Split? What Split?
Dmitry Sidorov, Kommersant’s man in Washington, has a lengthy piece in Forbes today about President Medvedev’s alleged “split” with Putin over issues of human rights and liberal Democracy. Fat chance, says Sidorov: “A...
Russia
Eastern Promises
Of all the doomsday scenarios Europe fears in its increasingly complicated relationship with Russia, the notion of the economic crisis weakening Democratic and economic advances in Eastern Europe, and particularly in ex-Soviet states, surely ranks...
No Mickey Mouse
In December, Disney announced plans to introduce a free version of the Disney Channel in Russia, a market prepped for “vast growth…despite the near-term economic turmoil.” But over the weekend Forbes reported that Russia’s ...
Coming to America
Mikhail Gorbachev has been all over the news lately. First there was the announcement he was joining forces with his alleged political protege, the billionaire banker Alexander Lebedev, to form a new political party supportive of “less state...
RA’s Daily Russia News Blast – Feb 23rd, 2009
TODAY: Anti-Kremlin protest in Moscow draws ‘several hundred’; Medvedev criticizes the speed of government’s anti-crisis measures. US to take Russian concerns into account on missile defense; China deems Russia’s actions &#...
Russia’s Dirtiest Corner
From the editorial page of the Financial Times: It is no surprise that Russia suffers some political violence, given the strains involved in the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s collapse. But the authorities’ failure to respond properly...
Undermining Rule of Law in the Second Khodorkovsky Trial
The following is an extract of a comment I wrote up for the legal news website JURIST on the due process violations that have characterized the run up to the second trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, due to begin in some weeks: The defense team underl...
500 Pounds of Uranium
Today, the Council on Foreign Relations interviews David Albright, President of the Institute for Science and International Security, who thinks Iran will acquire enough low-enriched uranium this year to “reach the first level of breakout ca...
Ambassadorial Ethics
A new survey by the Sofia Center for Social Studies says that only one quarter of Ukrainian citizens think Russia is a “friendly state and strategic partner.” Meanwhile, we already know what many Ukrainians think of Russian ambassador ...
Political Murders Continue to Go Unpunished
From the Washington Post’s coverage of the acquittal of defendants in the Anna Politkovskaya trial: The verdict came one month after a well-known human rights lawyer, Stanislav Markelov, and a student journalist, Anastasia Baburova, were gun...