In Russia, support for Bashar al-Assad’s regime cuts across political lines. Deep suspicions of Western motives for military intervention, combined with a domestic history of Islamist rebel groups, lead even the staunches...
Vladimir Vladimirovich celebrated his [Orthodox] Christmas holidays in his newly gilded city, Sochi, a gentle irony for the legions of Olympic workers for whom he cancelled the Christmas holidays a few weeks before. One wonders...
The situation in the Eastern Ukraine is creating a concern among Western leaders, especially in central Europe and Baltic states. It is constantly changing. The pro-Russian separatist groups create chaos on streets of Donetsk,...
Violence is nothing new to Eastern Europe, as the most recent events in Ukraine show. However, there are fears among many analysts that the example of violence used in Ukraine to overthrow governments could be repeated in other...
It’s not often that Russian anti-corruption activists can boast about their results. This week is one of those times. On February 12, 2013, head of RossPil and Coordinating Council of the Opposition member, Alexey Navalny...
Despite the current political climate in Moscow with its own unrest in the south, and concern over its “sphere of influence,” President Putin appears dedicated to supporting the Assad regime. Yet Russia, as well as the Unit...
Several dozen people burned to death late last week in Odessa, when violence between different political factions led to a fire in a heavily occupied building. Afterwards, witnesses uploaded to the Internet hundreds of differ...
There is something remarkably old-fashioned about the crisis that has broken out in the Crimea and the Eastern Ukraine. For once, there seems to be no pretence of following international law, not even a cursory attempt to justi...
It’s not every day that the Russian President pens an opinion piece in the New York Times, but it happened yesterday, and the American blogosphere promptly lost it collective marbles, as tweeting journalists and surprised o...