Staunton, July 1 – Leaders often acquire an epithet which prevents people from seeing them whole, sometimes to their advantage and sometimes not. One recent leader of whom this has been true, Oleg Kashin says, has been Mikhail Gorbachev, whose supporters and opponents now routinely forget that there was a time when the last Soviet […]
Oleg Kashin, the prominent Russian blogger forced into exile in Europe after brutal attacks on him in his homeland, has an article at the independent web site slon.ru which is being avidly discussed on Russian social media. Titled “From Crimea to the Donbass: The Adventures of Igor Strelkov and Aleksandr Boroday,” the piece explores the […]
On June 11-12, the All-Russia People’s Front (Общероссийский народный фронт, known by its Russian acronym ONF) will hold its founding congress in Moscow. The movement was established in 2011 by Putin and appeared to be designed to shore up support for United Russia in the 2011-2012 electoral cycle. Revived in March 2013, its current goal […]
[Author Leonid Bershidsky discusses the recent emigration (and alleged emigration) of liberal journalists Masha Gessen and Oleg Kashin—Ed.] On the same day, we found out that both Masha Gessen, a writer and ex-editor, and Oleg Kashin, a columnist have “emigrated.” In the first case it was Masha herself who told us, and we found out […]
The Russian opposition’s Coordinating Council has been under fire from both the government and the protest movement itself since its election in October 2012. At least 29 out of 45 members of the Council have faced harassment from authorities or their employers in recent months; three are in pre-trial detention or under house arrest. Every […]
“Motherland, You’ve Gone Nuts,” writes Maya Sonina, director of the Oxygen charitable fund in her blog And what else can you write? The Motherland really has gone nuts — or well, alright, if not the Motherland itself, at least its Istra City Prosecutor’s Office, which has issued the organization Help for Cystic Fibrosis Patients a […]
