The International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Association, organizer of the World Championship event in Sochi in February 2017, has decided to move the event from Russia due to a potential boycott by countries and athletes concerned over Russian doping.
Staunton, December 9, 2015 Yevgeny Vistishko, an environmental activist who was put in prison by the Russian authorities for exposing the abuse of the environment by senior officials in the run up to the Sochi Olympics, is now in failing health after having declared a hunger strike on November 23. Vitishko who was supposed to […]
War returns to Ukraine, as fighting has broken out across the front. World powers and intelligence sources continue to debate whether the Metrojet crash in Egypt was an act of terrorism. These are big, ugly headlines, but another headline may give insight into the source of so many of Russia’s problems — President Vladimir Putin’s […]
Staunton, November 6 – Many Russians are upset that their country lost 4.7 square kilometers last week as a result of Moscow’s handing over of a border parcel to China, but so far at least, they have expressed less anger that their country is losing 100 times as much territory every year to global warming […]
Staunton, June 5 – The contrast between the support Russian officials are giving to refugees from Ukraine and the complete absence of such support for Circassians fleeing from Syria is leading to the intensification of anti-Russian nationalism among the Circassians in the North Caucasus, according to Irina Babich. Babich, a senior scholar at the Moscow […]
Staunton, June 5 – Even before the upcoming trials of former FIFA staffers confirm, as seems likely, that Moscow corruptly secured the hosting of the 2018 World Cup, a finding that would make it unthinkable to allow the competition to occur in Russia, there are already three compelling reasons why the international community should insist […]
Staunton, January 6 – Vladimir Putin’s aggression in Ukraine has largely disappeared from the front pages of Western newspapers and the lead stories of Western news broadcasts, a development reflecting the short attention span of many people but one that gives the Kremlin leader a victory because this lowers pressure on governments to oppose Russia’s […]
Staunton, December 25 – Over the last year, Russia has experienced a coup “without a change of institutions, symbols or personnel,” being changed in even more significant ways than it was in the course of the “strong mutations of 2011-2013,” according to Aleksandr Rubtsov, the head of the Moscow Center for Research on Ideological Processes. […]
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. Russian legislators finally received an answer to their queries from military authorities about soldiers killed in combat in Ukraine — which is that they can’t say, it’s a “state secret.” […]
Staunton, October 18 – Like many dictatorships, the Russian government of Vladimir Putin likes to use “legal” means to oppress its population, because that sleight of hand gives the patina of legality to what it is doing, thus confusing both its own people and even more those abroad who might otherwise condemn it. But three […]
