Since the conflict in Ukraine, Western military leaders are operating under the assumption that an armed conflict with Vladimir Putin’s Russia will eventually happen. Signs of tension are everywhere.
Tag: russia
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Russian Doping, Tunisian Women, Free Coding
SPOTLIGHT: DOPING, FROM SOCHI TO RIO The terminology itself is telling: “State-sponsored doping” is the accusation that the The New York Times reports the U.S. Department of Justice is now pursuing against Russian athletes and officials, linked to the use of banned substances at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, and other competitions. “The inquiry […]
Sergei Magnitsky died on Nov. 16, 2009 in a solitary confinement cell of the infamous Matrosskaya Tishina Prison in Moscow. He was 37. His death rocked U.S.-Russia relations and sanctions were put in place by Washington, followed by countermeasures from Moscow. Magnitsky had been a lawyer and auditor and, while working for the investment company Hermitage Capital, had uncovered an alleged case of fraud amounting to several million U.S. dollars. According to his research, Russian civil servants had, in conjunction with criminals, managed to steal $230 million from the treasury and transfer it abroad through a very complex web of […]
Many are focused on the race to Mars, but Russia sees a unique opportunity to make an inhabitable base on the Moon. The possibility of lunar life and patented technologies could change the calculus.
MOSCOW — Alexey Navalny is one of most prominent opponents of the Russian government of Vladimir Putin. The 39-year old lawyer and head of the Moscow-based NGO Anti-Corruption Foundation first came to prominence through a blog that takes direct aim at alleged malfeasance by Putin and his associates. We spoke with him in his Moscow […]
As Russia looks ahead to next autumn’s key parliamentary elections, a national economic body has been resurrected in an attempt to kickstart sluggish growth, Moscow daily Vedomosti reports Thursday. After two years of stasis, Russia’s Economic Council Presidium has been revived in order to promote the countrys’ economic growth, as well as to look for […]
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Pricing Pawns
On Moscow’s Sparrow Hill, tourists can buy nestling dolls or wooden chess boards while enjoying the view over the Russian capital.
MOSCOW — The last state execution carried out in Russia was on Aug. 2, 1996, as the young democracy led by then President Boris Yeltsin was imposing a moratorium on capital punishment. But a recent bill submitted at the Duma national parliament proposes to bring the death penalty back in force, specifically for crimes of […]
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Popsicle Walls — Video Quote Of The Day
–Analysis – MOSCOW — Vladimir Putin’s decision to withdraw the lion’s share of Russia“s troops from Syria might have come as a surprise, but insiders in Moscow say the timing makes perfect sense. Many factors can explain why now. “Putin promised this operation would be limited in time and wouldn’t lead to an Afghanistan-like stalemate,” […]
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Russia’s Surprise Withdrawal From Syria
“Russia out of Syria,” the front page of Moscow-based daily Vedomosti reads, just hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s surprise announcement that Russian forces would withdraw from Syria. After yesterday’s unexpected announcement, a first group of warplanes has already left its Syrian base for Russia, the Defense Ministry said. “The main task now is to […]
Moscow is quietly working toward a federal future for war-torn Syria, with a central government but the nation divided into three different ethnic zones. It’s a nod to Kurdish ambitions and lessons from the Balkans.
Many locals in Lebanon’s capital are firm Hezbollah and Assad loyalists, seeing the Islamist militia that supports the Syrian regime and fights ISIS on the ground as their ultimate protector against the civil war raging across the border.
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February 25
-Analysis- PARIS — Could the trap of the Syrian crisis break up NATO? This question, which carries potentially grave implications for the security of the West, might sound overblown. After all, NATO’s unfailing cohesion eventually brought down one of the most formidable war machines of all time, the Soviet Union. Still, the spreading corrosive capacities […]
“If War Comes Tomorrow,” read this week’s edition of Moscow-based magazine The New Times, quoting the title of a famous 1938 Russian propaganda movie on a very Soviet-looking cover, as it wonders what the consequences a new “big war” would be for Russia. The weekly magazine focuses on the dangers of what it calls “the […]
There’s nothing the man in Kremlin wishes for more than Angela Merkel’s fall, which could give him plenty of leverage to play with and mould Europe.
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On This Day – January 31
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On This Day – January 22
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Putin Without Pants On Russian Weekly Cover
“But there is no money,” reads the front page of this week’s edition of Moscow-based magazine The New Times, alongside a caricature of Russian President Vladimir Putin as an empty-handed, pants-less joker whose socks need mending. Russia is facing a deepening economic recession, caused notably by the low international oil price. And though Putin has […]
LIBYA ANNOUNCES UNITY GOVERNMENT As part of a UN-backed plan signed last December, Libya announced the formation of a unity government today to reconcile the country’s warring factions. In the process of negotiation, there were disputes over the distribution of ministerial posts, Al Jazeera reports. Two rival governments, one based in the capital of Tripoli […]
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On This Day – December 31
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Letting Lenin Be
This is Lenin’s Mausoleum in Moscow“s Red Square, where the communist leader’s embalmed body is on public display. I preferred taking pictures of the marble and granite tomb from the outside.
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Khodorkovsky Back In Kremlin Crosshairs
Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky is a wanted man again, with a warrant issued for his arrest two years after being released from jail. The 52-year-old who’d spent more than 10 years in prison on charges of tax evasion and embezzlement — after what he described as a politically-motivated trial as he fell out with Vladimir […]
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On This Day – December 19
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On This Day – December 18
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On This Day – December 11
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KREMLIN WON’T JOIN SINGLE ANTI-ISIS COALITION Photo: Dai Tianfang/Xinhua/ZUMA The Kremlin said today that Western nations were “not ready” to form a single coalition with Russia to defeat ISIS, AFP reports. The comments come one day after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s meeting with French President François Hollande at the end of a diplomatic blitz in […]
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Russia Rebuilt
The village of Mandrogi, by the Svir River, is a tourist destination built in 1996 at the site of a village destroyed in World War II. The buildings, recreated in the traditional northern Russian style, house craft workshops and retail shops.
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Rise And Flow
A trip on the Volga river — the longest in Europe — is like floating down the stream of history. The magnificently decrepit churches along the way gave us a glimpse of the many layers of the Russian nation, just 10 years after the fall of the Soviet Union, and one year after the arrival […]
MOSCOW — Russian intelligence services are pursuing a network of Islamic State (ISIS) militants operating in Russia as the country faces an increase in terrorist activity, in response to Moscow’s recent air campaign in Syria. Kommersant has learned that a group of terror suspects, said to be trained in Syria, were detained after a raid […]
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Unmistakably Muscovite
The nine gilded onion domes of the Annunciation Cathedral are one of the inimitable features of Moscow“s Cathedral Square, the central square of the Kremlin.
A redeployment of Russian missiles to Kaliningrad and the Western borders could be a response to reports of U.S. nuclear bombs arriving at a German air force base.
The breakaway country’s fight for independence has lasted 25 years in the rubble of the Soviet empire. There is, inevitably perhaps, a growing religious rhetoric to the battle.
A Russian embargo bans imports of French cheese and other Western products. But one farmer has the answer: bring in French cheesemakers to teach him to make his own.
The unlikely tale of how a young Colombian’s communist convictions led him to leave his family in Spain to fight with Ukraine’s Putin-backed separatist rebels.
Amid controversial scenes of banned Western food being destroyed, Russia now faces criticism over proposed new import restrictions on life-saving medical equipment for the country’s most vulnerable.
Geneva native Marie-Laure Canosa says an eight-day fast at a world-renowned Russian treatment center was transformational. Many researchers seem to agree, as withholding food can heal the body of chronic diseases.