The KGB and its predecessors were not the highly disciplined professionals and successful managers Vladimir Putin and the numerous state-controlled media outlets want Russians to believe, according to a new book on the organization’s...
Vladimir Putin needs Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov so that “compared to him,” the Kremlin leader will appear “in the eyes of the West to be the lesser evil,” Igor Eidman says. Thus, it works to Putin’s benefit to ascribe to...
Novaya gazeta has made continuing contributions to exposing the vicious violence of Ramzan Kadyrov’s regime against its opponents, including gays and anyone whom the Chechen leader views as getting in his way. Its latest expose of mass...
The trial in the murder of Boris Nemtsov, one of Russia’s leading opposition figures, is coming to a close. Leonid Martynyuk, friend and colleague of the slain opposition leader, who recently received political asylum in the United...
Moscow has taken great pride in the fact that the number of Russians incarcerated in its penal system has fallen in recent years, but it has not stressed two current shortcomings of the system: the number of prisoners per 100,000 (434)...
Many people of good will around the world have been horrified by the case of Rizvan Ibragimov who has been subject to electro-shocks and other forms of torture for writing a history of Chechnya challenging the version approved by Ramzan...
February 27 will mark exactly six months since the death of my close friend and colleague, Russian and Ukrainian journalist Aleksandr Shchetinin. And the following day, February 28 will mark the second anniversary of the murder of Russian...
Today, many people around the world will be commemorating the second anniversary of the murder of opposition Russian politician Boris Nemtsov near the Kremlin, but it doing so, they should not forget all the other journalists, opposition...
Why have so many litigations been initiated and how could it all end for Ukraine? When can we expect the first court decisions? Not very soon, as cases submitted to international courts take years. For example, in March 2007,...
The murder of the Russian ambassador to Turkey is the first victim of the hatred of Russia and Russians among the world’s billion Sunni Muslims that Vladimir Putin has sparked by his support for Syria’s brutal Bashar al-Assad and...
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...
