Since being released from prison following his five-year sentence for embezzlement charges, Alexey Navalny’s campaign for mayor of Moscow has come under intense scrutiny, both from pro-Kremlin and oppositional quarters. Below, Interpreter translator Catherine A. Fitzpatrick weighs some of the controversies surrounding Navalny’s nationalism, his past comments about minorities and foreigners and his plan for barring […]
Currently north Asia is abuzz with military activity. And for once the main culprit is not North Korea, it’s Russia. But the activity is confined to drills and training exercises. Russia and China have been holding large-scale naval exercises—China has sent seven warships and Russia has committed its Pacific Fleet flagship, the guided-missile Slava class […]
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 […]
