Welcome to our new column, Russia Update, where we will be closely following day-to-day developments in Russia, including the Russian government’s foreign and domestic policies. The previous issue is here, and see also our Russia This Week. A Russian MP has called for banning iPhones for use by parliamentarians, and a once-revered statute of Steve […]
Staunton, October 1 – A dangerous but entirely predictable trend is occurring in both Russia and the West: Many who see what Vladimir Putin is doing in Ukraine as a crime are saying he is mad or insane, an approach that simultaneously makes him less responsible for what he has done and leaves others less […]
Staunton, September 4 – In an action that recalls some of the worst behavior of Brezhnev’s times, the current Russian government has sent a Ukrainian officer it seized and illegally transferred to Russia for “forensic psychiatric evaluation” at Moscow’s Serbski Institute where Soviet-era dissidents were infamously treated for “sluggish schizophrenia.” That has prompted a group […]
Updated Daily. The Russian parliament has passed a number of laws designed to rein in an increasingly free and outspoken blogosphere, lately filled with criticism of Putin’s aggression in Ukraine. Legislators have passed a law mandating bloggers with more than 3,000 readers to register as mass media under the restrictive Russian press law. If dissenters […]
