Russian Politics and Law, September 2011 Table of Contents

Volume 49 Number 5 / September-October 2011 of Russian Politics and Law is now available on the M.E. Sharpe web site at http://mesharpe.metapress.com. This issue contains: Ukraine After Yushchenko: Editor’s Introduction p.3 Dmitry Gorenburg Change, Transition, or Cycle: The Dynamics of Ukraine’s Political Regime in 2004-2010 p.8 Yuri Matsievski Post-Soviet Gravitation: On the Results of the Presidential Elections [...]

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Ukraine After Yushchenko: Editor’s Introduction

Over the last decade, Ukrainian politics has been characterized by its volatility. The Orange Revolution brought hope of a rapid democratization, although these hopes were soon dashed because of divisions among the governing coalition. Finally, in 2010, a population that was tired of the political instability elected Viktor Yanukovych as president. Although there were concerns [...]

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The strategic significance of the Sevastopol basing agreement

Pretty much all analysts are in agreement that the strategic value of the Black Sea Fleet is limited. This is due to factors that go beyond the age of the fleet and its limited warfighting capabilities, which were addressed in my last post. It is obvious that even if the most optimistic Russian projections for [...]

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The Future of the Sevastopol Russian Navy Base

The following article recently appeared in the Russian Analytical Digest.[1] Some of the research for this article was carried out under the auspices of CNA Strategic Studies. The recent election of Victor Yanukovich as president of Ukraine has brought the future status of Russia’s naval base in Sevastopol back to the forefront of Russian-Ukrainian bilateral [...]

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Stratfor’s expanding ignorance

Stratfor, the company that provides  ”global intelligence” to the world, seems to have completely lost its collective mind. It is currently in the middle of publishing a four part series on “Russia’s Expanding Influence.” (The reports are only accessible through the website to subscribers, though they are being reprinted in Johnson’s Russia List.) No author [...]

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Ukraine’s military in even worse shape than Russia’s

The Ukrainian military seems to be in complete disarray. I don’t regularly follow the Ukrainian military, so I apologize if the following is in some way incomplete or misleading. It is based on an article in the most recent issue of NVO. Once we get past the usual tendency of much of the Russian press to make [...]

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Russia in the Black Sea

In his recent article in Eurasia Daily Monitor, Vladimir Socor makes the case that Russia poses a significant threat in the Black Sea region. In the aftermath of last year’s war with Georgia and given continued hostile rhetoric against Ukraine, there is certainly a case to be made for Russia posing a threat to at [...]

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