... of State
saw
the recent developments on the peninsula with his own eyes and made a number of comments praising the efforts of Russian leaders and locals. The visit gave the impression of complete understanding: the parties agreed that the return of Crimea to Russia was an act of
historical justice
and that the rationale behind the sanctions was hardly productive; the member of the French parliament also
praised
the insightful decision of the local authorities to hold a referendum ensuring that Crimea’s ...
... Russia’s Southern Flank”, RIAC Blog, December 18, 2014. /en/blogs/igor_delanoe/?id_4=1588
[3] The B-261 Novorossiysk and the B-237 Rostov-Na-Donu. For a complete picture of the modernization plan of the Black Sea Fleet, read Igor Delanoe, “Russia’s Plans for Crimea: the Black Sea Fleet”, RIAC Blog, July 23, 2014. /en/blogs/igor_delanoe/?id_4=1305
[4] “Top NATO general: Russians starting to build air defense bubble over Syria”, The Washington Post, September 29, 2015.
[5] SIPRI Military Expenditures ...
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,...
The US space agency has forked out $490m for six seats for its astronauts to get to the ISS on board one of the Russian Federal Space Agency's (Roscosmos) Soyuz spacecraft. Nasa's space shuttles were stopped in 2011 as the organisation set ... ... with Roscosmos at a cost of $490m – despite the tense political relationship between the two nations - the invasion of Crimea in 2014 led to a ban on Nasa/Roscosmos collaborations. Nasa administrator Charles Bolden has written a letter to US Congress ...
... Republicans, which routinely send emissaries to countries that are of interest for whatever reason.
All this notwithstanding, there is no shortage of arguments that could reduce the international significance of the French politicians’ visit to Crimea. Russian experts have
described
the head of the delegation, Thierry Mariani, as a political heavyweight. But this can be seen as somewhat of an exaggeration. In French politics, it is not hard to find other figures that, just like Mariani, have been elected ...
... says: “The new Ukrainian government was largely disabled by the hybrid war, and thus was unable to prevent the Russian annexation of Crimea” (p. 12). According to the author, having started a hybrid war against Ukraine before decision to accept Crimea, Russia was so successful that by the time the military and political steps associated with its assimilation of the peninsula began Kiev had lost the possibility of defending its state sovereignty and integrity. If that is a true interpretation of Rácz’s ...
... growth resumed in 2010 at about 5% a year, but in 2012 froze at 0.3%
[3]
. The situation in the country has become critical, and the beginning of military operations in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions coupled with Crimea’s reunification with Russia only exacerbated it.
Crimea and Donbass: The price paid
In purely economic terms, the impact of Crimea’s secession from Ukraine has been relatively insignificant, and is estimated at about 3.8% of total GDP
[4]
. The region was not known for having a high standard ...
... baptized Rus and bolstered its statehood (the key features attributed to him by history textbooks), Grand Prince Vladimir has recently emerged as a huge stumbling block for Russian and Ukrainian politicians.
The Tale of Grand Prince Vladimir Legitimizing Crimea inside Russia
The rule of Grand Prince Vladimir came to the forefront of the political debate in Russia after President Putin's address to the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation in December 2014. Below is the key quotation related to the analysis of ...
The one-year anniversary of the takeover of Crimea sparked renewed debate over what that means for Russia's history. Perhaps the main result is that it put a definitive end to the history of the Soviet state.
The Crimea question has been around since 1991, when the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus met at Belovezhskaya Pushcha in Belarus to abolish ...
America seems reluctant in accepting the fairly benign fact that countries do not like to be dictated to and thus misses opportunities for creating new dialogues. This is especially prominent in explaining the poor relationship at the moment with Russia. There seems to be an element of purposeful animosity in the way Russia is viewed, analyzed, and engaged, especially at the so-called expert level and most prominently within the now Republican-controlled United States Congress. Perhaps one of ...
