The Kings of State Procurement

That summer day in 2005 completely changed the life of Pavel Yakshis, an ordinary St Petersburg motorist moonlighting as a deliveryman. He was driving his Gazelle van along Tikhoretsky Prospekt in the northern capital when a concrete mixer in front …

From Metropole to the PEN Centre

The Metropole affair of 1979 made a special contribution to the struggle for the anti-censorship Article 29 of the Russian Constitution, which the current regime has gone to great lengths to reduce to the status of a stage prop. The …

How the Press Elected the President

Boris Yeltsin won the 1996 presidential election in the second round after starting the campaign with an approval rating of 13 per cent.
Almost twenty-one years ago, on 3 July 1996, the second round of the presidential election was held in …

A Governor Who Loves to Spend

The best way to bankrupt a region: the example of Samara and Mordovia.
Governor Nikolai Merkushkin has been head of Samara Province for four years now, and for 17 years before that he was in charge of neighbouring Mordovia. This is …

The Syrian Nemesis

Almost thirty five years ago,the Soviet Union got into a war in Syria on the side of Hafezal-Assad, the Syrian ruler and the father of the present leader, with results disastrous for the USSR.
In June 1982, the Israeli Air Force …

Under the Aegis of the Foreign Ministry

Six months ago, Andrey Piontkovsky, in the course one of our conversations, came up with an unexpected hypothesis: that the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs had ‘spoiled’ Putin. Russian diplomats, in the political analyst’s opinion, are behind Putin’s anti-Americanism and anti-Westernism and, …

Age of Delirium

Not long ago, American scientists once again turned their attention to the case of Phineas P. Gage, whose strange fate raised the possibility that the brain contains a “moral center.”
On September 13, 1848, Gage, a 25-year-old construction foreman for the …

The Empire of the Presumption of Guilt: How cases are fabricated against the innocent

Russian courts of general jurisdiction acquit in fewer than 1% of cases. In Europe the average figure is around 10%. This does not indicate that the Russian law enforcement system is operating more efficiently than that of the West, just …

Sergey Chemezov’s “Russian Vacuum Cleaner”

‘Putin’s cronies’ tend to be in the news over their ‘immoderate lifestyles’, the shock revelations being usually about palaces, villas, land holdings, yacht collections, vintage car fleets, fur coat depositories, offshore accounts and multi-billion dollar fortunes (all, no doubt, acquired …

An Eyewitness Account of Events in Odessa on 2 May 2014

On 2 May 2014, I reported live to an audience of some one million viewers. Just after 11 o’clock that night, I left the blackened Trade Union House with a clear sense that a terrible tragedy had taken place, and …

Degrees of Risk

Conflict with the government in power is never-ending. The less a regime is beholden to the community, the more grounds there will be for conflict. There have been variations. At one time, when there were tsars and nobles, popular discontent …

Space Exploration – Russian Style

Here a failure at the launch of a carrier rocket, there a satellite lost in orbit… What has happened to Russia’s space industry?
The chief spokesman on space is Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who has a degree in journalism from …

Gaydamak’s Empire and Prison

The latest episode in Gaydamak’s story occurred in November 2015, when he gave himself up to the gendarmerie in the Île-de-France, the region in which Paris is located, and was taken into custody.
“My client is embarking on a new stage …

Import Substitution for Rogozin

By Vladimir Voronov
Translated by Arch Tait

For the Russian armed forces and defence industry, ruptured ties with Ukraine and Western sanctions are proving disastrous.
Calls for a full transition to using only Russian materials and components in the manufacture of military hardware …

A Necktie for Lawyer Shumkov

On the evening of Friday, 4 December 2015 the body of 43-year old Dmitry Shumkov was discovered in an office in the Federation Tower of the Moscow City business centre.
Shumkov’s name became known to the general public only from reports …

What is the Russian for Facebook?

The“weaponization of information”, the use of information for military purposes, is nothing new. In Russia today it is an imperative: if you work as a journalist, you are a combatant in the information war, and you won’t be allowed to …

One Economic Sector Booming in Russia: Corruption

This is the thirteenth in a series of guest publications and translations which The Henry Jackson Society is producing by arrangement with Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.   This publication was written by Mark Galeotti.
According to the Ministry of …

The Landowner Of All Russia

This is the twelfth in a series of guest publications and translations which The Henry Jackson Society is producing by arrangement with Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.   This publication was written by Vladimir Voronov, a Russian commentator and translated …

“If there is a hell on earth, I am in it.”

This is the eleventh in a series of guest publications and translations which The Henry Jackson Society is producing by arrangement with Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.   This publication was written by Amina Umarova, a Russian commentator and translated …

Death at the Stadium

This is the tenth in a series of guest publications and translations which The Henry Jackson Society is producing by arrangement with Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.   This publication was written by Yakov Nesterovich, a Russian commentator and translated by Arch …

Tanks on Parade

This is the ninth in a series of guest publications and translations which The Henry Jackson Society is producing by arrangement with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. This publication was written by Vladimir Voronov, a Russian investigative journalist and translated by Arch Tait.
The …

Tough Times for Tough People: Crime and Russia’s Economic Crisis

This is the eighth in a series of guest publications and translations which The Henry Jackson Society is producing by arrangement with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. This publication was written by Mark Galeotti, Professor of Global Affairs at the Center for Global …

Crimea and the Kremlin: From Plan “A” to Plan “B”

This is the seventh in a series of guest publications and translations which The Henry Jackson Society is producing by arrangement with Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty. This publication was written by Vladimir Voronov, a Russian investigative journalist, and translated by Arch …

Senseless and Merciless: “The Russian World” The Ideology of a Russian crusade

This is the sixth in a series of guest publications and translations which The Henry Jackson Society is producing by arrangement with Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.   This publication was written by Vladimir Abarinov, a Russian journalist, and …

Putin, Maria Ivanovna from Ivanovo and Ukrainians on the Telly

This is the fifth in a series of guest publications and translations which The Henry Jackson Society is producing by arrangement with Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.   This publication was written by Vasiliy Gatov, a Russian journalist,  and …