Gordon M. Hahn Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent approach to the semi-crisis in Yekaterinburg was ‘Putin the balancer’ in action. Although I had written several pieces recently asking whether Putin might be losing his touch in, or perhaps even his desire to continue balancing Russia’s sundry political forces opposed, partially opposed, sometimes opposed, etc. to […]
by Gordon M. Hahn When I specialized in jihadism and Islamism in Russia and Eurasia, I wrote quite a bit about the Imarat Kavkaz (Caucasus Emirate) or IK based in Russia’s North Caucasus. In my last writings on the subject I traced the IK mujahedin’s exodus or hijra from the North Caucasus to Syria, and […]
ANNOUNCEMENT OF GORDON HAHN’S MOST RECENT MEDIA APPEARANCE Can Zelensky Heal the Deep Divisions in Ukraine Left Behind by Poroshenko? I was please to give an interview to the World Politics Review on the implications of the election of Volodomyr Zelenskii as president of Ukraine and the first signals between him and Russian President Vladimir […]
by Gordon M. Hahn UPDATE 2: Here is another update on the myth promoted in the West and Russian liberal circles that the regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin is actively rehabilitating the image of Soviet dictator Iosif Stalin as an ‘effective manager’ rather than simply letting a pluralism of opinions flourish while taking a […]
by Gordon M. Hahn The victory of television comedic actor and producer, President-elect Volodomyr Zelenskii, over the increasingly ultra-nationalist oligarch, outgoing President Petro Poroshenko, marked a rejection by a slim Ukrainian majority in the western regions of the oligarchic element in the Weimar Maidan oligarchic-ultranationalist hybrid regime. In the country’s southeast it represents a full […]
by Gordon M. Hahn In an earlier article I suggested that Russian President Vladimir Putin seemed to be losing his penchant to balance between soft and hard authoritarianism, between competing political groups (parties, ethnicities, etc.) and ideologies, between competing state oligarchic clans, and so on (https://gordonhahn.com/2018/09/10/is-putin-losing-his-balance/). Recent events only confirm the hypothesis. The ‘sistema‘ as […]
by Gordon M. Hahn NATO expansion has contributed to the causal matrix of two wars: the 2008 Georgian-South Ossetiyan/Russian Five-Day War and the ongoing Donbass civil war. The West’s April 2008 promise that both Georgia and Ukraine will become NATO members encouraged Georgian nationalism and Saakashvili’s war in South Ossetiya and consequently led to Georgia’s […]
