Worldcrunch
MOSCOW — A new crackdown has begun on food illegally imported from Western countries that have imposed sanctions on Russia. But rather than just targeting goods brought in across the border, Russian officials now have the go-ahead to raid shops, warehouses and grocery chains throughout the country. Although most prohibited goods are stopped at the […]
-OpEd- PARIS — The late 1990s anti-globalization movement that protested against summits like the World Trade Organization in Seattle and G8 in Genoa used the slogan: “Another world is possible.” Is this “other world” now being constructed before our eyes by the BRICS, as the emerging countries of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa […]
The treaty signed with Iran won’t eliminate the risk of global proliferation. Russia, China and North Korea in particular are building arsenals and see destabilization as strategy.
Two priests have recently accused a secret and vindictive “gay lobby” of undermining the Church, from the inside.
Military commanders in Finland want to beef up capabilities on the country’s eastern border with Russia amid the backdrop of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.
In Buenos Aires, young adults buy tickets to bogus weddings, with hired bride and groom, the way others might pay to enter a disco. It’s an odd concept … ripe for export?
With the agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear program and end sanctions, a look at the energy economics of this new world order. With politics everywhere, as always.
Under cover of darkness, right-wing militias felled a massive Lenin statue in Sloviansk. Now there’s talk of selling it to finance reconstruction in the war-damaged city.
Belarus will hold presidential elections in October, and President Alexander Lukashenko will face Tatiana Karatkevich, the first-ever female candidate. That is, of course, unless the all-powerful ruler changes his mind.
MOSCOW — Alexander Prokhanov loves to play the bad guy. But he’s no character actor. He is editor-in-chief, since its founding in 1993, of Zavtra (Tomorrow), a Russian ultra-nationalist newspaper that is fiercely anti-Western and anti-American, as well as clearly anti-Semitic and homophobic. In his mess of an office, Prokhanov, 77, invites us to sit […]
From Facebook to Google, Baidu to VKontakte, the world’s biggest technology companies talk about their singular dedication to their users. Yet the road to becoming a global tech titan is inevitably lined with hard choices and conflicts of interest. Here are five prominent controversies where companies are accused of ceding to questionable demands of the […]
China’s President Xi Jinping is featured three times on today’s front page of Chinese state-owned newspaper People’s Daily. Xi arrived in Ufa, Russia on Wednesday for a flurry of diplomatic activity ahead of the BRICS and Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summits. The Chinese leader is pictured shaking hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian […]
Kommersant has learned that a former professor arrested last week in the Donbass region by Ukraine has been named as a Russian FSB agent.
Too many nations and peoples with too many grievances. A wealth divide that grows deeper. A new (new) world order is needed, with the U.S. and China firmly in charge.
If it wants to grow in a balanced way, Russia should not think a rash of new agreements with China will permit it to forsake the West.
Le Temps meets up with Olga Abramenko, head of a human rights organization that Russian authorities have deemed a “foreign agent” and banished from the country.
Italian PM Matteo Renzi has obtained Washington’s blessing to pursue its own dialogue with the Kremlin. Could Rome be the bridge to resolving the Ukraine crisis?
Putin Playing Nice, The World Tour by Worldcrunch
MOSCOW — Compared to last century’s Cosmonaut glory, Russia’s space program is looking more like a dud these days. On May 16, a Proton-M rocket crashed in Siberia with its commercial load, a Mexican telecommunications satellite. A week earlier, a Progress spacecraft, a Russian cargo craft that was supposed to deliver more than three tons […]
Evidence is so overwhelming that even Russians can no longer deny the truth that their country is fighting in Ukraine. But Putin offers something better than the truth.
MOSCOW — Russia placed 45th in the world on the most recent Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Index, a ranking of 141 countries compiled twice a year by the World Economic Forum and Strategy Partners Group. This represents a significant improvement over the previous year, when it ranked 63rd. Industry analysts agree that the driving factor […]
Despite having a Facebook page against its participation in Eurovision, and also having been copiously booed during last year’s event, Russia still went on and decided to participate in this year’s edition. Our guess is the audience really didn’t like the song, we don’t see any other reason. But still, how impolite and mean, even […]
MOSCOW — In a small town outside the capital, 15-year-old boys live in barracks with soldiers. They march in formation, memorize army regulations and sing songs in unison. “After our camp, young men aren’t afraid of hazing,” says Vladimir Prixodko, the camp director, referring to a persistent problem in the Russian army that has scared […]
Loathed and feared in the art world, Vladimir Medinsky has shown a clear willingness to quash what he believes casts Russia in a poor light.
An online series of photographs brings the writer back to his first great journey, via the Trans-Siberia rail, from his native Yugoslavia to post-Mao China.
As the European Commission targets Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom for antitrust violations, tensions between Europe and Russia over Ukraine are only bound to rise.
There are some lesser known places that give you some serious “travel credibility,” like Belize, Swaziland — or Kaliningrad. Being home to a very large number of storks during the warmer months, the Russian enclave reminded me of Alsace, a stone’s throw away from where I live in eastern France.
They’ve known him from up close, and their insights help explain the mystery of the Russian president’s rise. And, perhaps, what he’ll do next.
The Tsar Bell on the grounds of Moscow“s Kremlin is the biggest bell in the world, but it has never rung. During a fire in 1737, before the bell’s decoration was completed, guards threw cold water on it, causing a slab to crack off. The bell is so huge — look at the man on […]
Russian researchers have been doing a rather unusual study that compares DNA across countries with political affinities. A patriotic take on the old nature v. nurture question.
Despite the ruble’s freefall, a shaky economy and growing international isolation, cosmetics companies and the beauty industry at large can rest easy that Russian women will buy what they’re selling.
SIMFEROPOL — One year after Russia annexed Crimea, oyster farmer Sergey Koulik is exultant about both the future and the past. “Russian Crimea means new markets, more business and state funding,” he says. “Crimea’s return to the mother country is a good history lesson for all of Europe.” Koulik owns the only oyster farm in […]
The assassination of democratic reformer Boris Nemtsov prompts a look back over the past two decades of Russia flirting in vain with economic and political reforms.
It’s been a year since the Russian Federation annexed Crimea. The controversial move, which caused as much anger as paralysis in the West, confirmed Vladimir Putin in his role of strongman of the East. This was a move that the Russian president prefers calling a “restitution” rather than an “annexation” — a mere question of […]
MOSCOW — I’m going to share my own observations about myself, yes, but also about my neighbors in the countryside. I spent last summer in a 100-year-old house outside of Moscow. In between writing articles, I maintained two beehives and pruned old apple, cherry and currant trees. I harvested. I made jam and extracted honey. […]
Far from the murders and intrigue swirling at the Kremlin, or the war rumbling in Ukraine, most of Russia lives in a strange post-Soviet state of denial like one finds in the city of Yelets.
860,000UN Refugee Agency Commissioner-General Pierre Krähenbühl told the BBC that “it is a figure of shame for the entire world” that 860,000 Palestinians are dependent on food assistance. He also highlighted the significant gap between the money pledged after last summer’s Gaza conflict and the actual money that the agency received to help with the […]
“The reaction to the murder of Boris Nemtsov turned out to be as extraordinary as the politician himself,” Moscow-based daily Kommersant writes on its front page article, alongside a photo of Nemtsov that was carried at Sunday’s memorial march. Organisers said that up to 70,000 came out Sunday to mourn the opposition leader in the […]