In 2024, I’ll be middle aged, turning 40. Maybe filthy rich, much more probably struggling to feed the kids. Or without any kids. Or maybe even dead – who knows? The polar ice caps might be gone and the US broken up into individual chunks run by China and Norway. Maybe not. But one thing […]
Another of Azerbaijan’s prominent defense lawyers was effectively disbarred late last week, the third such incident involving attorneys for opposition figures in recent months. Elchin Namazov, who had been representing four defendants involved in street protests in April, was expelled from Azerbaijan’s “Collegium,” an organization that vets attorneys for participation in felony trials. Lawyers Khalid […]
The assassination of former President Burhanuddin Rabbani is a signal of things to come: the Taliban have demonstrated that they have upper the hand over the Afghan military and police. The Taliban have shown that they are not weakening and that they will not settle the conflict in Afghanistan on any terms but their own. […]
Of all the things to envy about Alexander Lebedev – his billions, his international media empire, his mansion on the grounds of Hampton Court Palace – what most Russians are really jealous of is that it was he and not them who knocked out Sergei Polonsky. Sergei who? Now internationally ridiculed as the man who split […]
I remember when Russian haute cuisine was a 10 letter word: mayonnaise. When the first “Western” pizzeria opened in my home town of Murmansk around 1994, its house specialty certainly looked like pizza: a slick flatbread baked in a giant rectangular pan and sliced into plate sized squares. I queued for ages to get my […]
Ten years ago the story of the Taliban as a criminal organization began its unfolding international public narrative. Ten years ago the story of Islamist rebellion and insurgency in Afghanistan dovetailed directly with the story of American politics in the 21st century. That story is run through with cheap talk, carnage, forsaken promises and missed […]
As if any more evidence were needed that Putin will return to the presidency, Britain’s David Cameron has raced to Moscow to mend fences. Of course, this being Cameron, his limp supplicating came with an extra dose of hypocritical moralising. The UK has not been talking to Moscow because of Russia’s refusal to extradite suspected […]
Vladimir Putin was at a ceremony a few days ago at which he pressed the button that began the process of delivering natural gas to Germany through the Nord Stream pipeline. According to Gazprom, Nord Stream is the first direct link between Russia and the European gas transmission system. It runs under the Baltic Sea, […]
What is it about transition societies? No matter how far away they are from each other or how different their culture and history, they have much the same problems: inequality, crime, corruption, a single dominant party, health crises, poor education systems and pervasive nostalgia for the old regimes. Russia’s transition from Communism and South Africa’s […]
“An irreparable loss for ice hockey”. That’s how Vyacheslav Fetisov, head of KHL, the Russian equivalent of the NHL, called today’s horrific plane crash that wiped out the Locomotiv ice-hockey team en route to Belarus, killing 43. Only two people survived the crash as their 18 year old Russian Yak-42 jet failed to gain altitude, […]
As Russia desperately struggles to make amends with Libya’s rebel government, a fantastic new article uncovers some amazing parallels between Libya’s revolution and Russia’s transition from Communism. Writing in the Exiled, the web-only successor of the defunct Russian gonzo paper, “War Nerd” Gary Brechter observes that Gaddhafi’s Libya and Brezhnev’s Russia were very similar: Libya […]
On the occasion of Eid, the celebration at the end of the month of Ramadan, Mullah Omar declared the Taliban are willing to deal politically with the U.S and President Karzai’s government Kabul. The Taliban leader let it be known that even though he is now principally interested in a workable prisoner swap, in the […]
Azerbaijani courts have convicted and sentenced seven defendants in cases relating to protests in April of this year and the parliamentary elections last November. Six defendants (Babek Hasanov, Zulfugar Eyvazov, Elshan Hasanov, Arif Alishli, Elnur Israfilov and Sahib Karimov) in Baku were convicted of charges of “organizing actions resulting in the violation of public order […]
Was the August Coup the blueprint for the Arab Spring? Sociologist Boris Kagarlitsky says no. “The only thing the Arab Spring and the end of the USSR have in common is that they happened to involve large crowds. It’s like comparing a political rally with a football match, or the French Revolution with a rock […]
First the bad news: Russia is officially the Unhappiest Nation in Europe. Only 37% of Russians are happy despite the economic downturn, according to a German study publicized in the Moscow Times. This compares to a whopping 80% of Greeks, who are happy despite not even having an economy. (Denmark, with 96%, came out tops). […]