International
Inside the Putin Youth Cult
Michael Hammerschlag has an insightful item called “Putin’s Children” on the Kremlin-funded Nashi youth group in the International Herald Tribune. The 120,000-odd Putin Youth members are perhaps the most creepy demonstration of Putin’s “Back to the Future” cult of personality – youth groups created, supported, and used by the Kremlin to harass, bully and intimidate […]
Jul 6, 2007 | Continued
Birds of a Feather Dept.
What do Hugo Chavez, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Vladimir Putin have in common? Many things, in fact. All three lead increasingly repressive petro-states whose regimes are kept in power by the high price of oil and the power it purchases. All are dealing heavily in the world of armaments, with Russia selling weaponry and technology to […]
Jun 29, 2007 | Continued
Rights in Russia: Pushing Back
Recent developments in the Russian courts and parliament make it clear that the Russian opposition movement is having an impact. First we saw a more respectful security presence for our marches in June. We were allowed to march in relative peace, although intimidation and harassment of our activists and organizers continued prior to the marches. […]
Jun 28, 2007 | Continued
Hudson Institute on USA-Russia Relations
The Hudson Institute has released a new report on the eve of the Bush-Putin summit at the American president’s residence in Kennebunkport, Maine. Four respected experts from the seven-member study group issued a joint statement that led with the remark, “Russia is reverting to patterns of behavior characteristic of the Soviet Union.” The report’s recommendations […]
Jun 26, 2007 | Continued
Lantos on Communism and Putin
US Representative Tom Lantos has long been one of the strongest and most outspoken western lawmakers when it comes to standing up for democracy and individual freedoms around the world. Lantos, a Democrat and now the chairman of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, is a Holocaust survivor who later fled the Communist takeover […]
Jun 18, 2007 | Continued
Putin’s Rules on Trade
Last weekend Vladimir Putin attacked the World Trade Organization for being “archaic, nondemocratic and unwieldy.” As The Wall Street Journal pointed out yesterday, WTO director Pascal Lamy was quick to remind that these characteristics haven’t stopped Russia from attempting to join. The article continued: Yet the biggest sticking point concerns Russia’s failure to fulfill promises […]
Jun 16, 2007 | Continued
Bush’s Backtrack
In his statement at the June 5 Prague Conference on Security and Democracy, US President Bush said, “In Russia, reforms that once promised to empower citizens have been derailed, with troubling implications for democratic development.” The next day, in his remarks to the travel pool of reporters, Bush found it necessary to explain his speech. […]
Jun 8, 2007 | Continued
Estonian President on Russia and the G8
In a long interview, Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves mentioned Russia’s continued presence in the Group of 8. Ilves: . . . Briefly, democracies don’t go to war with each other. Democracies don’t make warlike threats against each other. Either that truism is false or the notion of a G8 of the industrialized democracies getting […]
Jun 6, 2007 | Continued
Bush: Russian Reforms “Derailed”
Everything has a start, and today might have seen the beginning of a long-overdue toughening of US policy toward the Putin police state in Russia. President Bush’s remarks in Prague were still cautious, and it remains to be seen if there will be any follow-up as he heads to Germany for the G8 summit, where […]
Jun 5, 2007 | Continued
America Discovers the Other Russia
What follows are excerpts from this May 31 address by David Kramer, Deputy Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs. It is only a shame that these words were spoken not in Moscow but in Baltimore. Will they be repeated in Heiligendamm, Germany, at the G8 summit June 6-8? Or will the West’s leaders again […]
Jun 2, 2007 | Continued