Over the last several weeks, racist crowds have reportedly attacked markets in St. Petersburg and in Moscow, often with the assistance of the police. Without cause, immigrants selling fruit in marketplaces have been beaten or arrested, and their produce destroyed, often before they are even given an opportunity to present any documents that could prove […]
Luke Rodeheffer is an MA candidate in International History and a research assistant at Koç University in Istanbul, as well as a freelance analyst on Eurasian geopolitical affairs. He tweets on Eurasian geopolitics at twitter.com/lukerodeheffer. Supporters of the Customs Union, which was introduced in 2012 to establish an economic compact between and among Russia, Ukraine, and […]
Earlier this month, EU finance ministers gave their approval for Latvia to become the eighteenth member of the Euro in January 2014. It seems counterintuitive that the country of two million people would want to enter the perpetually distressed and recession-stricken economic zone. But for Latvia it has a variety of benefits, not the least […]
Since being released from prison following his five-year sentence for embezzlement charges, Alexey Navalny’s campaign for mayor of Moscow has come under intense scrutiny, both from pro-Kremlin and oppositional quarters. Below, Interpreter translator Catherine A. Fitzpatrick weighs some of the controversies surrounding Navalny’s nationalism, his past comments about minorities and foreigners and his plan for barring […]
The sentencing of Alexey Navalny and Petr Ofitserov on July 18 had two immediate and simultaneous effects: in Moscow, a protest of several thousand swarmed a major intersection near the Kremlin, and in Kirov, prosecutors abruptly appealed the defendants’ arrest pending their appeal. Could it be that the prosecutors had responded to the demands of […]
Aleksei Navalny woke up this morning knowing that he’d be found guilty of the crime of embezzlement. What he wasn’t absolutely sure of, though probably heavily suspected, was that he’d be given a lengthy jail sentence — five years, as it turns out, which is just one fewer than the prosecutor had asked for, along […]
Last Thursday, Sergei Magnitsky was convicted of tax evasion. The only problem was he was not there to hear the verdict read. Magnitsky was killed in Moscow’s Butyrka prison in 2009, likely as a result of beatings and a lack of medical treatment. His crime was uncovering a $230 million tax fraud involving members of […]
Yesterday, I wrote about how the unrest in Pugachev, where anti-Chechen riots broke out following the murder of a local paratrooper, was the result of the weak migration regime that has allowed ethnic resentments to grow unhindered. Ethnic tension, however, are only part of the puzzle. The bigger picture comprises the ineffective way in which […]
The North Caucasus is a seething with tension in recent weeks. One area where ethnic tensions are rapidly escalating is in Pugachev. Below is part one of Sasha de Vogel’s investigation into what’s causing the tensions in the town. Part two of her investigation erosion of faith in the State is driving the protests at […]
Few developments speak so well of how far Caucasian dictatorships have come since the grey days of the Soviet Union as the fabulously wealthy and incredibly investment-savvy 15-year-old male heir of Azerbaijan’s ruling family. When he was a mere 11 years old, Heydar Aliyev, the son of Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, purchased $44 million in […]
