International correspondents often cite the difficult role objectivity plays while covering terrorism, since the nature and genesis of media coverage is often prone to sensationalism. Yet, if exercised with professionalism and integrity,...
Eleven years ago, on October 7, the widely respected Russian journalist and human rights activist Anna Politkovskaya, an outspoken critic of Putin’s government and propaganda, was murdered. The courageous Politkovskaya, who was not...
At first glance, Vladimir Pastukhov says, Moscow’s approach to the Skripal scandal appears “irrational and inadequate, in fact, the Kremlin is acting precisely according to ‘a protocol’ developed earlier” following the political...
There now can be little doubt that Moscow and the Russian security services were behind the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter, but even as ever more evidence points in that direction and ever more officials accept that verdict,...
US President Donald Trump is doing everything he can to delay the implementation of Congressionally-mandated sanctions on Russia, Yury Makarenko says, and that means that “at this time,” he “is playing on the side of Russia” to the...
Speaking to this year’s Valdai Conference, Vladimir Putin delivered a speech blaming the West for all of Russia’s problems and indicating that he will take a hard line in response, a speech that some commentators are already comparing...
Many Russian commentators are suggesting that Donald Trump’s refusal to impose Congress-mandated sanctions on Russian leaders is an act of “sabotage” – see, for example, Aleksandr Nemets’ essay on Kasparov.ru about recent...
Pavel Chikov, head of the Kazan-based Agora Human Rights Organization, says that after Vladimir Putin is re-elected, the Kremlin leader will neutralize the political and regional elites, pull out of the Council of Europe, restore the death...
Vladimir Putin’s power is “not legal because he was not once chosen in correspondence with the law,” but it is “legitimate” because “the majority” of those people under his control recognize it as such since they know that...
The flood of news stories from a country as large, diverse and strange as the Russian Federation often appears to be is far too large for anyone to keep up with. But there needs to be a way to mark those which can’t be discussed in...
Free independent media is a necessary condition for democracy to function in any country. Censorship, on the other hand, is rampant in all its forms in dictatorships. These definitions may be relevant in a black and white world; in...
