The draconian laws the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada passed by a show of hands on January 16 were intended to quash the Euromaidan movement. Instead, the action ignited a furious backlash among pro-European Ukrainians: tens of thousands of protesters braved the cold on Kiev’s Independence Square on Sunday, in intentional violation of the new legislation. Fighting […]
Valery Morozov is a whistleblowing businessman who fell foul of the Russian authorities in Sochi after reporting state bribery. He has been granted political asylum in Great Britain. Morozov posts this dramatic story. What starts as a conversation about Sochi, and corruption in Russia in general, ends in a revelation about the theft of one […]
The Geneva II conference on Syria starts this week. The Syrian National Coalition, the internationally recognized opposition group, has decided that it will attend. The SNC also indicated last week that hopes for success were slim. But those hopes have now fallen to zero. This is not my wish, nor my opinion, but the only […]
In the aftermath of terrorist attacks and during times of societal turmoil, it is quite common to see the introduction of security or emergency measures which give security services increased powers. Sometimes these powers are time-constrained and meant as a temporary measure to—at least publicly—reduce the constraints on the security services ability to counter terrorism, […]
The Russian Foreign Ministry has released a report on the human rights record of the European Union. It begins with a rather honest and astute reflection of problems facing the EU: The most pressing human rights issues in the EU still include a steady growth of xenophobia, racism, violent nationalism, chauvinism and neo-Nazism. In the context […]
The Microsoft Corporation (which owns the internet telephone service Skype) is prepared to store information on conversations and correspondence for six months, in order to provide it, along with user data from within the Russian Federation, to Russian law enforcement agencies, according to a response from Microsoft’s press service to a request from ITAR-TASS. “Microsoft […]
Last week, Senegalese commandos borded the Russian fishing vessel Oleg Naydenov, which Senegal claims was fishing illegally in its waters. The Guardian reports: The trawler, the Russian-owned factory ship Oleg Naydenov, which regularly fishes off the west African coast, was boarded by armed Senegalese commandos near the maritime border with Guinea-Bissau last week and escorted back […]
This is a translation of an article published in Izvestia, a pro-Kremlin publication, praising Ariel Sharon and drawing parallel’s between what happened in Gaza and what could happen in the Caucasus if Russia should withdraw. — Ed. The passing of Ariel Sharon came as an inevitable tragic outcome after eight years in which he was […]
Today, at a meeting in the Ministry of Defense they discussed the unique operation that Russian sailors, together with foreign colleagues, are carrying out in the Mediterranean. They are escorting ships filled with Syrian chemical weapons. It is understood that this deadly cargo, that includes about 20 tons of toxic mustard gas, needs to be […]
In December, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a very long press conference. However, many organizations were not allowed to attend, and the kind of hard-hitting questions we’d expect if there were freedom of the press in Russia were not asked. Three days before the event, The New Times published this brave piece of journalism – […]
