Sick Attachments
Vladimir Ryzhkov makes a rather convincing point about President Medvedev’s efforts to prevent the “falsification” of history – that the best way to do this would indeed be to fully open up the Soviet archives. Sure, ...
Russia
Devouring Deripaska
Bret Stephens has a new one in the Wall Street Journal, teeing off on Vladimir Putin for his surprisingly public betrayal of Oleg Deripaska, scapegoating him as a “cockroach” whose inordinate greed costs the jobs of so many Russian wor...
These Grim Baltic Shores . . .
Ariel Cohen has a new piece in the Washington Times, which has some very interesting material on Russia’s growing diplomatic overtures to Mongolia to seal up uranium supplies, as well as some info on a letter sent by President Barack Obama t...
The Gas Mobster Trial
As Russia’s prosecutorial bulldozer plods its way through the second trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, another trial is getting underway across town, which oddly makes the former seem relatively open, at least by Russian standards. Some o...
Alexei Kudrin, voice of reason
This is another example why, at least in fiscal terms, Kudrin is more credible than other members of the Russian government: “I don’t think any new unions of currencies will appear any time soon,” Kudrin said in a panel discussio...
Weafer: Kremlin Gunning for Norilsk
Although the St. Petersburg Economic Forum was a little soured this year by the doldrums of the crisis and the humbling of global capitalism, the Russian government still closed the show with a bang with President Dmitry Medvedev promising a rapid...
No More Mosques in Moscow
Today Paul Goble is blogging about the Russian strategy to discourage Islamic extremism from flourishing in its cities – which also appears to include a ban on the establishment of any new mosques. The result of this idea, Goble notes,...
Accountability in Moldova
Though it doesn’t own the headlines like it used to, the political crisis in Moldova continues unabated, and deserves greater international attention. Here Arcadie Barbarosie and Igor Botan from Chisinau make the case for a U.S. role i...
On the Murder Beat
The New York Times has a cool profile of Russian journalist Sergei Kanev, who fearlessly covers the crime beat for Novaya Gazeta: Bit by bit, in the Vladimir V. Putin era, the ranks of people willing to hold the powerful to account are thinning. T...
American Perestroika
Mikhail Gorbachev has some advice for the United States in today’s Washington Post (also see Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s very similar “global perestroika“): Elements of such a model already exist in some countries. Having reject...