Month: July 2007

July 24, 2007

The Dark Heart of the Kremlin

Below is an exclusive translation from the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. The Dark Heart of the Kremlin Russia and Britain are in conflict over the poisoning of former agent Alexander Litvinenko. This is the escalation of...
July 24, 2007

Oleg Kozlovsky: Romantics Learn to Use Their Fists

[Editorial note: Oleg Kozlovsky, one of the organizers of the Oborona civic youth movement in Russia, has kindly accepted an invitation from RA blogger Grigory Pasko to publish an article on this space to explain the history of his organization an...
July 24, 2007

Applebaum: Putinism is Not a Foreign Policy Problem

From Anne Applebaum in the Washington Post: It’s a good reminder of something we often forget: Not every prime minister has to be a genius, and not every economic target has to be met for life to improve in a developing or transitional count...
July 24, 2007

Tom Nicholls: A Fine Balance

Resource Nationalism Contains the Seeds of its own Demise By Tom Nicholls The International Energy Agency has good news for Russia and other oil and gas producers. A combination of accelerating non-OECD energy demand over the next few years and mo...
July 23, 2007

Russia Today and “The Syrian Defense”

An op/ed today in the Moscow Times argues that the Russian state’s continued insistence that the Litvinenko murder was actually carried out by enemies of the Kremlin is reminiscent of the murder of Bolshevik Sergei Kirov in 1934. This offici...
July 23, 2007

The United Kingdom Divided against Itself

The now infamous diplomatic spat between the United Kingdom and the Russian Federation has illuminated a clear divide between two groups in Europe: those who have willingly blinded themselves to the recent conduct of the Kremlin in the name of ene...
July 23, 2007

RA in Reuters: “Lawyers are Viewed as Fair Game”

Robert Amsterdam is quoted today in a Reuters story on Boris Kuznetsov. But that is not an isolated incident. Dozens of others have been subject to criminal prosecution or had to fight off official applications to strip them of their right to prac...
July 20, 2007

Mitvol: “I Steal from the Poor”

This week the Independent is running an interesting profile of Russia’s glamor-bureaucrat / eco-warrior / regulatory hammer, Oleg Mitvol – who famously applied his agency’s pressure on Royal Dutch Shell to force a major concessio...
July 20, 2007

Rewriting Russian History: A Disgraceful Scandal

Earlier this week we posted an exclusive translation of an article from Nezavisimaya Gazeta on the Kremlin’s controversial history textbook – the following is the second article in the series from journalist Oleg Kashin. (there is also...
July 20, 2007

Grigory Pasko: Putin’s Failure

The Khodorkovsky Affair – a Failure for Putin Russian Alternatives Conference Takes Place in Moscow By Grigory Pasko, journalist A conference entitled «Russian Alternatives» recently took place in Moscow. Three topics were on the agenda: the law a...