Tag Crimea

Die Krimische Dreckapotheke

Alexander Petrun’ko was one of the “conservative activists” who attacked the Josh Sturges exhibition at the Brothers Lumère Center in Moscow last Sunday. Reportedly, he spilled a foul-smelling yellow liquid over the exhibits and the walls. (Some reporters got sprinkled, too.)…

Homecoming/Heimkehr 1941-2015

Last weekend, on the first anniversary of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Russian TV aired a propaganda “documentary” called Krym: vozvraschenie na rodinu, which can be translated as Crimea: Homecoming or literally Crimea: The Return to Motherland. Let’s do a simple…

Moscow or Pikalevo?

Russia is sliding into a full-scale economic and social crisis faster than I expected as the fiscal and monetary authorities are powerless to stop, much less push back, the juggernaut of self-destructive behavior launched by the Kremlin earlier this year. The…

Holy Seb!

Extracts from Yulia Latynina’s latest radio interview on Ekho Moskvy. Without endorsing her views in general, I more or less agree with this: First, I have to tell you that… I’m in the Netherlands, in Maastricht, at a congress… talking…

A man for our time

I was half-listening to Moscow’s Business FM radio last weekend when the anchor, talking about the standoff in Eastern Ukraine, mentioned “Graham Phillips, a British journalist”. I cocked my ears: the name rang a bell. Phillips was then quoted as…

Don’t be shy, make it one trillion

March 21, 2014. PM Medvedev says Russia may sue Ukraine for $11 billion, the amount Russia was going to lose by denouncing the 2010 Kharkov agreements. (A statement so absurd and brazen at once it was hard to believe. Having annexed Crimea, Russia denounced the…

Business as usual

Anne Applebaum has tweeted: “Russia, which denied having troops on the Ukrainian border, has now announced they will be withdrawn,” linking to this BBC report. Sounds familiar. The Soviet press was silent about the missiles in Cuba during the 1962…