Shades Of Night Descending

February 24, 2008 – 2:02 pm
This entry is part 1 of 4 in the series Putin and Russia

On the front page of today’s New York Times is a chilling account of just how bad things have got in Russia under the rapidly coalescing dictatorship of Vladimir Putin.

By Malcolm | Posted in Foreign Affairs | Comments (3)

Vlad The Impaler

February 25, 2008 – 10:52 pm
This entry is part 2 of 4 in the series Putin and Russia

Yesterday we passed along a New York Times story about the deepening autocracy of the Putin regime, and our old friend Jess Kaplan commented insightfully. Today he has sent us a valuable article on the subject: The Myth of the Authoritarian Model: How Putin’s Crackdown Holds Russia Back, by the Stanford scholars Michael McFaul and […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Foreign Affairs | Comments (3)

A Collective Yawn

February 26, 2008 – 2:24 pm
This entry is part 3 of 4 in the series Putin and Russia

In recent posts, inspired by a New York Times article and helped along by our well-informed friend Jess Kaplan, we’ve looked at Putin’s tightening grip on Russia. His power-grab has hardly confined itself to increasing restrictions on democracy, but has also, and arguably more dangerously for global stability and security, involved ruthless appropriation of major […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Foreign Affairs | Comments (6)

The Nail That Sticks Up

February 27, 2008 – 12:40 pm
This entry is part 4 of 4 in the series Putin and Russia

Continuing our recent focus on the decline of freedom in Russia, we see in today’s Wall Street Journal that Lev Ponomarev, an outspoken critic of the Russian penal system, has been charged with criminal libel: On Friday, Mr. Ponomarev, a former aide to Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov and a colleague of opposition leader Garry Kasparov, […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Foreign Affairs | Comments (1)