Russia and Italy just go together.
Because Italy had the warmest relations with the Soviet Union of any Nato member state, Russia’s best-selling car was based on a Fiat and manufactured in a town named after the head of the Italian Communist Party.
But it’s no longer movies, Ladas …
‘Opposition supporters who attended the Friday Prayer service in Tehran had responded to calls to chant “Death to America!” by chanting “Death to Russia!” instead’, Robert Mackey writes in today’s New York Times blog.
Though I completely agree with the commenter who noted
‘I’m not sure …
That question, asked at Russia’s opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta back in 2006, after the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, was answered on Wednesday with the slaying of human rights activist Natalya Estemirova.
“Who is to blame for Natalya’s murder?”, asks Oleg Orlov, head of Moscow-based Memorial. …
When Putin imprisoned Mikhail Khodorkovsky for wanting to sell parts of his oil business to the West, he was criticised abroad for political interference in the energy market.
What to make then of the EU and US cheerleading for Nabucco, a pipeline with no economic rationale being built solely for the …
‘What kind of future are Russia and America going to have together? What world order will replace the Cold War?’, asked Obama in Moscow. ‘Those questions still don’t have clear answers’.
Today’s New York Times described America”s new style of diplomacy as one in which ‘yesterday’s enemies may become tomorrow’s partners …
Almost exactly a year ago, one lucky Russian family received a free brand new SUV from the government. What had they done to deserve such a gift? They managed to have a baby on Russia Day – June 12th.
That much publicised campaign was only the tip of a creepy pro-natalist …
Is Europe suffering from a hope-defict? Dominique Moisi a visiting professor at Harvard thinks so and he outlines (in the Brussels beltway premier Newspaper the European Voice) that this may delay Europe’s revovery from economic crisis. Citizens of the US, on the other hand, he believes …
Margaret Warner (The News Hour) is doing a good job of setting the scene for President Obama’s visit to Russia next week. Talking in Moscow with a cross-section of media, government spokesmen, activists and Kremlin-watchers, Warner’s reports this week paint a fairly nuanced picture. Stability but arbitrary authority. …
For his birthday on Friday, Russia’s most famous prisoner Mikhail Khodorkovsky held an online Q&A with readers of Gazeta.ru, a popular online daily.
In it he defends himself against allegations of robber-baronism and asset stripping, and says: “I decided to take the risk and have never felt sorry …
“What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers”, wrote two men much wiser and more bearded than I. “But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield …
“It might seem impolitic to embrace what many regard as a looming global catastrophe. But this has not stopped the Russians”.
So begins an article in the Abu Dhabi based National about the future of my arctic hometown of Murmansk in the age of global warming.
Feted in Soviet …
Most English-speaking readers didn’t know about Ingushetia until this morning, when its president Yunus-Bek Yevkurov miraculously and barely survived a massive suicide bomb that nearly levelled a whole city block (lending added weight, if any were needed, to Russian officials’ traffic aversion).
The headline grabbing stunt, on the …
Amidst all the media intoxication with the Iran protests, you can count on Russia to deliver a well-advised downer. Sean at Sean’s Russia Blog helpfully provides a digested read of the press reactions to the post-election unrest.
“Iran”, Sean writes, “only highlights the nadir of political change in …
When the French Finance Minister says that the EU needs to cooperate with the US, that’s when you know the economic crisis is really devestating! Perhaps that’s a bit unfair to the French, as Ms. Christine Lagarde in part of the most pro-US Government in French history, under Americophile President Sarkozy. But it …
As Jon Stewart of the Daily Show said, the unwritten understanding between the US & Europe during the US elections was: We elect Obama, you love us again. A survey today in the Wall Street Journal shows that though this has generally true, the view of Europeans regarding the …
