Reprinted from Facebook (2018/02/15): From what I am observing on Twitter, things are rapidly spiraling beyond our usual frames of reference so far as Ukraine is concerned. Yanukovych, nowhere to be seen, is fast becoming something of an irrelevance so far as both sides are concerned. The new government is being formed without his input, and he
Here is a radio discussion on VoR I did on Sunday with Amos Gelb and Robert Bridge on the western media’s coverage of the Sochi Olympics. http://voiceofrussia.com/uk/news/2014_02_17/Western-media-coverage-of-Sochi-The-worst-form-of-poor-sportsmanship-9458/ Please note that the written summary provided gives only a fraction of the discussion. Anyone wanting to follow the whole discussion will need to listen to it. Please
In my last Sitrep I said that the West was trying to pull off a coup in Ukraine against the duly elected President. We now have very strong evidence in the shape of an intercepted phone call between Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt. They talk about how
Got this in the mail from Jamestown. My response. Not that I expect much of an answer. What a load of crap! Saakashvili, the as-yet-unindicted-former,-but-now-despised,-boss-of-Georgia (saved and given a comfortable retirement in the USA. His creator.) is going to feed us more lies. Wah hoo! I so want to be there to hear him emit
“Corruption across EU ‘breathtaking’ – EU Commission” says a headline in the BBC. The Commissioner responsible for the report said that she believed the cost of corruption was “probably much higher” than the €120 billion (US$162 billion) the report estimates. And indeed that is probably correct because corruption within EU organs themselves was not included.
Do the opposition leaders retain control over the Maidan? Would it be wise for Yanukovych to finally crack down? What are Western leaders trying to accomplish by meeting the opposition leaders in Munich?
Discuss all things Euromaidan here and vote in the poll (tick as many options as you like). My own opinion is “Protests die down as Yanukovych reasserts control,” for reasons that I will expound upon in a forthcoming post. But I have made many of the arguments already on my Twitter feed where I, like
I have no idea what possessed Putin. Did he think that it would spare him Western criticism in the run-up to Sochi? Of course not. Khodorkovsky was on the back-burner. LGBT rights are West’s stick du jour to beat up on Russia. Did he think it would improve the legal and investment climate? I sure
Opposotionist Boris Nemtsov arrested in Moscow for showing his support for Kiev mob actions, as reported by Moskovsky Komsomolets’ Natalia Rozhkova, December 2, 2013. Nemtsov shamefacedly arrested in Moscow city centre at a demonstration in support of the Ukraine Activists from the Republican Party of Russia “Parnas” taken to local police station for showing their
Here it is: From RT: ‘No going back for Yanukovich now’ If the Ukrainian president goes back on the deal with the EU, he’ll disappoint his supporters and he’s obviously not going to regain the support of those who are protesting, author and blogger Anatoly Karlin told RT. RT:President Yanukovich is being accused of betraying
Reprinted from Facebook (2018/02/15): The reason the police were “barely in control” is that Yanukovych demoralized them by criticizing them for breaking up yesterday’s Maidan, in a bid to appease protesters who will not be appeased. Apparently, the ProFFesor believes balancing between two stools is a good strategy for Ukrainian domestic politics too. What other explanation can
“Imperialist Putin “Steals” Ukraine”… If only all those hysterical newspaper articles were true! In reality, the only thing he stole was Ukraine’s credit card debt. He’s no idiot, of course, and is in no rush to pay it off. The drama certainly hasn’t ended. But a geopolitical pivot on the model of Khmelnitsky’s 1654 decision this
In Komsomolskaya Pravda, Andrei Ryabtsev notes a close correlation between average housing prices and Navalny’s vote share in Moscow’s districts – and tries to find out why that might be the case. Why did they vote for Navalny in the centre, and for Sobyanin in the dormitory suburbs? The election results for Moscow’s mayor have
1. The CEC results Here they are. The turnout was 32%. Sergey Sobyanin – 51.37% Alexei Navalny – 27.24% Ivan Melnikov – 10.69% Sergey Mitrokhin – 3.51% Mikhail Degtyaryov – 2.86% Nikolai Levichev – 2.79% Invalid ballots – 1.53% 2. Pre-elections opinion polls: Navalny’s support – among those who indicated a clear preference for one candidate or another – rose from
In this article by Alexey Stepanov from Komsomolskaya Pravda, recent events and continued concern over the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi demonstrate that terrorism still afflicts Russian territory Putin: Several Countries Are Deliberately Destabilizing the Situation in the Northern Caucasus The President of the Russian Federation urged to “more roughly stop such attempts and to