Tag Archives: putin

NY Dispatches: The shape of the constitution

Posted on February 17, 2020 by

Friday was going to be the (extended) deadline for presenting amendments to Vladimir Putin’s constitutional reform bill that the State Duma adopted in the first reading in January. Pavel Krasheninnikov, the co-chair of the constitutional reform working group however announced … Continue reading →

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NY Dispatches: What we know and what we don’t

Posted on January 27, 2020 by

The past two weeks have seen seemingly transformative political developments happen at a breathtaking speed in Russia. Vladimir Putin proposed a series of constitutional reforms. In a little more than a week those reforms were spelled out in a draft … Continue reading →

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Putin’s endgame

Posted on January 16, 2020 by

Vladimir Putin unveiled a set of sweeping constitutional amendments, Dmitry Medvedev’s government resigned, Russia’s new prime minister is a little-known tax official and Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov is “temporarily incapacitated”. And all of this happened within a couple of hours. … Continue reading →

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NY Dispatches: 2020 – plans and reality

Posted on January 10, 2020 by

According to an old adage, a political analyst is a person who is able to give a coherent prediction of what is going to happen in six months’ time, and also able to explain coherently, in six months’ time, why … Continue reading →

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United they stand

Posted on December 22, 2019 by

The ruling United Russia’s congress in November seemed to confirm that Russia’s leaders intend to rely on the party in the early 2020s as Vladimir Putin’s fourth presidential term draws to an end. This was significant because recent years have … Continue reading →

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NY Dispatches: the issue of waste management

Posted on December 11, 2019 by

On Sunday thousands protested in Kotlas, a town of only 60 thousand in Russia’s Northern Arkhangelsk oblast against a landfill near the Shies station between Arkhangelsk and the Komi Republic, which is planned to absorb 46 million tons of waste … Continue reading →

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Alexander the Reluctant

Posted on November 21, 2019 by

Belarus’s parliamentary election last week got barely any attention, even though the vote was a rehearsal for next year’s presidential election, in which Alexander Lukashenko, in power since 1994, will run for a sixth term. This coming election may tell … Continue reading →

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