BY GREGORY L. WHITE MOSCOW—Popular support for Vladimir Putin's government continues to erode and Russia could see a full-blown political crisis before he finishes his six-year presidential term, according to a new report from an influential Moscow think tank. "The erosion of confidence can't be stopped," Mikhail Dmitriev, director of the Center for Strategic Studies, said in an interview on the eve of the report's public release on Thursday. The study is being closely watched because Mr. Dmitriev's center was the only major one to accurately predict early last year that support for the regime was plunging and that it would face a crisis ...BY GREGORY L. WHITE MOSCOW—Popular support for Vladimir Putin's government continues to erode and Russia could see a full-blown political crisis ... Continue reading →
On March 6, 2011, a group of fifteen schoolboys in the southern Syrian town of Daraa were arrested by local security forces. Aged ten to fifteen, the boys were caught spray-painting the slogan “As Shaab Yoreed Eskaat el nizam!”—“The people want to topple the regime!” They had taken the words from satellite television coverage of the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. The boys’ parents were members of Daraa’s most prominent families: Sunni tribesmen from the Haroun plains, which run from the Golan Heights along the Jordanian border. Their captor was Atef Najib, the head of local security, a first cousin of President Bashar al-Assad and a member of his minority Alawite sect. When the families approached him with a local Sunni sheikh, seeking the release ... Continue reading →
