Since the recent Russian Duma election, some members of the Russian opposition have tied themselves in knots with a discussion of whether electronic voting played a positive or negative role in the outcome. But such discussions completely...
Two high-resonance processes have been simultaneously unfolding in Europe in the last few weeks: the sharp increase in the prices on natural gas (see EDM, August 11) as well as the fierce contestation in the parliamentary elections in...
Had there not been massive falsification of the vote in the Russian Duma elections, Putin’s United Russia party would have won only 31 to 33 percent of the vote, not the nearly 50 percent the election commission reported, and would...
The voting in the Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics” (DPR, LPR) marked the first time that local residents—legally the citizens of Ukraine—voted in Russia’s elections as newly minted citizens...
From the standpoint of international law, these territories belong to Moldova, Georgia, and Ukraine, respectively; and their residents are technically citizens of those countries. From Russia’s standpoint, however, Crimea belongs to...
The Kremlin recognizes this, the London-based Russian analyst says; and that explains why its reaction has not been limited to hysterics but involves real “panic” as “the most horrible thing for any authoritarian and...
Mass passportization Preparations for the State Duma Elections elections in the occupied part of the Donbas kicked off as early as the spring of 2021. At the time, Russia distributed under a simplified procedure some 630,000 Russian...
The 20-year-old ban on regional-level political parties, put in place when President Vladimir Putin came to power in 2001, actually turned Russian regions into political “clones” of one another (Region.Expert, September 3)....
There are at least two reasons why the Kremlin is working to avoid any transition of power from Vladimir Putin to someone else, Vitaly Shklyarov says, making all the discussion among the Russian commentariat and beyond “a waste of...
Many of Vladimir Putin’s supporters only ten days ago were expressing concern that he had not launched his campaign with the kind of speeches that would mobilize the population around his plans for the next six years. But such...
First stereotype: Ukrainians are very poor Some Europeans viewed Ukraine as extremely poor. Many Ukrainian refugees were surprised to learn that. “They perceived us almost like we are cave people who do not know and have not seen...
