My Russian friends used to annoy me when they insisted I could not understand Russia if I knew only Moscow and St. Petersburg. So I began to visit other Russian cities and surrounding countryside--Perm, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, Izhevsk, Chelyabinsk, Kazan, Ufa, Krasnodar, Vladimir-Suzdal, Tuapse. My conclusion? My friends were right. These cities are not Moscow or St. Petersburg. But then, Oklahoma City, Provo Utah, Flint Michigan, and Columbus Ohio are not New York City or Washington D.C.
There...
Comment on Brian Whitmore's RFE/RL podcast, “The Daily Vertical: Return Of The Russian World> http://www.rferl.org/content/daily-vertical-return-of-russian-world/27340254.html
Not much understanding of Russkiy Mir or its role in Russian foreign policy in this podcast.
Russkiy Mir is often represented as some new, strange, perhaps threatening concept cooked up in the Russian Foreign Ministry as part of a new Russian imperial project. Not so! Russkiy Mir existed long before even...
Ukraine's Increasing Polarization and the Western Challenge, by Eugene Chausovsky 11 March 2014 http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/ukraines-increasing-polarization-and-western-challenge#axzz38mfJD9Bl
George Friedman, The United States Has Unfinished Business in Ukraine and Iraq 24 June, 2014 http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/united-states-has-unfinished-business-ukraine-and-iraq#axzz38mfJD9Bl
Friedman and Chausovsky, along with many others, force the Ukrainian crisis excessively into a geopolitical...
