This week’s new Russia blog is Moscow Tory, written by Carl Thomson a Scot who has worked in both British politics (he was a Parliamentary candidate for the Conservative Party in the last British General Election) and has lived and worked in Russia.

Moscow Tory isn’t a blog exclusively about Russia – Carl is interested in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union generally, so as well as posts about Russia, there are plenty of posts about Georgia, Belarus and Ukraine, and countries as far afield as Kosovo.

Carl tends to focus on longer, more thought out posts, published every week or so – don’t expect quantity, but do expect him to have taken the time to think through his arguments.

My favourite posts so far are this provocative post endorsing Viktor Yanukovich as the next President of Ukraine (“He is not the ideal candidate [but] he would be far from the disaster that many people imagine him to be”) and this analysis of how many former Soviet Republics have passed laws to extend Presidential term limits:

The seven countries which have changed their constitutions in this way are the two mentioned in yesterdays blog post, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, plus Russia, Belarus, and the Central Asian states of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

[...]It does not require any detailed research to see that the countries which have refrained from amending their constitutions to keep incumbents in power are some of the more open, free and politically developed in the former Soviet Union. This is not universally the case, but in the case of countries like Armenia, Georgia and Ukraine the political system, while messy and corrupt, does nonetheless entail genuine competition for power, however unequal the contest may be.

That’s it for this week – as ever, I’m always on the look out for new blogs to write about here at Siberian Light – if you have one, let me know!

Tagged as: Moscow, Russia Blogs