Word: russianizing
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...Turkmenistan, Saparmurat Niyazov - the self-titled Turkmenbashi, or Chief of all Turkmen - erected a golden statue of himself that rotated with the sun, and renamed days and months after family members. In Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev has had not one but two museums built in his honor. During his presidency, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was featured in children's books, his name was printed on women's underwear and portraits of him in various guises - as deep thinker, brave warrior and brawny fisherman - graced the walls of Russia's offices, businesses and schools. (See pictures of Putin...
Moscow is particularly irked by Yushchenko's recognition of leaders of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, or UPA, which fought against Soviet - as well as Nazi and Polish - forces in World War II. Members of the group are frequently denounced as "fascists" and "Nazi collaborators" in the Russian media, but Kulchytsky says the reality is more complex and that they "never had an agreement with Hitler...
...finally purge itself of the symbols of a regime that destroyed millions of innocent people," saying that 400 such monuments were taken down last year. A recent decision to remove a statue paying tribute to the Red Army in Lviv in western Ukraine brought harsh criticism from the Russian government, reminiscent of the outcry when Estonian authorities had a similar statue dismantled and relocated in Tallinn in 2007. "We have a shared history, but our views of it are very different," says Stanislav Kulchytsky, deputy director of the Institute of Ukrainian History in Kiev...
...Russian authorities are hitting back. On Tuesday, Medvedev announced the creation of a presidential commission to work to protect Russia's history from being revised or re-evaluated in any way that tarnishes Russia's image. "More and more frequently, we are coming across historical falsifications," he said in a video blog on May 7, two days before Victory Day, which celebrates the WW II defeat of Nazi Germany by Soviet forces. "Such attempts are becoming more vicious, evil and aggressive. We will not allow anyone to cast doubt on the heroic feat of our people." (See pictures of Victory...
...more problems than they'll solve - at best, they'd simply set back the Iranian program by a few years, at the price of potentially triggering a regional war that could imperil the interests of the U.S. and its allies, including Israel, for years to come. Winning Chinese and Russian support for harsher sanctions remains unlikely absent Iran taking actual steps towards nuclear weaponization, while an economic blockade could prompt a confrontation...