Staunton, VA, July 15, 2016 - The flood of news stories from a country as large, diverse and strange as the Russian Federation often appears to be is far too large for anyone to keep up with. But there needs to be a way to mark those which can’t be discussed in detail but which are too indicative of broader developments to ignore.
Consequently, Windows on Eurasia presents a selection of 13 of these other and typically neglected stories at the end of each week. This is the 40th such compilation. It is only suggestive and far from complete – indeed, once again, one could have put out such a listing every day -- but perhaps one or more of these stories will prove of broader interest.
1.
How Many Female Relatives Does Putin Have? Kremlin Says Russia Could Have a Woman President. With the election of ever more women to the top positions in Western countries, the Kremlin has allowed that a woman could at some point be elected president of the Russian Federation. That naturally provokes the question:
how many female relatives does Vladimir Putin have?
9.
Moscow Creating National Parks and Destroying Native Peoples. By
creating national parks in the areas where they traditionally live, native peoples in Siberia and the Russian Far East say, the Russian government has put their survival at risk, even as it allows oil and gas firms to exploit deposits on those territories. The Aleuts have become the latest group to appeal to Vladimir Putin to stop this process.
10.
Offensive Ignorance Increasingly a Way of Life in Putin’s Russia. The governor of Kaliningrad asks “
where are the states of Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia”? Russian school children are now using textbooks which assert that
Jerusalem was a Russian city until 1250, and some commentators, updating Stalin-era claims that Russians invented baseball, now say that
King Kong had Russian ancestors – three recent examples of offensive ignorance at a time of widespread duplicity by Russian officials and the media.
12.
Can Lavrov’s Daughter Still Speak Russian? At a time when the Kremlin routinely equates Russian speakers with Russians, some in Russia and elsewhere are asking whether the children of members of the Putin elite who study abroad for long periods are retaining their Russian language and hence their “Russianness.” The latest of those about whose language knowledge questions have been raised is the daughter of Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov who, it is said,
doesn’t speak the language very well.
And another six from countries in Russia’s neighborhood:
1.
Moscow Using Georgian Criminals Against Ukraine. In the latest iteration of the old Soviet joke that “friendship of the peoples” means that members of various nationalities will get together to beat up representatives of another, Moscow is
said to be using figures from the Georgian criminal underground to destabilize the situation in parts of Ukraine.
3.
‘After Lukashenka, There’ll Be Another Lukashenka.’ Some analysts say that even when Alyaksandr Lukashenka passes from the scene,
he will be replaced by someone very much like him, a conclusion that won’t make many in Belarus or in Moscow entirely happy but that may reduce interest in the latter about working to displace him.