Archives: July 2016

Ukrainian troops claim it was shot down by Russian-backed fighters.

The Daily Vertical is a video primer for Russia-watchers that appears Monday through Friday. Viewers can suggest topics via Twitter @PowerVertical or on the Power Vertical Facebook page. A transcript of today’s Daily Vertical can be found here.

ON MY MIND If, as the circumstantial and forensic evidence available seems to suggest, Russia was indeed behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s e-mail servers, it should come as no surprise. In recent years, state-backed Russian hackers have attacked targets including a French television station, a German steelmaker, the Polish stock exchange, Estonian […]

At the end of last week, President Vladimir Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is to visit the Kremlin at the beginning of August. This will be Erdoğan’s first face-to-face meeting with his Russian counterpart since September 2015. Relations between the two countries, which had been fraying over the course […]

On this week’s Power Vertical Briefing, RFE/RL’s Brian Whitmore and Steve Gutterman discuss the fallout from the IOC decision and what comes next.

The Daily Vertical is a video primer for Russia-watchers that appears Monday through Friday. Viewers can suggest topics via Twitter @PowerVertical or on the Power Vertical Facebook page. A transcript of today’s Daily Vertical can be found here.

ON MY MIND So yeah, Moscow dodged a bullet when the International Olympic Committee (IOC) decided against a blanket ban of Russian athletes at next month’s Summer Games in Rio. Russia escaped the ignominy of being the first country ever banned from the Olympics for doping. The World Anti-Doping Agency is disappointed and Russian authorities […]

Several hundred convicts organized a rebellion in Corrective Labor Colony No. 35 in the republic of Khakassia in southwestern Russia, reportedly demanding Muslim prayer times.

Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko is investigating a claim that Vadim Troyan, first deputy head of the National Police had placed Pavel Sheremet, the journalist slain July 20 in a car bomb, under surveillance before his death.

Many Russians have drawn the wrong lessons from the events in Turkey because in that country, the military has traditionally been the promoter of Westernization and secularism.