The Kremlin’s efforts to undermine the democratic opposition and cultivate anti-American sentiment are the real factors behind the arrest of alleged CIA spy Ryan Fogle, analysts suggest.
“Public humiliations of hapless foreign spies were a staple of the Soviet …
State-controlled media reveled in embarrassing the U.S. over an alleged attempt to recruit a Russian intelligence agent, highlighting the summoning of U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul (right) to the Russian Foreign Ministry to receive a formal protest.
“In the Russian elite …
A group offering support to Russians suffering from cystic fibrosis is one of hundreds of civil society groups to have been subject to official warnings and intrusive inspections under the Kremlin’s “foreign agents” law, a leading human rights group …
Russia should revise a law that is having “obstructive, intimidating and stigmatizing effects” on the country’s non-governmental organizations, three United Nations experts said today. The report coincides with growing concern that a former Kremlin ideologue’s resignation signals that the regime …
“Wednesday’s dismissal of Deputy Prime Minister Vladislav Surkov (above left), once a trusted aide, has underlined how isolated Putin is a year into his third term,” writes Reuters’ Timothy Heritage:
His replacement by a less sophisticated operator, …
“Thousands of people turned out Monday for a protest here that was intended to draw attention to what organizers said was the return of political prosecutions in the Russian courts,” The New York Times’ Andrew E. Kramer reports …
Turkey finally became a “dialogue partner” of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) last week, providing Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan (above) with a strategic counterbalance to NATO and a potential alternative to European Union membership.
“With this choice, Turkey is …
The United States should give a higher priority to advancing global religious freedom as a matter of national security, says a major new survey. The persecution of people of faith is inherently dangerous because it has the effect of …
Recent events demonstrate the failure of President Vladimir Putin’s project of developmental authoritarianism, says a leading analyst.
“Putin hoped to be the Lee Kwan Yew of Russia: someone who behind a facade of quasi-democratic institutions led a powerful state …
Russia’s only independent election monitoring group yesterday became the first nongovernmental group to fall afoul of the “foreign agents” law.
A Moscow court fined the Association in Defense of Voters’ Rights Golos (Voice) 300,000 rubles (almost US$10,000) for failing …