Few pieces of graffiti are more famous than Dmitri Vrubel’s My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love. The painting, sometimes called Fraternal Kiss, adorned the Berlin Wall between 1990 and 2009. It recreated a picture taken in 1979, on the anniversary of the founding of the Communist German Democratic Republic in East Germany. At that celebration, two men, Leonid […]
Edward Snowden is a man who gave up the life he had in order to “blow the whistle” on the work of the National Security Agency (NSA). The NSA programs that have been exposed in the process have raised serious concerns about secret surveillance programs and internet spying. Many rights groups, free speech advocates, and […]
The United States is waking up to hear the news that Edward Snowden, the fugitive NSA leaker, has reportedly left Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport and has entered Russia, according to Snowden’s lawyer. The latest updates: 12:38 EST: Wikileaks has confirmed that the pictures we’ve posted below do in fact show Snowden leaving the airport. They have already […]
Among the many debates surrounding the endless bloodshed in Syria, one of the loudest has been over Russia’s defense of its sale of advanced anti-aircraft missiles (S-300) to the Assad regime. Pointing to the fact that the contracts were signed before the conflict, and justifying their fulfillment as legal under international law, the sale has nevertheless […]
On July 25, Russian Prime Minister Sergey Lavrov met with a Syrian government delegation headed by Qadri Jamil, Assad’s Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs. The meeting came at the same time that representatives of the Syrian opposition met with the UN Security Council for the first time. Lavrov opened with an introductory speech. The statement contains […]
Last Wednesday, we went to bed with the knowledge that opposition figure Alexei Navalny could be headed to prison while we slept. This thought did not escape Navalny, either. The investigative-blogger-turned-Moscow-mayoral candidate did what he did best in the final days before his sentence. His last blog post, translated by The Interpreter, was a heartfelt call to action, […]
10:48 EST: Snowden’s lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, continues to speak to RT. Snowden is in good spirits, and has thanked, through Kucherena, the journalists who are covering his story “in an objective way.” Kucherena stressed again the real concerns that he and Snowden share about security, even after Snowden receives asylum. Kucherena then went on to […]
Russia recently concluded the largest war games in its history. The Defense Ministry stated that over 160,000 troops, 5,000 tanks and armored vehicles (the Ministry originally reported only 1,000), 70 ships and 130 aircraft. The size and scale of the exercises on paper is impressive; the simple coordination of the games is worthy of congratulation. […]
In what resembles a real-world James Bond plot gone wrong, a former Russian agent-turned-dissident was killed in 2006 while in England. Alexander Litvinenko, a former FSB secret service member, died of Polonium-210 poisoning after moved to the UK following his disclosure that the FSB was engaged in assassinations, had ties to the mob, conducted terrorist […]
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is free only one day after having been sentenced to five years in prison. Yesterday, the prosecution in Kirov, that had asked for a 6 year sentence, appealed the actual arrest of Navalny on what seemed like a legal technicality. At a hearing today, the prosecution argued that keeping Navalny […]
