Almost no one believes that the offer Ramzan Kadyrov made this weekend to step down is on the level. So what is the wily Chechen leader up to? On this week’s Power Vertical Briefing, we unpack Kadyrov’s announcement. Joining me are RFE/RL Senior Editor Steve Gutterman and Pavel Butorin, managing editor of RFE/RL’s Russian-language television program Current Time. Also […]
Dmitry Medvedev recently played a telling little head game. When the Russian prime minister said at the Munich Security Conference that Moscow and the West had “slid into a new Cold War,” he essentially created a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t situation. “If the West agrees that it is a new Cold War, then it automatically acknowledges Russia’s global-power […]
Chechnya’s mercurial leader Ramzan Kadyrov will be back in the news this week as the first anniversary of Boris Nemtsov’s assassination approaches and Russia’s opposition prepares to release a lengthy report on his activities. On this week’s Power Vertical Briefing, we look at the likely impact of opposition leader Ilya Yashin’s upcoming report, titled National Security […]
Anybody who was expecting Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev to make conciliatory noises at the Munich Security Conference must have been severely disappointed. And anybody who was expecting the cease-fire agreement reached in Munich last week to result in an actual cease-fire must be severely disappointed as well. Not only is Russia’s bombing campaign in […]
You’ve gotta love it when a Kremlin official gets caught telling the truth. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova this week called a NATO plan to station air, naval, and ground forces in six Eastern European countries — Bulgaria, Poland, Romania, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania — part of a strategy to “contain” Russia. Well, yeah. That’s exactly […]
NOTE: The Power Vertical Briefing is RFE/RL’s short look ahead to the stories expected to make news in Russia in the coming week. It is hosted by Brian Whitmore, author of the Power Vertical blog, and appears every Monday. Reports have surfaced that Vladimir Yakunin, a longtime crony of Vladimir Putin, is being investigated by […]
The Power Vertical is a column and podcast by RFE/RL’s Brian Whitmore. He’s like a cartoon villain, except that he’s real. He can be pretty amusing, except when he’s terrifying. He’s a bit of a clown and more than a bit childish, but he’s also one of the most powerful men in Russia. It’s pretty […]
The Power Vertical is a column and podcast by RFE/RL’s Brian Whitmore, syndicated here with permission. Russian officials seem to have developed an execution fetish of late. One example, of course, is the disturbing video Ramzan Kadyrov posted on Instagram showing opposition figures Mikhail Kasyanov and Vladimir Kara-Murza in the crosshairs of a sniper’s rifle. Another is […]
NOTE: The Power Vertical Briefing is RFE/RL’s short look ahead to the stories expected to make news in Russia in the coming week. It is hosted by Brian Whitmore, author of the Power Vertical blog, and appears every Monday. As Western powers push for a final settlement to the conflict in Donbas, Ukrainian President Petro […]
The Power Vertical is hosted by RFE/RL’s Brian Whitmore and is syndicated by The Interpreter. The international community should thank Russia for forcefully seizing Crimea. The United States seeks the dismemberment of Russia so it can take over its natural resources. And European leaders take their orders from Washington. These are just a few of […]
