Russia This Week: Ultranationalist Politician Urges Men to Rape Women Reporters on Good Friday (April 14-18)

April 18, 2014

Updated Daily. Russia’s most outrageous ultranationalist has reached new lows at a press conference today. Russia’s leading social network entrepreneur reports that authorities have ordered him to turn over the personal data of groups related to the EuroMaidan protests and opposition leader Alexey Navalny; he has refused. Navalny also faces a lawsuit by a pro-Putin […]

Russia This Week: Professor Dismissed for Crimean Criticism Reinstated (April 7-11)

April 11, 2014

Updated Daily. A professor who compared Putin’s forcible annexation of the Crimea was fired from his position, but then later re-instated after protests. But for how long? Meanwhile, bloggers face new challenges as conservative legislators seek to equate bloggers with media outlets under the restrictive Russian press law. Go here, here, and here for past […]

Russia This Week: Is the Crimean Annexation Putin’s Anschluss? (March 31-April 5)

April 4, 2014

Updated Daily. Russians protesting Putin’s forcible annexation of Crimea are experiencing a backlash from conservative officials and activists and a campaign of xenophobia and hatred for dissenters has been unleashed. In recent weeks, Dmitry Kiselyov, Russia’s chief TV propagandist, has reminded us that only Russia can “reduce America to radiocative ash.” Conservative Sen. Oleg Panteleyev, […]

Russia This Week: Distorting the News (March 24-28)

March 28, 2014

Russians continue to protest the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine following a mass march against Putin’s forcible annexation of Crimea last week. (Go here and here for the last weeks’ news.) Defendants in the Bolotnaya Case charged with “instigating riots” remain on trial. The Russian government continues to make moves to suppress dissent, chiefly by blocking […]

Russia This Week: Will the Kremlin Reduce America to “Radioactive Ash”? (17-22 March)

March 22, 2014

Russians continue to protest the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine, as tens of thousands turned out to protest the rigged referendum and forcible annexation of Crimea this past weekend. (Go here for last week’s chronicle.) The defendants in the Bolotnaya Case remain on trial. Some of those who protested during the Sochi Olympics last month, such […]

Chronicle of Russian Dissent: Pussy Riot Beaten, Independent Media Space Shrinks (8-15 March)

March 14, 2014

Russians continue to protest the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine, and suffer backlash themselves. Cases of those arrested last week in solidarity with the sentenced defendants in the Bolotnaya Case continue to be processed. Some of those who protested during the Sochi Olympics last month, such as the Circassians, are still suffering the consequences. And the […]

The Backlash of Moral Equivalency on Ukraine

March 11, 2014

With strong statements from the US State Department countering Kremlin propaganda like “President Putin’s Fiction: 10 False Claims About Ukraine” and “Setting the Record Straight on Ukraine” coming from the US Embassy in Kiev, it didn’t take long for some commentators to appear with a “plague on both their houses.” The Israeli newspaper Haaretz published an […]

Is Terrorism in Russia Really Getting Worse?

January 3, 2014

Readers might get the idea that the number of terrorist attacks in Russia is increasing because of a series of well-publicized suicide bombings in the central Russian city of Volgograd in December and earlier in the fall. With the Sochi Olympics coming up in February, a view of the map of terrorist bombings in the Russian Caucasus yields a sense […]

“For Our Freedom and Yours”

December 5, 2013

When the artist Pavel Pavlensky stripped naked on Red Square last month, then sat down on the cold cobblestones and nailed his scrotum to the ground, many people were not so much shocked as hoping to scrub the cringing image from their eyes. He didn’t quite gain the hipster world-wide popularity and saturation media coverage […]