Amid reports of more Russian troops in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin has proposed sending a stabilization force into the country until it is “normalized.” This is an invasion, just under a different name. Yesterday’s liveblog can be found here. For an overview and analysis of this developing story see see our latest podcast. Below, we […]
The Russian judicial system is a service that can be extremely intrusive. As the case of Sergei Magntisky shows, exceptions are not even made for the dead. Neither are they made for accused people chained to hospital beds. But why talk about some “system”? Here is a specific judge from the Tverskoy district court in […]
Russia-U.S. relations have gone from chilly to frigid, as the cancelled bilateral presidential summit has led to concern that a new Cold War is on the horizon. While those fears are unrealistic (and have been dismissed by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov) things are not about to warm up any time soon, as Russia will sign […]
On June 4 2012, Russian reporter Sergei Sokolov was part of a press delegation accompanying the three-year-old Investigative Committee, often described as Russia’s FBI, on a trip to Kabardino-Balkaria, a republic in the Caucasus. Sokolov’s publication, Novaya Gazeta, is one of the few independent newspapers left in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, a fact ominously borne out […]
To begin with, Barack Obama’s planned summit with Vladimir Putin next month in St. Petersburg, in advance of the upcoming Group of 20 confab in that city, was not really “cancelled,” as has been widely reported. It was “postponed,” a semantic distinction with a difference, even in the style of more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger diplomacy which now characterizes […]
Vladimir Pastukhov writes an essay for Novaya Gazeta, a liberal newspaper, on how Putin is not the driver of creeping totalitarianism, but Russia is pushing Putin down that path. It is worth noting that four Novaya Gazeta journalists have been assassinated in eight years. – Ed. Standing on the edge of the Russian abyss, they […]
The Russian State-Media outlet RIA Novosti has published an alarming headline on the state of corruption inside the Russian military: The financial cost of corruption uncovered in the Russian Armed Forces this year has soared 450 percent from last year to over 4.4 billion rubles ($130 million), the Prosecutor General’s Office reported on Thursday. “The […]
The New Times has gone to London, Moscow, Tel-Aviv and Damascus to learn about the new diplomatic duel between the Kremlin and the West, the Russian missile systems provided to Assad and its impact on regional dynamics. The talks between US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian President Vladimir Putin with Russian Foreign Minister […]
William F. Browder has succeeded in making the Kremlin very angry, which is perhaps the best he could hope for after a remarkable three-year campaign to hold Russian government officials accountable for the wrongful death of Sergei L. Magnitsky, a 37-year-old lawyer, in a Moscow prison in 2009.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrived on 7 May for his first visit to Moscow. The Russian capital met him with tanks — a dress rehearsal was under way that day for the parade to take place on Red Square on Victory Day (May 9). Whether Kerry was intimidated by Russia’s military force or […]
