Kiev — During a midnight cab-ride, the taxi driver tells me: “No, no, I’m not a Kievyanin. ’I’m from Donetsk. Back home I was a manager, small company, we sold and installed air-conditioning.” The chauffeur tells a sad tale that is heard all over Kiev currently, but he is one of the lucky ones. Despite […]
Staunton, June 21 More than 80 percent of the five-story apartment buildings in Moscow constructed under Nikita Khrushchev have now been torn down, and the remaining ones are scheduled to be. But the program, begun in 1999, is slowing because private firms are no longer willing to take the risks involved, and the government is […]
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 […]
