Showing Archived Posts

Public Enemy No. 1 in Belarus: A Diplomat turned Democrat

Posted April 29th, 2011 at 9:34 am (UTC+0)
1 comment

When I last talked to Andrei Sannikov, on the night of Dec. 19, he was partly leading, partly being swept along, by a river of Belarussians who filled the largest avenue in Minsk, protesting yet another fraudulent presidential election. Dressed in a business suit and tie, speaking English polished during a five year diplomatic stint […]

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Chernobyl Zone — Europe’s Largest Wildlife Refuge?

Posted April 25th, 2011 at 4:00 pm (UTC+0)
5 comments

Japan has imposed a 20-kilometer exclusion zone around Fukushima nuclear power complex, banning human habitation for the foreseeable future. April 26, marks the 25th anniversary of the worst nuclear accident on record, the explosion of the nuclear power plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine. The fate of 4,500 square kilometer exclusion zone around the old Soviet plant […]

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Belarus’ Lukashenko and his Mini-me: Biographer Needed

Posted April 22nd, 2011 at 5:58 pm (UTC+0)
2 comments

Calling all political biographers: We have here on the eastern edge of Europe a quirky modern dictator in desperate need of a world-class writer to tell his tale. Alexander Lukashenko, the long running ruler of Belarus, never ceases to surprise. For starters, there is his 6-year-old son, Nikolai. The president dresses him up in various […]

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Belarus: Bombing while Economy Burns

Posted April 18th, 2011 at 6:05 am (UTC+0)
1 comment

When a massive bomb goes off in a police state, one can only ask: where were the police? Belarus is the Cuba of Central Europe — a police state. Type “List of countries by size of police forces” into Wikipedia and you will find that Belarus is the champion, with 1,442 policemen for every 100,000 […]

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Yuri Gagarin: When the Soviets Beat the Americans

Posted April 13th, 2011 at 3:10 pm (UTC+0)
2 comments

I remember standing in a field in southern France one evening in the summer of 1962. My father watched a blinking red light slowly arcing across the night sky. “That,” he said pointing. “That is a sputnik.” It could well have been the night flight from Paris to Algiers. But the uneasiness in his voice […]

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Russia’s Corruption Fighter — Censored?

Posted April 6th, 2011 at 3:59 pm (UTC+0)
12 comments

Do a Google search on “Kadyrov cars,” or “Kadyrov palace,” or “Kadyrov racehorse.” Russians often wonder what happens to the billions of rubles the Kremlin pours into Chechnya to prop up Ramzan Kadyrov, the chief of the long rebellious republic. Five minutes on Google gives a juicy hint. Russia is riding the rocket of some […]

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About

About

James Brooke is VOA Moscow bureau chief, covering Russia and the former USSR. With The New York Times, he worked as a foreign correspondent in Africa, Latin America, Canada and Japan/Koreas. He studied Russian in college during the Brezhnev years, first visited Moscow as a reporter during the final months of Gorbachev, and then came back for reporting forays during the Yeltsin and early Putin years. In 2006, he moved to Moscow to report for Bloomberg. He joined VOA in Moscow in 2010. Follow Jim on Twitter @VOA_Moscow.

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