MOSCOW — The terrible accident on May 6 — a 25-year old worker was killed when part of the stage for the Bolotnaya protest collapsed on him — was a human tragedy and gave all of us an awful feeling. Twitter erupted in accusations against the organizers and it was unclear for a number of […]
The international press freedom NGO Reporters Without Borders vigorously criticised Vladimir Putin this week, listing him among its top 39 “Predators of Freedom of Information.” This updated list, released in honour of World Press Freedom Day, said of Putin: “If just one word were needed to describe Vladimir Putin, who was catapulted into the presidency […]
Vladislav Surkov, the architect of Putin’s “sovereign democracy” idea, and now the deputy prime minister for economic modernization, gave talk at the London School of Economics yesterday in which he said that the Kremlin “beat” the Russian opposition after the December 2011 Duma election protests: Do you really think that the old system collapsed after the protests in December 2011? […]
The launch of an online magazine dedicated to translating Russian-language news articles, editorials and blogs seems at once long overdue and well-timed. Since Vladimir Putin returned to the presidency in 2012, Russia has undergone such a frenzy of noteworthy developments that the Western press has often struggled to keep up with them, much less make […]
Putin’s raids on the Skolkovo financial center outside of Moscow, and his recent push outlawing state officials from owning foreign assets-including precious metals-are just two of the most recent examples of Putin using anti-money laundering and financial laws as a means of control. The traditional view of anti-money laundering laws is that they are designed […]
Kirov, Russia — The date of the first session of the trial against Alexey Navalny has been on people’s minds for a while. Both, the Russian opposition and pro-Kremlin groups see this trial as symbolic, although for very different reasons. The opposition view it as an attempt to lock up one of the most well-known […]
On April 12 the U.S. government published the so-called Magnitsky List—names of individuals who are believed to be responsible for “gross violations of human rights” in Russia. The 18 people included in the list will be denied entry to the United States and have their assets and property in the country frozen. There is also […]
It’s no secret that in 2013, just like during the Soviet era, Russian agents are operating in Europe. But today, no one calls them “agents” anymore. Spies have been displaced by professional lobbyists, members of parliament, journalists, writers, PR experts and economists. That’s one of the ways in which the Kremlin promotes its agenda in […]
In the last few weeks, England saw the deaths of Margaret Thatcher and Boris Berezovsky, two very different figures who left a long-lasting imprint on the history of Russia. Official reaction to these events from Moscow, in which we can confidently include the government-controlled media, gives us some interesting insights into the mindset of people […]
