What’s wrong with the Russian opposition? Everyone (except the AP) agreed that yesterday’s long awaited protest march in Moscow failed to inspire. The LA Times described how Only 20,000 people at most had shown up for a litany of somewhat listless chants, speeches and songs against President Vladimir Putin, before going home past endless lines of […]
Nestled among gorgeous mountains, blessed with exotic cuisine, and loved for its arts and outgoing people, Georgia has many suitors. Long courted by her northern Russian neighbor, she has in recent years been beset by foreign admirers, bearing gifts of “democracy” and “growth” that (they promise) will ensure she lives happily ever after. With parliamentary […]
Recent public opinion polls in Russia showed that an approval rating for the Russian President Vladimir Putin fell to its lowest level since December 2011, when thousands rallied against parliamentary election fraud, chanting “Putin should go.” In the meantime, the share of those who hold negative outlook of Putin’s presidency reached 35 percent, compared to […]
So now we know for sure: Putin “enjoys events involving the participation of fauna” (his own words). The whole world has seen the Russian president swanning around (he he, see what I did there?) on his ultralight, pursued by just two disorientated looking cranes. The spectacle was so bizarre that, beyond a few zany pictures and […]
In this week’s shameless FPA self-promotion, my piece about Pussy Riot somehow infiltrated today’s International Herald Tribune and got a few angry looks. So, is it hypocritical for Western mainstream media to champion a group of anarchist feminists over in Russia for behaviour that it would almost certainly not approve of at home? Read on […]
Whether drowned out last week by the U.S. presidential campaign, or the crash of August waves at the beach, a rare but notable news item may have missed most readers. A suicide bomber in eastern Afghanistan killed four Americans, one of whom was a civilian aid worker, only the second such U.S. professional to lose […]
Four years after the Russian-Georgian war of 2008, the event is back in the news, in Russia if not here. Moreover, it appears to be tied to a power struggle, and the news also resurrects old questions about exactly how that war started. Understanding the precise order of events is key to understanding the war, […]
These days, the anachronism of the U.N. Security Council has long been taken for granted. After all, the world has moved on a bit from 60 years ago when four European counties and China called the shots. Or has it? Of the five top gold medal winners in the London Olympics, only South Korea is […]
My last post on Pussy Riot received a thought-provoking comment from a reader. John was disgusted at the ‘perennial “whataboutism” that pervades [my] Russophilic interpretation of the Pussy Riot action’. But what about whataboutism? And what is it, really? According to the FT, it was the Communist-era tactic of deflecting foreign criticism of, say, human […]
A few months ago, few Americans had heard of Pussy Riot, the feminist punk band turned latest icon of the anti-Putin opposition. That’s because the band was known under a different name in the US press: ‘P***y Riot’. In an amusing and predictable turn of events, the same American newspapers have got busy accusing Putin […]
Just what is Bill Browder really playing at? After the high-flying American investment banker was ousted from Russia in 2005, his lawyer Sergey Magnitsky was killed in police custody four years later. It is said that Magnitsky earned his Steve Biko-like death after the lawyer, investigating the authorities’ dismantling of Browder’s Hermitage hedge fund in […]
While not a movie that makes you say “Wow!” Charlie Wilson’s War is a solid film. Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts and Philip Seymour Hoffman are excellent in their roles. The story revolves around Hanks as Wilson, a United States congressman who likes to party. Wilson appears to be the most unlikely candidate to help people in the developing world which is why this movie is so surprising. Roberts […]
Isn’t it ironic? On the same day that Putin signed Russia’s official accession into the world economy, he also signed a law essentially labelling NGO workers foreign agents. As the country edges another step closer to western economics, it slips further from western ideals of human rights. Was this just another example of Russia’s characteristic […]
As Russia vetoed a Western-backed UN resolution imposing non-military sanctions on Syria as “unilateral” and directed only against the regime, it once again demonstrated that its position on the Syrian crisis remains unchanged, emphasizing its split with the West. The repetitive pattern of the Kremlin’s refusal to pressure regime change is often explained by […]
As Russia counts its dead from yet another summer tragedy, investigations continue into how flooding had killed 171 in Krymsk, near the Black Sea. “A system to warn the residents was set up,” confessed Emergency Minister Vladimir Puchkov yesterday, “but, unfortunately, not everyone was warned early enough.” The regional governor immediately dismissed the head of the Krymsk […]