Historian Anne Applebaum Details Stalin’s War Against Ukraine: ’I Believe It Was Genocide’
The true number of famine victims has been difficult to calculate, Anne Applebaum says, because the Soviet system tried to cover up the famine immediately after it happened. …read more Source: Kharkiv Human Rights Protection...
Sentence to silence Crimean Tatar leader Ilmi Umerov on trial for words he didn’t utter
Russia’s trial on openly falsified charges of Crimean Tatar leader Ilmi Umerov has reached its squalid end, with the real aim likely to be reflected in a ban on public activities, accompanying the demanded suspended sentence. No reversion to rule of law is anticipated, although the verdict is due a day after a UN monitoring report expressed...
It’s time to reboot the Eastern Partnership
Remember the Eastern Partnership? Launched in a flurry of ambiguous optimism in 2009, the European Union’s attempt to reach out to Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine still staggers on, with a summit in Brussels on 24 November as the next point on a now somewhat threadbare calendar. In the run-up to that came a...
Kleptocracy Daily: September 26, 2017
Russia probe: Those funding Trump’s legal team include “a billionaire investor, a property developer seeking U.S. government visas and a Ukrainian-born American who has made billions of dollars doing business with Russian oligarchs.” (WSJ) Australia has begun returning allegedly stolen cash to China under a joint working group established...
Kadyrov’s Myanmar offensive and its consequences
Politics The protests by Russia’s Muslim population against the oppression of their brothers in faith in Myanmar are somewhat reminiscent of Soviet demonstrations against the wars in Vietnam or Grenada – the form and the essence do not coincide. Judging by their form, the protests are devoted to international problems. When one looks at the...
Five Things to Know About the Zapad-2017 Military Exercise
25 September 2017 Mathieu Boulègue TwitterLinkedIn Research Fellow, Russia and Eurasia Programme As Russian forces leave Belarus, what are the main lessons to draw from the Zapad-2017 drills? Servicemen take part in the joint Russian-Belarusian military exercises Zapad-2017. Photo by Sergei Gapon/AFP/Getty Images Following seven days of...
The great decommunisation. Ukraine’s wartime historical policy
The war with Russia which began in 2014 has triggered serious changes in the way history is thought about by the Ukrainian public, especially in opinion-forming circles. The liberal reflection critical about the nationalist tradition initiated somewhat earlier has been rejected since wartime requires heroic narratives above all. …read more...
Crimea: Crimean Tatar Leader Convicted on Spurious Charges
(Kyiv) – A Russian court in Crimea on September 27, 2017, convicted a prominent Crimean Tatar leader on bogus separatism charges following an unfair trial, Human Rights Watch said today. The court imposed a two-year prison sentence and banned Ilmi Umerov, the Crimean Tatar leader, from involvement in public activities, which includes contact with...
The Atlantic Council: ‘Debates’ Between People Who Hate Russia & People Who Really Hate Russia
Welcome to the Atlantic Council. A think tank which isn’t given to introspection and which ultimately amounts to NATO’s propaganda arm. This week, I endured an Atlantic Council echo-chamber to spare you the bother. The list of lobbyists retained by the club (who prefer to call each other ‘fellows’) reads like a veritable...
September 26th, 2017
CHINA China Blocks WhatsApp Messages The Daily Telegraph Chinese authorities appear to have severely disrupted the WhatsApp messaging app in the latest step to tighten censorship as they prepare for a major Communist Party congress next month. Users in China have reported widespread disruptions in recent days to the Facebook-owned service, which...
