Grigory Pasko: Russia’s Potemkin Roads

By Grigory Pasko | Published: July 28, 2010

Everybody has heard of Potemkin villages. They say that during Catherine the Great’s era, many villages were ordered built by Grigory Potemkin in which the only thing real was the facade. Viewed from the front, it seems as though there is a village. But in reality it is impossible to live in it. Если Вы […]

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Grigory Pasko: Spies Like Them

By Grigory Pasko | Published: July 10, 2010

I’ve been getting a lot of phone calls lately from people asking me to comment on the exchange of the Russian spies for … other Russian spies. Just in this one fact alone you can feel the obvious idiocy of the situation. They exchanged one group of Russians for another, with all parties feeling pretty […]

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Grigory Pasko: Russia Has Oil Spills, Too

By Grigory Pasko | Published: July 2, 2010

In a recent interview with the French publication Les Echos, Mikhail Khodorkovsky answered questions about what he would do if released into freedom, and addressed earlier statements he has made regarding renewable sources of energy. He answered, “I don’t want to leave Russia. As for questions concerning alternative energy (or rather, new energy sources), I’m […]

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Grigory Pasko: Russia, Country of Lawyers

By Grigory Pasko | Published: June 29, 2010

There is not one, but two lawyers in power in Russia. And both are ceaselessly talking about the necessity of perfecting the institutions of state: the judicial power, for example, the legislative… They talk and they talk… And nothing changes and nothing changes. Если Вы хотите прочитать оригинал данной статьи на русском языке, нажмите сюда. […]

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Grigory Pasko: Will the Real Vladimir Putin Please Stand Up?

By Grigory Pasko | Published: June 28, 2010

The recently published report by Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Milov presents heaps of evidence showing that over the time of Vladimir Putin’s rule corruption has sharply increased, while the life expectancy of average Russian citizens has fallen (a translation of the document is provided on La Russophobe). The country has turned into a raw-materials appendage […]

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Grigory Pasko: Rebuilding Vladivostok

By Grigory Pasko | Published: June 23, 2010

In early 2007 the Vladivostok newspaper Konkurent published an article under the headline “Putin and the price of the question,” which dealt with the preparations to host the Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) 2012 forum. The newspaper quoted various statements by Putin and his stated plans for the “socio-economic development” of Russia’s Far East. However, further […]

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Grigory Pasko: Forgotten Baikal

By Grigory Pasko | Published: June 9, 2010

Out of all the things that could pop up to drive a wedge between Kremlin elites, from foreign meddling to money to competing powers of the clans, you would have never guessed that the environment could become so troublesome an issue. At the end of May President Dmitry Medvedev openly criticized Prime Minister Vladimir Putin […]

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Grigory Pasko: The Chichvarkin Chronicles

By Grigory Pasko | Published: June 2, 2010

Everybody here seems to be talking about the video appeal of the not-yet-fully-imprisoned businessman to the man sitting in the president’s chair. Yevgeny Chichvarkin, a multi-millionaire businessman and founder of a mobile phone company Yevroset, was chased into hiding in London following an incident of apparent corporate raiding and political charges. He has most recently […]

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Grigory Pasko: Everyone Loves a Good Sordid Scandal

By Grigory Pasko | Published: May 26, 2010

New kompromat clips against opposition politicians and public figures, often depicting particularly sordid situations, have become all the rage on the Russian internet in recent months. The politician Ilya Yashin, who has been lured into the honey trap himself, has commented, “The previous creativity of the anonymous provocateurs looked like little flowers in comparison with […]

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Grigory Pasko: The Return of Socialist Realism

By Grigory Pasko | Published: May 23, 2010

Our country, led by the friendly Putin-Medvedev tandem, continues to move in seven-mile steps towards the shining heights (a variant on the shameful failures) of the socialist past. They’re writing that in one of the polyclinics (I suspect that this is a clinic for the treatment of the mentally ill) in Saint Petersburg, there has […]

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