EDITORIAL: What can Russia Do About it?

EDITORIAL

What can Russia Do About it?

Scholar Paul Goble points to an important bit of analysis by Valery Bondarenko on the Imperia website which highlights Russia’s foreign-policy impotence even in its near abroad.  What can Russia really do, Bondarenko asks, to rein in the actions of countries like Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova if they choose to go their own way, independent of Russia?

Next to nothing, he answers.

SPECIAL EXTRA: Moldova turns to the West

In yet another devastating blow to Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy, the pro-Russia government of Moldova has been repudiated in the most recent parliamentary election, with Moldovan voters turning 53-48 to the pro-West democracy parties.  The plan of the winning majority is clear:  Reject Russia, embrace the EU and democracy.  Go Moldova! Go Freedom!  We stand in awe.

EDITORIAL: Frolov Plumbs new Depths

EDITORIAL

Frolov Plumbs new Depths

Two weeks ago, the streets of Moldova exploded in flames.  Thousands of outraged Moldovans took to the streets directly flouting the authority of the Communist regime and sending out echoes of the street protests in Ukraine that marked the famous “orange revolution” that, for the clan of KGB spies that populates the Moscow Kremlin, were terrifying.  Russia has been desperately seeking to control the Moldovan state and wedge free a strip of territory along its eastern border in manner very similar to what it tried in Georgia with Abkhazia and Ossetia, with the obvious ultimate goal of resabsorbing the entire country.

The Putin regime reacted with frenzy and panic. Russia’s Foreign Minister wildly accused the protesters of being “pogrom-makers” and state-controlled television portrayed them breathlessly and continuously as criminals and agents of foreign countries.

“The Moscow authorities are afraid of spontaneous mass protests in the regions…and for this reason Russian television is showing what is happening in an exclusively negative light,” said Russian political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin.   Yevgeny Volk of the Heritage Foundation agreed:  “If the economic situation in Russia deteriorates, such a rebellion could become really possible. Young people will suffer the most from the economic collapse… and this is what the authorities are most afraid of. It’s a serious challenge for the leadership.”

But you’d never know about any of this by reading the crazed rantings of Kremlin stooge Vladimir Frolov in his most recent Moscow Times column.

EDITORIAL: Red Moldova, Red-faced Russia

Anti-communist protesters light a bonfire on the steps of their parliament in Moldova

EDITORIAL

Red Moldova, Red-faced Russia

Last Sunday, voters in Moldova returned the Communist Party to power in a massive landslide.  Two days later, Moldova’s streets exploded in violence, organized on Twitter.

Russia, it’s policy in shambles, is panicking and screeching hysterically about “foreign interference.”

Kozlovsky on Moldova

Oleg Kozlovsky, leader of the Oborona protest movement, writing on the Huffington Post:

Some countries are just more lucky than others. Moldova wasn’t lucky enough to be known in America or Western Europe. Indeed, it’s a small East-European ex-Soviet country, poorest on the continent, and there’s little of interest about it. Except maybe for the fact that Moldova is the only place in the world where Communists keep winning West-approved elections. So they did, or claim to have done, at general elections last Sunday.