Putin, Gaza and the siege of Leningrad

by admin Comment Closed
For all those who are interested in the evolving position of Russia regarding the most recent developments in the 2023 Gaza war, below is an (almost) literal translation of positions publicly expressed by Putin on this matter. The link to the original video is here. The formulations employed show a degree of continuity with the late Soviet policy in essentials but not in detail. Israel and Zionism are not presented as a settler-colonialist enterprise, for example,  but as a side with legitimate and justifiable claims. The commitment is a very ‘general-purpose’ rather unspecific one to the creation of the independent Palestinian state. There is a degree of grievance towards the one-sided American mediation and abandonment of the ‘Quartet’ effort.  In particular, the comparison of the ‘siege of Gaza’ to the siege of Leningrad during the Second World War is not meant to draw ‘Israel-Nazis’ parallel but to hint at the devastating, for civilians, consequences of such a measure. All, or almost...
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HOW TO UNDERSTAND RUSSIA, AND HOW NOT TO

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Autocracy it isHaving gone through a period of radical political transformation and economic crises Russia is back as a world player. It re-emerged gradually, but its recent direct involvement in Syria, its sightings within the context of the American election and finally its 2014-2022 ‘Ukrainian campaign’ brought it back to the Westerners’ attention. Russia, in the eyes of an average Westerner, is an exotic and somewhat incomprehensible place. Russian bears, Russian dolls, Russian oligarchs, Russian brides, Russian vodka, Russian baths. A soft form of ‘Orientalism’, if you ask me. ‘Natasha from Russia’ will tell you everything you need to know about that… A lot has been written on Russia by serious scholars since the collapse of communism and the access to the archival materials that followed. However, the area of Russian studies in the Western academia never stagnated. Robert Conquest, Robert Service, Richard Pipes, Orlando Figes published maybe 50 books on the Soviet period of Russian history, all before 1990. There...
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DO SANCTIONS AGAINST RUSSIA WORK? A REPORT FROM THE NATURAL EXPERIMENT AND LESSONS FOR ISRAEL AND ISRAEL’S DETRACTORS

by admin Comment Closed
Do Western sanctions against Russia work? Such was the question asked by the ‘Economist’ recently. Those sanctions, yes, ‘like none the world has seen’. Well, how does one know that something works, in principle?  In scientific fields, it is rather rigidly understood: something ‘works’ when it achieves the hoped result, and the result is confirmed by comparing the ‘before-policy’ situation to ‘after-policy situation’, and possible alternative explanations that could have generated the result are ruled out definitively. The comparison, in scientific fields, should be based on numerical indicators, not feelings. Presumably, Western sanctions were imposed to end the war against Ukraine. And, presumably, the causal mechanism, if it was ever specified by those who conceived the sanctions, would look something like this: sanctions will be imposed, prices would go up, hopefully scarcity would develop too, Russian population will suffer, it will then turn against Putin and depose him. That will end the war. Has it happened and, if not, how close...
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