Special Reports

Turning on those reporters who have covered the war in the Donbass first-hand right now is hardly going to help this situation.

The Russian liberal opposition Democratic Coalition fell apart yesterday as anti-corruption activist Alexey Navalny and Vladimir Milov, former deputy energy ministe broke ranks with former finance minister Mikhail Kasyanov and his colleagues in Parnas. Behind their differences, however was the relentless pressure, organizing restrictions and privacy-busting of Putin’s intelligence service – factors that won’t go away even if people paper over differences.

With the upcoming broadcast of a BBC documentary on the conspiracy theories surrounding the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 on July 17, 2014, several media outlets, both Western and Russian, have revived some old and debunked claims. This morning, Britain’s Daily Express ran, in a break from its usual staples of Princess Diana stories and […]

The Russian opposition made their first test of the upcoming fall elections in Barvikha, a prestigious suburb of Moscow where top Russian officials have their homes. When they uncovered obvious fraud there, they felt that Ella Pamfilova, the new head of the Central Elections Commission proposed by President Vladimir Putin

From fly-bys and barrel rolls to an unprecedented level of submarine activity, Russian military aggression has escalated sharply in recent weeks. So has the Kremlin’s rhetoric

Sergey Lavrov likes to think of himself as a man of ideas, whose contribution to shaping his country’s foreign policy comes from the ability to place it in a long historical context. That said, Lavrov cares little for history properly understood.

Originally published on March 23, 2016, revised on March 24, 2016. The crises in Ukraine and Syria have undermined the geopolitical balance that has kept us safe for generations It’s perhaps an outdated cliche that voters do not care about foreign policy. Thanks to the horrific news in Brussels, terrorism in Paris, the chaos in […]

Five years ago the world was glued to Twitter, Internet news agencies, and live television, where one could watch the “old world order” fall apart in real time. On December 19, 2010, Mohamed Bouazizi’s vegetable cart, his livelihood, was seized by Tunisian police. He lit himself on fire, perhaps the only method of protest which […]

A Ukrainian prisoner of war is now on the fifth day of a dry hunger strike, accepting neither food nor water, and nearing the end of a show trial in the Russian border town of Donetsk. With her health deteriorating and the outcome of this much-publicized and highly political case certain to be a guilty […]

On Monday, February 15, the EU Council took a decision to lift sanctions on 170 people and 3 companies in Belarus. Not for the first time, the EU is lifting sanctions on a dictator — and not for the first time “the last dictator in Europe” (as Alyaksandr Lukashenka is known) is being pardoned for […]