Russia
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Vladimir Putin: A 21st-century czar
It's just after 11 p.m., and Vladimir Putin is driving down a highway outside Moscow, hugging the inside lane as his advance and chase cars bomb along beside him, keeping the diverted traffic at bay.
Putin Rising, Russia Regressing - The Editors
T he return of Vladimir Putin to the presidency of Russia is yet another unhappy milestone in that tragic nation’s post-Soviet history.
They nervously recall the growing casualty list of regimes that miscalculated their response to demonstrations, most usually by allowing well-publicised brutality on the part of the state security forces. The rally today in Moscow is a show of strength by the opposition in response to blatant ballot-rigging in the parliamentary elections last Sunday and the police violence that followed.
Leading article: A test for people power in Russia - Leading Articles - Opinion
The U.S. and Israel are widely assumed to be responsible for the Stuxnet computer worm that hit Iran’s nuclear facilities. But Moscow has just as good a motive. The Stuxnet computer worm is widely considered to be a U.S.
Was Russia Behind Stuxnet?
Bear nettles the eagle, dragon smiles
Bear nettles the eagle, dragon smiles By M K Bhadrakumar From an apparently impromptu remark on Monday, the United States has elevated the Russian parliamentary election held on December 5 to a core issue of US-Russia ties. The dramatic escalation of rhetoric scatters the continued pretences over the Barack Obama administration's "reset" of relations.
On Monday night, 24 hours after the polls closed in Russia's parliamentary elections and United Russia claimed victory with 49 percent of the vote, some 6,000 young Russians stood out in the cold rain in the park at Chistye Prudy voicing their dissatisfaction.
#OccupyMoscow - By Julia Ioffe
Putin’s canny politics in Russian elections
S peculation is growing that Vladimir Putin will have to ease his grip on power if he wants to remain Russia’s leader. His approval rating, at 80 percent a year ago, has been driven to 60 by, among other things, an uncertain economic future, critics exploiting the Internet’s increasing popularity and the slowly maturing disgust among Russians at the prime minister’s cynical plan to return to the presidency next year.
The Autumn of the US-Russia Reset
A colleague and I have described the post-Soviet era in Russia as the “ age of impunity ,” whereby even the most howlingly obvious crimes of man or state are implausibly denied or whitewashed in a manner redolent of Stalinist propaganda.
J ohn Dunlop is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and an expert on Russian domestic politics, Russian nationalism, and the decline of the Soviet Union. In the 1990s, he was an election monitor in a number of former Eastern Bloc countries transitioning to democracy.
Whither Russia? - Interview
Curse of the Krokodil: Fears as home-made Heroin that's rotting Russian addicts' flesh spreads across Europe
Dubbed 'the drug that eats junkies' Majority of addicts die within one year of first hit 1.2million addicts in Russia Cases now reported in Germany By Lee Moran UPDATED: 15:57 GMT, 18 November 2011Condoleezza Rice Blames Putin for War with Georgia
The Atlantic magazine’s website reported what would have been a surprising bit of news.25 October 2011 | Issue 4752
From Liberal to Lackey | Opinion
A Moscow apartment block’s tenants turn over, one vodka binge at a time. “Help me, sonny!” the old man said, holding out his hand as he lay on the landing outside the door of our Moscow apartment.