It was reported today that Vladimir Putin will meet with business leaders next week to discuss the possibility of granting amnesty to imprisoned entrepreneurs—prompting speculation about whether such a measure would extend to former Yukos CEO and Putin nemesis Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Formerly one of the most powerful men in Russia, this October will mark ten […]
On Friday May 10, Russian President Vladimir Putin received British Prime Minister David Cameron in Sochi, and later thanked him for a very candid conversation. Almost all of this candor was related to Syria. Meanwhile, David Cameron did not send any message to US President Barack Obama, although many experts had spoken of this on […]
On Sunday, Russian investigators revealed that a 23-year old man (subsequently identified by activists as Vladislav Tornovoi) was tortured to death, in what the authorities believe to have been an anti-gay attack. Tornovoi was brutally beaten and raped during the Victory Day celebrations on May 9th, and two men have been detained in connection with […]
The photographs showing U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry smiling and slapping palms with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov are being circulated by many Syrians opposed to the Bashar al-Assad’s regime as visual obituaries of their cause. Weren’t these men supposed to be on opposite sides of the Syrian conflict? And why does the Herman Munster-ish Lavrov […]
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrived on 7 May for his first visit to Moscow. The Russian capital met him with tanks — a dress rehearsal was under way that day for the parade to take place on Red Square on Victory Day (May 9). Whether Kerry was intimidated by Russia’s military force or […]
Yesterday, Vladimir Putin berated his Cabinet for their failure to execute the decrees to fulfill his campaign promises. He specifically attacked the Cabinet for failing to provide adequate support to regional authorities on various matters including the provision of funds—touching on a longstanding sentiment that the regions have been neglected under Putin. Whatever the sincerity of this […]
Russian dissident and author Alex Goldfarb, who knew the late Boris Berezovsky, writes about the oligarch’s now-infamous British court case against Roman Abramovich, his Kremlin intrigues, his Chechen peace-making abilities, his patronage of Vladimir Putin, and his love of women. –Ed. What women loved him for, and why Putin didn’t love him; he could reach […]
People usually expect me to say something new or I will to shout a new slogan. I haven’t thought up a new slogan, but on the other hand, I’ve come on stage with my wife, Julia. And maybe that is the new slogan — protest with your wife or together with your husband, as it […]
In my early youth, a friend of the family who had consecutively passed through the hell of German and Stalin’s concentration camps gave me A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich [by Alexander Solzhenitsyn] to read. Ever since, for many years, I have hungrily read everything I could about Stalin, about the hard years […]
The international press freedom NGO Reporters Without Borders vigorously criticised Vladimir Putin this week, listing him among its top 39 “Predators of Freedom of Information.” This updated list, released in honour of World Press Freedom Day, said of Putin: “If just one word were needed to describe Vladimir Putin, who was catapulted into the presidency […]
