Russia

April 6, 2010

Grigory Pasko: The Chaos in Khamovnichesky Court

In preparation for this week’s trial testimony of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, defense lawyers Yuri Schmidt, Vadim Klyuvgant, Natalia Terekhova, Elena Liptser and Konstantin Rivkin held a press conference I was able to attend at the editorial offic...
April 6, 2010

Putin’s Embrace of Poland Hard to Explain

Anne Applebaum takes a stab at explaining Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s sudden change of heart to improve relations with Poland, and recognize the Katyn massacre of 1940.  It is certainly not hard to understand why a 70-year-old probl...
April 6, 2010

RA’s Daily Russian News Blast – April 6, 2010

TODAY: Ingushetia double bombings still unclaimed; new law bans media from printing terrorists’ statements; Khodorkovsky article investigated for ‘extremism’; drivers protest against flashing blue lights of government cars; prote...
April 5, 2010

Khodorkovsky and the Trial that Scared the Kremlin

Among the regime’s many defenders, the leadership of the Kremlin can count upon a supportive chorus in the West to parlay any criticism of Russia’s democratic bankruptcy – happily pointing to high GDP growth over the past decade,...
April 5, 2010

Corruption’s Impact on Terror in Russia

Writing in the Washington Post, Masha Lipman sees some problems with the Kremlin’s approach to dealing with the North Caucasus conflict and the rise of radical Islam. Today, the rise of radical Islam in the North Caucasus is inevitable, espe...
April 5, 2010

RA’s Daily Russian News Blast – April 5, 2010

TODAY: 3.5 million attend Easter services; two more bombs detonated over the weekend are linked to North Caucasus, investigators say; second Moscow metro bomber named; Yevgeny Chichvarkin believes mother’s death was murder; banner referencin...
April 2, 2010

The Face of a Teenage Widow Suicide Bomber

Today Kommersant published photos of the suspected suicide bomber Dzhennet Abdurakhmanova, a 17-year-old girl from the Khasavyurtsky region of Dagestan who was married to the fallen militant Umalat Magomedov.  Leave it to the British tabloids...
April 2, 2010

Taking the Easy Way Out after Metro Bombings

Sam Greene of the Carnegie Endowment’s Moscow Center has a very interesting article taking a look at the political implications of the Metro bombings.  Given that Vladimir Putin kept his playdate with Hugo Chavez in Caracas instead of r...
April 2, 2010

Our Father, Who Art in the Kremlin…

The things I like best about Andrei Piontkovsky are his exceptional restraint, carefully measured understatement, and avoidance of inflammatory language … OK, Piontkovsky is pretty much the opposite of all that, but that doesn’t mean h...
April 2, 2010

RA’s Daily Russian News Blast – April 2, 2010

TODAY: Press keep mum on whether rights activist attacker will face charges; Medvedev visits Dagestan, urges ‘dagger blow’ against terrorists; 2 killed in car bomb in the troubled region; Strasbourg fines Russia over Ingushetia disappe...