After reading the news about Francois Hollande, President Vladimir urgently convened his cabinet: “Yes, we can do the meeting without Dmitry at all. Let him finished his game of Angry Birds” – growled the President before hanging up. Five minutes later everyone was already in the room with their documents and pencil cases, someone even came […]
Both remaining imprisoned members of Pussy Riot, Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova have been released from prison this morning. UPDATES 1929 GMT: Maria Alyokhina has arrived in Moscow. 1722 GMT: Translation of Nadezhda Tolokonnnikova’s interview with TV Dozhd up. @gruppa_voina tweets that Maria Alyokhina will be arriving at Moscow’s Kursky Station at 23.15 MSK (19:15 GMT) in […]
The headline is huge: As part of an amnesty bill, celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Russian Constitution, many high profile prisoners could be set free as early as this week. The list of those included in the amnesty appears to include the two imprisoned members of Pussy Riot, as well as the Greenpeace activists […]
The headlines over the last couple weeks have rightly been focused on Ukraine and its unenviable position as a pawn being torn asunder by the competing interests of the EU and Russia. The situation is merely another example of how Russia uses economic intimidation and its supply of hydrocarbons to enact foreign policy ambitions (Russia […]
Just yesterday there was a major headline brewing in the Russia Press. TV Rain (TV Dozhd) ran a rather alarming headline: Russia to Abolish Mayoral and City Duma Elections The story sent shivers down a lot of journalists spines. The story, based on a “source,” said that Putin would make the announcement today, during his […]
In a blow to President Vladimir Putin, German President Joachim Gauck’s has declined an invitation to attend the Sochi Olympic games. President Gauck’s gesture is also a boost for opposition leaders who believe the attendance by foreign dignitaries at the games would legitimize Putin and give tacit acceptance to his mounting campaign against Russia’s democracy […]
Dan Kaszeta is a chemical weapons expert, but he has also spent many years of his life studying Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Bloc. He raises many good points about the deep internal divisions within Ukrainian society. As Ukraine is now in the midst of its second period of major popular unrest in less […]
When the artist Pavel Pavlensky stripped naked on Red Square last month, then sat down on the cold cobblestones and nailed his scrotum to the ground, many people were not so much shocked as hoping to scrub the cringing image from their eyes. He didn’t quite gain the hipster world-wide popularity and saturation media coverage […]
Vladimir Putin has had a very good year, and one of his crowning achievements is that he appears to have successfully bullied Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych into halting Ukraine’s march towards the European Union. Russia closed the border to Ukraine’s products, backing up traffic for miles (possibly costing Ukraine billions). Russia froze entire industries: banned cheese; stopped […]
Recently, Russian President Vladimir Putin attracted international attention when he appeared to publicly rebuke his Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. For all the attention the incident received, the reason for the dispute between Medvedev and Putin has been largely ignored by the media. The Interpreter’s Andrew Bowen examines the new tax fraud laws, backed by Putin, […]
