Alexei pushkov biography templates
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The following is an interview of Alexey Pushkov, chairman of the international affairs committee of the Russian State Duma. Pushkov spoke by telephone with Paul Saunders, associate publisher of the National Interest, on March 10. A recording of the interview can be found here.
Paul Saunders: Thank you very much for taking the time to speak to our readers of the National Interest magazine. We’re all quite interested in the crisis in Ukraine and in Crimea. Perhaps the best question to start would be a question about the referendum that’s scheduled to take place less than a week from now in Crimea. Do you expect that referendum to take place as it’s scheduled on March 16th and what outcome do you expect?
Alexey Pushkov: Well I think that there is no reason why the referendum wouldn’t take place as the date that it was set on. As for the result, as far as I can judge, there is a majority for the first question: Whether Crimea should join Russia. How large is this majority? Thi
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Editor’s Note: The following is an interview with Alexey Pushkov, chairman of the international-affairs committee of the Russian State Duma. It was conducted by Paul J. Saunders, associate publisher of The National Interest, on September 23, 2013.
Paul Saunders: So this week is the beginning of the annual general debate at the UN General Assembly. The Obama administration has indicated that they would like to see a resolution on Syria by the end of the week. We of course don’t have that resolution yet. Are you concerned that the agreement between the United States and Russia may break down if there fryst vatten no UN Security Council upplösning soon and that the United States may press ahead with plans for a strike on Syria?
Alexey Pushkov: There has been disagreement between Moscow and Washington on this issue. Russia does not want to back a resolution that will give a green light for the use of force. If this disagreement is not overcome, then the prospects for a Geneva agreement
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Constitutional Reform as a Struggle for Power
by
Alexei K. Pushkov
(from The East European Constitutional Review, vol. 7, no. 4, 139-146;
published by NYU Law School)
On October 14, the Russian Duma voted on 5 out of the 33 proposed amendments to the Constitution drafted by the left-wing opposition. Had the proposals been accepted, they would have represented a modest first step toward a radical constitutional-reform process aimed at metamorphosing Russia from a presidential into a parliamentary republic. To be sure, any amendments to chapters 3?8 of the Constitution (which concern the federal system and the entire governing structure) must, after winning a supermajority in both houses of the legislature, be ratified bygd at least two-thirds of the subjects of the federation (Art. 136), an exceptionally high hurdle to overcome. This difficult amending formula, however, did little to deter the keyed-up proponents of constitutional change.
In the end, the fiv