark flare for political theater, promising, among other things, to leave his foreign foes toothless.
Busted for hanging anti-government posters, 15-year-old Nikita has been jailed for almost a year on charges of ‘terrorism,’ and has yet to even go to trial.
London is taking a hardline against Moscow since Trump’s departure left Putin increasingly isolated.
In order to circumvent French and German mediation, the Kremlin is leaking secrets to the press as a defacto policy of stalling in its seven-year-long conflict with Ukraine.
Moscow and Washington are attempting to work out how to communicate with each other after Joe Biden insulted Vladimir Putin.
Russia may not be heading toward a full-blown revolution, at least not yet. But the current wave of protests shouldn’t be dismissed either.
Lockdowns, travel restrictions and the shift toward remote working have combined to cut global demand for oil. Moscow hopes it’s all just a passing trend. But is that really the safest bet?
Political chaos in Kyrgyzstan, revolution in Belarus, war in Nagorno-Karabakh: three decades after the collapse of the USSR, Vladimir Putin’s “near abroad” is currently marred by instability.
BERLIN — Over the past two weeks, since the allegations of election rigging in Belarus, there have been calls for Germany to open a dialogue with Russia. As if the country with the world’s largest nuclear arsenal and a permanent seat in the UN Security Council is nothing more than a wayward child that Germany […]
The imposition of quarantine and self-isolation has hit migrant workers hardest of all. They have nothing to live on in Russia but have no way of returning home.
The OPEC-Russia oil spat that has provoked stock-market panic may prove the last straw for a world economy on the verge of another recession.
A closer look at the iconic photo of the three Allied leaders gathered to bring an end to World War II, and shape the map of the coming Cold War.
-OpEd- MOSCOW — Despite the predictions before this past week’s NATO summit of a major split in the alliance, and some awkward moments among its respective leaders, the meeting itself concluded without any real substantive complications. Even traditional anti-globalist clashes we’ve come to expect from these kinds of gatherings were absent. As for Russia, it […]
-Analysis- MOSCOW — The USA betrayed the Kurds. This was the blunt interpretation from Dmitry Peskov, press secretary to Russian President Vladimir Putin, following the Turkey-Russia agreement on northeast Syria signed earlier this week in Sochi. The Kurds have been the Americans’ most loyal allies in Syria, yet Washington abandoned them. Now Kurdish military units […]