This week’s headline concerning Russia’s elections has focused on how United Russia has lost power, or at least has struggled to maintain its power. The most obvious example is in Moscow, where United Russia incumbent Sergei Sobyanin clings to an official vote count that, if it holds, would barely prevent a runoff election. All the […]
While the focus is on Moscow, for many obvious reasons, we’ll also be trying to look at election results from across Russia in order to get a sense of the larger trends in Russia’s electoral process. This is a report about a heated and contested mayoral election in Yekaterinburg (sometimes written as “Ekaterinburg,” map), the 4th […]
This is a tongue-in-cheek post about what the Russian opposition should do on election day. Obviously, the election has already past, but this article actually provides a really good “idiot’s guide” to how votes in Russia are counted, and how they are supposed to be. Alexei Navalny is claiming that the incumbent mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, […]
Moscow’s mayoral election is today, and opposition candidate Alexei Navalny is behind in the polls. Digging through some of the latest polling, it appears that Navalny, while he has growing support, also has very high unfavorability ratings among many who think he’s too radical. This assessment is a translation of an article by a political […]
Vladimir Putin would like Barack Obama to come Russia so they could “talk and discuss the outstanding issues”, but he sees “no disaster”, if that meeting doesn’t happen. This is what the Russian president said in an interview to the “First Channel” and the Associated Press news agency. He explained that the contacts between the […]
Vladimir Putin has stated that Alexei Navalny’s sentence in the Kirovles affair is not at all related to his opposition activity and cites several episodes proving – in the president’s opinion – that there was normal “violation of current law” by Navalny. The New Times has fact-checked Putin’s statement. In an interview with Channel One […]
Apparently it took a while for the Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski to figure out what to do to stand out from the chorus of EU politicians who realize more and more clearly with every day what kind of catastrophic consequences for international relations the U.S. attack on Syria, without UN authorization, will have. His […]
The following is a translation in Ria.Ru, one that represents a lot of editorials on the Syrian issue that can be found in the Russian media. It has a few noteworthy characteristics that are common. Curiously, despite the fact that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has specifically stated that there is no “boots on […]
For weeks, social media and Russian newspapers have circulated rumors that Navalny’s supporters were planning riots, and other illegal or nefarious actions, in the lead-up and wake of the September 8th mayoral election in Moscow. Most of these reports have been accusations without any supporting evidence. Now, Izvestia, a newspaper with close ties to the […]
This article is a translation from September 2, and is a snapshot in time. Some of the information has changed since this has been published. For instance, there are more American warships heading to the Mediterranean, Congress now looks like it is closer to authorizing strikes, new public opinion polls show a shift in momentum […]
