Russian state media has given saturation coverage to the report by engineers from the Russian defense corporation Almaz-Antey which claims that while a Buk-M1 was used to shoot down MH17, it was launched not from the area near Torez but further south in Zaroshchenskoye, ostensibly under Ukrainian control at the time. We debunked this claim […]
In earlier essays here this author has noted that Russia can be thought of as a frozen culture that cannot escape its past and therefore is condemned endlessly to repeat it. Allegedly as well, Vladimir Putin is a keen student of Russian history. But if that is the case, rather than learn from that history […]
The frenzied world-wide front is expanding Mercy to no one, no one, no one! Stanza from 1989 Russian anarchists’ song Vintovka – eto prazdnik (The Rifle is a Holiday) By the Russian punk bank Grazhdanskaya Oborona (Civil Defense) The annexation of Crimea, the “Novorossiya” project, and the fight against the “Kyiv junta” are not supported […]
Last week we reported how volunteer Russian fighters from the Ural Mountains region went to fight in the Donbass alongside the Russian-backed militants in the Prizrak Brigade there, but came back somewhat underwhelmed by the living conditions and lack of combat opportunity. These were the people sent by the Sverdlovsk Fund for Spetsnaz Veterans and […]
Staunton, April 14 – While Russians have been focusing on Ukraine, the situation in the North Caucasus has deteriorated in two important ways, according to Maya Astvatsaturova. On the one hand, disputes of any kind are increasingly invested with ethnic meaning. And on the other, young people are better armed and ready to use guns […]
On March 6, the Ukrainian news site 24tv.ua published an interview of Sergei Stepanov, a recently-released Ukrainian POW, with journalist Yevgeniya Mazur. The account was also published by the Krivoy Rog city site. Stepanov, who was severely wounded, was released to be treated in a hospital 15 days after being taken prisoner at the Krasny Partizan […]
Alexey Navalny, the opposition leader and anti-corruption blogger, has posted a piece on his blog about the murder of Boris Nemtsov, his fellow coordinator of protest marches and other projects challenging the Putin regime. He was unable to attend his colleague’s funeral today because authorities wouldn’t give him leave from serving a 15-day jail sentence […]
Staunton, February 2 — The revival of Kremlinology, of relying on a variety of indirect indications of who is closer to the top leader and who may be opposed to him, is “a bad sign,” Ekaterina Schulmann says, not only because of what it says about the increasingly closed nature of Russian politics but also […]
Russia’s well-regarded Ekho Moskvy radio station, which has long attempted to maintain political independence despite the increasingly hypoxic climate for dissenting media and pressure from shareholders (the station is owned by Gazprom-Media), has today, facing an acute crisis since last month when the station received a warning from Roskomnadzor (the Russian media regulator) and an intervention […]
Rossiyskaya Gazeta (RG.ru), the Russian state newspaper of record, has published an interview with Anatoly Kucherena, the lawyer of Edward Snowden, titled Snowden Awaits his Fiancé: Anatoly Kucherena Describes How the Most Mysterious American Lives and Works. The interview was conducted by Boris Yamshanov, a journalist who has authored a number of articles on legal […]
