Archive - 2005

The Russian government badly mishandled the fallout following the sinking of the Kursk submarine and, as a consequence, conspiracy theories are flourishing. The latest claims come from Maurice Stradling, a British...

Russia spent this weekend celebrating Orthodox Easter, and will be spending the rest of this week on the buildup to the celebrations for the 60th anniversary of VE Day.  Despite that, 1.2 million people found the...

In the last seven days: President Putin gave a rambling and largely pointless speech to the nation, ex-Yukos boss Mikhail Khodorkovsky was told he must wait until after George Bush has visited before his guilt is...

President Vladimir Putin presented his annual State of the Nation address yesterday( transcript here).  The content of the address has been somewhat obscured by the rather inflammatory ‘money’ quote:...

Hogging the news this week are Condoleezza Rice’s visit to Moscow and Donald Rumsfeld’s visit to the Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan.  Someone whacked Garry Kasparov over the head with a chessboard, too...

eDefenseonline takes a look at how European forces are developing, or in Russia’s case, not developing 21st century infantry programmes to fight in the low-level conflicts prevalent today.  Despite 25 years...

Pavel Felgenhauer’s always excellent defense column in the Moscow Times notes that the army is dissatisfied with Russia’s government: Last week, newspapers discussed the results of secret opinion polls made...

Residents of three Siberian regions voted overwhelmingly this weekend to merge into one super-region. The new region, made up of Krasnoyarsk, Evenki and Taimyr, will be six times the population of Germany, but with a...

Yes, you read the title right.  Kasparov was busy signing chessboards for fans – like you do when you’re a former world chess chamption – when one of them turned around and bashed him on the head...

As another week draws to a close – on a Wednesday, of all days – it is time to investigate what’s been happening since the last week ended – also, co-incidentally, on a Wedesday.  Domestic...