Following the race riots in the southern Moscow district of Biryulyovo, where ethnic-Russian Neo-Nazis attacked a warehouse full of immigrants, Moscow police were forced to act to appease the furious Russian nationalists. And act they did. Police raided warehouses, arrested migrants, and filmed the beating and humiliation of one migrant who stands accused of committing […]
Russia’s trade wars are showing no signs of ending any time soon. In fact, despite signs that the Kremlin has fired a man who has been the face of Russia’s isolationist and exclusivist policies, a development which some said was a sign of change, Russia is now increasing its threats to Ukraine by making them […]
Syria has sacked their deputy prime minister, Qadri Jamil, without warning. Any sudden change in the Assad regime is likely to spark controversy and conspiracy theory. Jamil is a member of the opposition party recognized by the President’s party, the Ba’ath party. Jamil’s party is often seen as a farce as it is fairly closely tied […]
November 4th is a national holiday in Russia, Unity Day, which commemorates the occasion in 1612 when Russians from every class united to push the Polish-Lithuanian occupation force out of the country. This year, however, both a nationalist group (anti-immigrant) and a pro-migrant group have sought to hold rallies on that day. At this moment, […]
There’s a word – liberal – and there’s some kind of problem with it lately. Either the liberals want to destroy the country, or they and their Bolotnaya [demonstrations] are causing Biryulyovo [ethnic riots]. The word bubbles up, embeds itself into curly narratives, passions rage, but one thing is not clear: who is all the […]
Gennady Onishchenko, head of the Federal Consumer Protection Service, has been dismissed. Onishchenko was seen as the face of many Russian isolationist policies, such as the banning of “harmful” food products from many former Soviet countries which had expressed interests in joining the European Union instead of the Russian alternative, the Customs Union. The Moscow […]
Current election law in Russia bans anyone convicted of a serious crime from ever holding public office. This is one reason that the court case against opposition candidate Alexei Navalny is significant — though his sentence has been suspended, he is still a convicted felon, and so would be unable to run for office under […]
The Russian website “Sochi 24” is focusing a lot on weather reports these days, especially since the Winter Olympics, which start in a few short months, are taking place in an area that has been having weather similar to the sub-tropics. Though this forecast is for Moscow, Sochi is actually 1,600 kilometers south of the […]
The following is an editorial that appeared in Colta, an independent media website. It is a revealing look inside the xenophobic and racist culture that pervades Russia today. – Ed. It turns out that no single idea in modern Russia has such a mobilizing effect as the nationalist idea. Xenophobia is a spiritual clamp which […]
In recent months, the Russian Far East has been devastated by historic floods in recent months, and authorities have only allocated 6 billion rubles (about $188 million) to help relieve more than 25,000 households that have been affected and nearly 600,000 hectares (about 2300 square miles) of destroyed farmland. Now, the weather is dropping below […]
