The most terrible thing for Russia about its war in Ukraine is the extent to which that conflict has “contributed to the transformation of an authoritarian regime into a neo-totalitarian one,” something with horrific consequences far...
Budget documents may seem dry reading most of the time, but they often provide clearer indications than anything else of what the priorities of rulers are. Vladimir Putin’s new budget numbers show that for him, propaganda is more...
Even as Moscow denounces anything it views as a manifestation of fascism abroad and prepares to mark the anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany, the Russian authorities are hosting tomorrow a meeting of Europe’s neo-Nazis, extreme...
There are many ways that the powerless can protest their status – jokes, indifference and contempt among them. But some residents of Russian-occupied Crimea have come up with a new one – they’ve come up with some invented...
Russia’s treatment of the Crimean Tatars since the Anschluss a year ago recalls that of Hitler’s Germany between 1933 and 1938 when the authorities did everything they could to show that the Jews were not welcome and should immediately...
Since the Maidan, a new Kyiv poll shows, the share of Ukrainians favoring EU integration has risen from 41 percent to 47.2 percent since the Maidan, while that backing integration with Moscow has fallen from 35 percent to 12.3 percent. At...
In the USSR, it was sometimes said, there was no sex because that subject could not be addressed directly in the media. However idiotic that might have been, a new dreadful truth is emerging: in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, there will be no...
Political commentator Vitaliy Portnikov wrote in a recent article that the main question remaining after the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine adopted amendments to the special law on self-government in the Donbas is whether Putin would dare...
Kyiv analyst Taras Berezovets says that there is no threat that Vladimir Putin will be overthrown by a coup, however much his underlings may fight among themselves in ways that may even help him keep power, but there is a very real threat...
The discussions we observed during the debate (in Verkhovna Rada) on parliamentary amendments to the law on the special status of certain areas of the Donbas, as well as the angry reaction to these events by Russian diplomats and the...
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...
