Russia Archive

The France-based non-governmental organization Reporters Without Borders recently released its Worldwide Press Freedom index, which ranks Russia as 147th on a list of 168 countries in terms of protecting journalists and media expression. Russia’s 147th ranking is five spots behind the Democratic Republic of Congo, the site of the bloodiest conflict in the world, and just a few spots ahead of Iraq, where 85 journalists have died violently since 2003. Russia even allegedly lags nineteen spots behind Kazakhstan, where President-for-Life Nursultan Nazarbayev erected a golden statue of himself and whose government has threatened to sue the British comedian Sacha Baron […]

Over the last month, Russia has experienced a surge of contract killings, with five high-profile murders — a potent reminder that the country is far from the stable democracy its leaders say it is. The Oct. 7 murder of the anti-Kremlin journalist and human rights advocate Anna Politkovskaya is the most prominent of these, and the latest of 11 murders of Russian journalists in the last six years. Sadly, however, Politkoskaya’s is not the most recent such killing. Aleksandr Plokhin, manager of the Moscow branch of the state-owned Vneshtorgbank, was shot dead on Oct. 10. And Anatoly Voronin, an executive […]

I volki syty i ovtsy tsely. “The wolves are full and the sheep are still alive.” That Russian version of “having one’s cake and eating it too” describes the current state of Russian foreign affairs in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). In the few past weeks, Russian President Vladimir Putin has not only intensified Russia’s policy regarding Georgia, but convinced the United Nations Security Council, led by the United States, to pass a resolution that gives Russia unprecedented clout in the sovereign territory of its struggling southern neighbor. Russia introduced the resolution, which passed on Oct. 16, as part […]

Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a statement Oct. 1 declaring that the Georgian government’s arrest of seven Russian officers was needlessly provocative, and suggesting a U.S. hand in the incident. “There seem to be some powers which specialize in creating a new crisis every day, thinking it will distract attention from the old problems,” Putin said. “In the short term it might have some effect, but it absolutely will not help in resolving old and very serious crises around the world.” Putin compared the Georgian government’s actions to the paranoia of the U.S.S.R. under Stalin and his secret police chief […]