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Sex, Politics, and Putin
If you’d like to know one of the reasons for Vladimir Putin’s phenomenal popularity in Russia, pick up Clark University Professor Valerie Sperling’s excellent new book, Sex, Politics, and Putin:...
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Ukraine’s Real and Unreal Elections
Ukraine recently witnessed one real election and one pseudo-election, but both may be turning points in the country’s history. The real election, to the Rada (Ukraine’s Parliament in Kyiv), took place...
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Kiev Cuts Subsidies to Separatist-Controlled Enclaves
Even as Putin’s proxies in the Donbas enclave are preparing a major assault on the Ukrainian army, they are also evidently panicking. And all thanks to the Ukrainian government’s recent wise decision...
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Does Ukraine’s Reform Plan Measure Up?
The reform plan of Ukraine’s coalition government-in-the-making has received mixed reviews from a team of Ukraine experts affiliated with the policy discussion website VoxUkraine. According to the...
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Time for a Hybrid War Against Russia?
Should Ukraine embark on a “hybrid war” against the Donbas enclave controlled by Russia and its proxies? One of Ukraine’s best military analysts, Yuri Butusov, the Russian-speaking editor of the...
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Who Will Save the People of the Donbas?
The answer, as is becoming increasingly obvious, is no one. Having ruined the economy of the Donbas enclave they occupy and caused a humanitarian catastrophe, neither Russia nor its terrorist proxies...
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Decoding Putin’s State of the Union Speech
Vladimir Putin’s December 4th “state of the union” address to Russia’s Federal Assembly once again explained why he annexed the Crimea. This time, his explanation reached new ideological heights, while...
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Ukraine's Pro-Reform Cabinet
Ukraine may finally have a cabinet able to introduce radical reforms. For the first time in independent Ukraine’s history, its ministers are young and Western. Youth matters, as it’s a measure of the...
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The Putin-Santa Letters, 2014
The Communist Party of St. Petersburg recently issued a statement to Russian children in which it warned them against the imperialist intentions of the CIA stooge, Santa Claus. (Seriously.)Fortunately,...
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Sex, Politics, and Putin
If you’d like to know one of the reasons for Vladimir Putin’s phenomenal popularity in Russia, pick up Clark University Professor Valerie Sperling’s excellent new book, Sex, Politics, and Putin:...
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'The Russian Army Has Huge Problems'
The following is an interview with Rajan Menon, a professor of political science at the City College of New York and a senior research scholar at the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace...
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What to Expect from Russia, Ukraine in 2015?
What should we expect from Ukraine and Russia in 2015?My guess is: more of the same. And that’s both the good news and the bad news.Ukraine will consolidate its democratic institutions, while Vladimir...
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Free Nadia Savchenko!
Vladimir Putin’s star political prisoner—Nadia Savchenko—is a 34-year-old Ukrainian helicopter pilot who served with a volunteer battalion in eastern Ukraine this summer and was taken prisoner by...
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Putin's War on Civilians Defines Terrorism
Russian President Vladimir Putin is rapidly cementing his reputation as a sponsor of terrorism in Ukraine. One could, with some stretch of the imagination, have qualified the earlier violence...
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The Case for Arming Ukraine
No one could make the case against supplying weapons to Ukraine better than my good friend Rajan Menon, a professor of political science at City College of New York. So, if his best shot falls short,...
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Trusting or Containing Putin?
Now that the first step toward a negotiated settlement of the Russo-Ukrainian war may have been reached in Minsk, the question of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s reliability as a negotiating partner...
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Why Russia Will Lose in Ukraine
So who’s winning the war in eastern Ukraine—Russia or Ukraine? The answer is not as simple as it might seem, because victory means different things for each side.A Russian victory could take one of two...
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Has Putin Lost Germany?
A recently released German documentary about Vladimir Putin—Mensch Putin!—paints a decidedly unflattering picture of Russia’s leader. He is, according to the film, a disturbingly insecure man with a...
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Ukrainian Jewish Leader on Russian Aggression
Josef Zissels is the chairman of the General Council of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress. He is sitting in the middle of a long table in the Ukrainian Restaurant in downtown New York. Before him is a...
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The Decline of the Russian Empire
The following is an interview with Rein Taagepera, professor emeritus of the University of Tartu, in Estonia, and the University of California, Irvine.***MOTYL: Professor Taagepera, you were the first...
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