In the United States, the White House launched an initiative where people could organize a petition drive, and if they got enough signatures then the White House would officially respond by either giving a public statement or by proposing legislation. Putin appears to have copied that effort. Before the Moscow election, Alexei Navalny started a […]
This editorial by Dmitry Oreshkin in Novaya Gazeta provides a statistical argument that the results of the Moscow Mayoral Election were rigged. However, what’s far more interesting is that Oreshkin also argues that, despite the fact that Sobyanin stole the last few percentage points needed to avoid a runoff, democracy has been achieved. For the first […]
Andrey Kokoshin, the Dean of the MSU Faculty of World Politics, talks with the pro-Kremlin Izvestia about the possible consequences of a U.S. strike against Damascus for the international community. Kokoshin states, among other things, that Saudi Arabia and Iran will both be encouraged to develop nuclear weapons should Syria be attacked by the West, […]
The CIA has begun the delivery of weapons to detachments of the Syrian opposition. For now it’s a question of only firearms, ammunition, and communications devices. All of this is necessary to wage combat in cities in small groups. This fact once again confirms the wish of Washington to continue the escalation of the civil […]
Many people across the globe are debating Syria, and the content of Vladimir Putin’s editorial in the New York Times. However, in Snob.ru, a Russian online magazine with a somewhat more liberal slant, the debate is not just about the content of the editorial, but about the wisdom of reportedly paying a PR company to […]
Moscow courts received 448 claims from Alexei Navalny, an opposition leader, including the principal petition to cancel the results of the elections for the Mayor of Moscow submitted to the Moscow city court. “According to the information on the number of applications for revocation of the local election commissions’ decisions submitted to the district courts, […]
The political analyst Boris Mezhuev writes, in Izvestia, about how President Putin’s initiative influences the world political climate. Note that Mezhuev implies that it was Western powers that postponed the latest meeting of the United Nations Security Council. In fact, Russia both called for the meeting and then cancelled it in light of demands from […]
On September 3rd, a somewhat puzzled world awoke to a hyperventilating Russian media. The report making its rounds in the Russian press, translated by The Interpreter, said that Russian radar systems had recorded a ballistic missile launch over the Mediterranean. Eventually, the Israeli government stated that it had conducted a test of a missile defense […]
Alexei Navalny, the opposition candidate for Moscow’s mayor who was just beaten in Sunday’s election (according to official results) had proposed a hard limit on the cost of cars purchased for public officials. The Minister for Open Government, Mikhail Abyzov, then said that he also wanted to impose a limit on the costs of these […]
Kommersant publishes this article, claiming that Russia will go ahead and deliver the S-300, a powerful anti-aircraft system, to Iran. However, Interfax news agency has published an article which disputes this claim. Their source says that the delivery of the modified S-300 system can’t be excluded, but that no plan has yet been put into […]
