And Igor Luzenko is the lucky one. The other activist with whom he was abducted, beaten and interrogated didn’t make it home alive.
Tag: russia
Russia’s own Academy of Sciences has declared the country the European leader in aggressive and loathsome behavior. And if you doubt it, just consider the grim statistics.
GORODISH — In the streets around a village near Moscow, the stores don’t sell official, licensed vodka because they apparently have never obtained a license to. It’s just as well, as government levies on the official drink have caused its prices to surge. But on regular trips to my Gorodish country house, I’ve noticed that […]
Latvia becomes the 18th member of the European single currency zone, adopting the euro just as the small Baltic nation starts to enjoy economic growth. Will Latvians come to regret it?
Eyewitnesses tell of the scenes of horror, while authorities still try to confirm if the second attack in two days was a suicide bombing.
Russia and China risk setting off global conflicts for the sake of national pride. A century later, the lessons of Otto von Bismarck are being ignored again.
Faced with Colombia’s military strength and apparent resolve not to hand over a disputed swathe of the Caribbean, Nicaragua is inviting friendly Russia into the area.
Much has changed in the past 10 years. Oligarchs have been replaced by networks as the real challenge to Vladimir Putin’s power.
The Sochi Olympics are to Putin what Saint Petersburg was to Peter The Great. Freeing rivals, such as Khodorkovsky and Pussy Riot, are one more step toward sealing his place in history.
What would Niccolo Machiavelli, the author of “The Prince” (published exactly 500 years ago), have thought about modern China? What would he have done with the Internet?
MOSCOW – As they met in the Green Room at the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin and Viktor Yanukovych were sitting comfortably in armchairs, sharing each other’s worries about the drop in trade between their countries. Now, the Russian and Ukranian presidents told each other, is the time for decisive action, time to open up a new […]
Part of Moscow’s new striving urban class has taken its ideas and energy to the farm. A different kind of Russian revolution.
MOSCOW — Last week’s U.S. criminal complaint alleging that Russian diplomats in New York systematically defrauded Medicaid reads like a low-down scam at its worse. Moscow, however, is convinced that it is actually the latest geopolitical chess move, the result of deteriorating relations between the two countries. As the accused diplomats prepare to return to […]
Moscow has already made it clear to Ukraine that it should stop reaching out to Western Europe. The same message is being sent to Lithuania, which is already an EU member.
Russia is using “obligatory patriotism” and university “deans of ideology” to ward off separatist movements that challenge the central authority.
MOSCOW – Recently, Russian leaders have been meeting more and more frequently with their Asian counterparts – Vladimir Putin visited Vietnam and South Korea last week, and in the past two weeks there have been official meetings with India, China and Japan. Many are starting to talk about a strategic shift in Moscow. What is […]
Putin is doing everything to not be remembered by history as the one who “lost” Ukraine. Mother Russia’s imperial face is on the line.
KHODORKOVSKY FREE Former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky was freed from prison this morning, after Thursday’s surprise announcement by Vladimir Putin that he would sign a decree pardoning him of his convictions for fraud, tax evasion and embezzlement, Ria Novosti reports. The international cause célèbre spent a total of 3,709 days in prison. ROOF COLLAPSE AT […]
Rising religious objections to the practice come 93 years after the Soviet Union became the first country to legalize abortions. Today, they are still legal – and free.
With the United States no longer able to impose its position on Internet security and governance in the wake of the NSA spying scandal, Moscow is stepping into the void.
Bad guys and the cops who chase them… from Russia and Mexico, to Belgium and Australia. Freeze!
MOSCOW — The U.S. government is convinced that Edward Snowden is violating Vladimir Putin’s “ultimatum.” The Russian president had said in July that the National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower could stay in Russia only if he “stopped his work that was meant to cause damage to our American partners.” In August, Snowden was granted asylum […]
And it’s about to get worse in the country that has granted temporary asylum to Edward Snowden.
See the solar eclipse through shades, the Boston Red Sox win the Series, a “poisoned” USB key and other images that have made news in the past seven days. (cover photo: Imahinasyon)
MOSCOW — It’s not often that the government’s plan and the people’s plan match as well as they do right now. The government is projecting an increase in real incomes in the next couple of years, but it also anticipates a decrease in the amount that people will save. And that is precisely what people […]
SESTRORETSK — There was a time when this northwest Russian city was considered the engine of the workers’ revolution. It had been the largest weapons factory in Imperial Russia, and just after the launch of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, workers frequently set off from here to expropriate property from the Czar’s followers in nearby St. […]
The Arctic, where Russia has dispatched military resources, is the last disputed area of such massive proportions. It’s a region where the interests of Moscow and Washington collide, an excellent stage for a Cold War parody.
Moscow’s goal be an exporter of manufactured goods must be done in the face of major political and financial uncertainties.
Tuesday, October 21, 2014 NEW ISIS OFFENSIVE IN KOBANI ISIS fighters have launched an assault “on all fronts” in the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani, the director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told AFP. The offensive came hours after U.S. airplanes dropped ammunition and medical aid to besieged Kurdish fighters. It also came […]
MOSCOW — The timing of the Geneva 2 conference about the future of Syria’s chemical weapons has changed once again. According to our sources, it is probably not going to be mid-November — as Russia and the U.S. had first indicated — but rather at the end of that month, or maybe even in December. […]
MOSCOW — In the wake of last weekend’s anti-immigrant riots in Moscow and the burning of a produce warehouse, the Russian government still seems to be holding on stubbornly to the idea that the problem is simply uncontrolled migration from the post-Soviet states. The government has made frequent tweaks to the immigration laws in the […]
Kiev doesn’t want to risk its ties with Moscow, but can’t afford to pass up economic opportunities in Europe. And where does that leave jailed opposition chief Yulia Tymoshenko?
Russians have one of the highest levels of indifference, or anomie, in the world. They don’t know whether they want tea or coffee, much less democracy or authoritarianism.
To satisfy Russian apetites, frozen shipments of the low-end *red caviar* have come in from Alaska. Not all are pleased.
BISHKEK — Russia has reached a deal with the leaders of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to provide military aid to the two Central Asian nations. Though the details are still being hammered out, Moscow appears to have netted a deal with potentially major geopolitical implications. “We have agreed with our colleagues regarding the delivery of weapons, […]
MOSCOW — Since the first traffic camera was installed in Moscow in 2008, a new kind of traffic violation has been born — license-plate camouflage. The cameras capture license plate numbers, which is how drivers who break traffic laws are identified. Tickets are then sent by mail. More than 60% of traffic tickets are now […]
NEW YORK — At long last, the members of the United Nations Security Council have reached an agreement on a Syria resolution. The West has agreed to give up on including language that Russia had furiously opposed — that is, to automatically sanction the use of force against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad if he fails […]
– Commentary- MOSCOW — Russia’s deputy prime minister in charge of defense is many things, but lazy isn’t one of them. Dimitry Rogozin has been jumping from city to city — holding conferences about the construction of new warships and delivering grandiose critiques of the leaders of the Russian space program. Everywhere he goes, he […]
MOSCOW – The Russian government is looking to change the law on mass communications, which could potentially have a serious impact on the way the media does business. Perhaps the most important proposal put forth concerns who can open and own a media company. Currently, media business owners must be legal adults, cannot be presently […]
-Analysis- MOSCOW — So Russian diplomats finally prevailed on the Syria question. Since the beginning of the clashes in 2011 between the Syrian army, which is loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, and the armed opposition, Russia has used all of its power to prevent an international intervention, including blocking a UN Security Council resolution condemning […]