Two days ago, the discussion on social networks was about how people on the EU sanctions list could nevertheless travel to France and even give press conferences in Paris. The fourth most powerful official in Russia, the Speaker of the Russian State Duma, Sergei Naryshkin, did just that. He found himself on the EU sanctions […]
John Wilson, a Scottish writer, is the author of The City of the Plague, a scary story from the 17th century which takes place in London. In Russian school, we don’t study Wilson, but we read Alexander Pushkin. Among Pushkin’s Little Tragedies, there is one called A Feast in the Time of the Plague, a […]
Ulrich Speck is a Visiting Scholar at Carnegie Europe and an expert on German-Russian relations, arguably the fulcrum on which the European Union’s response to Russia’s invasion and annexation of Crimea will pivot. The Interpreter‘s Editor-in-Chief Michael Weiss invited Speck to explain Berlin’s changing posture toward Moscow, and what effect this may also have on […]
While most eyes have been on the Moscow mayoral race as the September 8 election, a greater drama is playing out in Russia’s regional elections. Across the country, from Zabaikalsky Krai to Arkhangelsk, the fate of United Russia is being decided. After nearly two decades as the prevailing power of a dominant party system, United […]
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 […]
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 […]
Boris Nemtsov has occupied many roles in post-Soviet Russia, both in government and in the parallel polis that is oppositional politics. He was first elected governor of Nizhny Novgorod, whose successful economic reforms in that region carved a political pathway that would ultimately take him into the deputy premiership under the Yeltsin government. Nemtsov has […]
The photographs showing U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry smiling and slapping palms with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov are being circulated by many Syrians opposed to the Bashar al-Assad’s regime as visual obituaries of their cause. Weren’t these men supposed to be on opposite sides of the Syrian conflict? And why does the Herman Munster-ish Lavrov […]
All show trials in Russia commence with adjournments, as if to purposefully use as banal legal procedure to interrupt the anticipatory anxiety of seeing the Kremlin face off with one of its enemies. So it was with Mikhail Khodorkovsky, with Pussy Riot, and now with the trial of opposition blogger Aleksei Navalny. After all the […]
