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The Daily Vertical is an RFE/RL video primer for Russia-watchers that appears Monday through Friday. Viewers can suggest topics via Twitter @PowerVertical or on the Power Vertical Facebook page.

The Briefing is a weekly feature from RFE/RL’s Brian Whitmore. It appears that Russia can’t deliver the one and only thing the West wants from it in Syria — the orderly exit of Bashar al-Assad. According to a report in the Financial Times, late last year Putin dispatched General Igor Sergun, head of Russia’s military […]

The Power Vertical is hosted by RFE/RL’s Brian Whitmore and is syndicated by The Interpreter. What has long been suspected now has official imprimatur. Nine years ago, Russian agents assassinated a U.K. citizen in the heart of London, most likely with the explicit approval of Vladimir Putin. That was the conclusion of a British inquiry […]

The Daily Vertical is RFE/RL’s video primer for Russia-watchers that appears Monday through Friday. Viewers can suggest topics via Twitter @PowerVertical or on the Power Vertical Facebook page.

The Power Vertical is written by RFE/RL’s Brian Whitmore and is syndicated here with permission. In many ways it all began with the assassination of Aleksandr Litvinenko. Not that Vladimir Putin’s Russia was exactly a model global citizen before the November 2006 killing of the former KGB spy who defected to Great Britain. But when […]

The Daily Vertical is an RFE/RL video primer for Russia-watchers that appears Monday through Friday. Viewers can suggest topics via Twitter @PowerVertical or on the Power Vertical Facebook page.

The Power Vertical, by RFE/RL’s Brian Whitmore, is syndicated with permission by The Interpreter. Ramzan Kadyrov hasn’t gone rogue. Ramzan Kadyrov isn’t off message. Ramzan Kadyrov hasn’t jumped the shark. No, the mercurial Chechen leader is playing his role to a tee. After calling Vladimir Putin’s foes “enemies of the people,” and after the speaker of his rubber-stamp […]

The Daily Vertical is an RFE/RL video primer for Russia-watchers that appears Monday through Friday. Viewers can suggest topics via Twitter @PowerVertical or on the Power Vertical Facebook page.

Is Ramzan Kadyrov going rogue? Or is he launching a Kremlin trial balloon by calling for opposition figures to be tried as traitors and enemies of the people? On the new Power Vertical Briefing, I discuss this issue with Pavel Butorin, editor in chief of RFE/RL’s Russian-language television program Current Time. Also on the Briefing, […]

The Daily Vertical is an RFE/RL video primer for Russia-watchers that appears Monday through Friday. Viewers can suggest topics via Twitter @PowerVertical or on the Power Vertical Facebook page.