Showing Archived Posts

Two Russias Will Collide in Sunday’s Presidential Election

Posted February 29th, 2012 at 6:52 am (UTC+0)
4 comments

In the last week, I covered two big political rallies in Moscow: the first, a staged mass meeting for Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in Luzhniki, Russia’s largest stadium; the second, a hastily organized event, where opposition supporters held hands in a 16-kilometer human chain around the Kremlin. On display were two radically different Russias. Next […]

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Prokhorov Melts Hearts in Russia’s Political Winter

Posted February 22nd, 2012 at 7:00 pm (UTC+0)
4 comments

Evelina Zakamskaya had a new bob in her hair. She leaned forward in her chair. Her eyes shone brightly. Her lips glistened. Her white teeth flashed in the night. She hung on every word. She tittered at every attempted joke by her TV interview guest, Mikhail Prokhorov. Russia’s tall, lean, bad boy bachelor billionaire is […]

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Ghosts of Revolution Serve as Political Brakes in Russia

Posted February 18th, 2012 at 1:02 pm (UTC+0)
4 comments

YEKATINERINBURG – In the gray twilight of a winter afternoon, the black and white photographs appear before the church walls like ghosts. These ghosts may well inoculate Russia against revolution this spring, when political passions may rise with the temperatures. The ghosts are Czar Nicholas II, his wife, Alexandra, their son, Alexei, and their four […]

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Russia: Revolution of the Well-fed, Well-dressed and Well-informed

Posted February 13th, 2012 at 10:45 am (UTC+0)
5 comments

At 8pm Friday night, I decided to close up shop in VOA’s Moscow office and fly to Odessa, Ukraine, for the weekend. Moscow’s weekend forecast was -30C, my trip to Central Asia had been cancelled, and the Black Sea sounded like a good mid-winter break. I did not have an airline ticket, but I knew […]

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Russia’s Generation Gap: Аста Ла Виста, беби!

Posted February 7th, 2012 at 9:16 pm (UTC+0)
3 comments

Their backs to the massive Lenin statue on October Square, the Anarchists were spoiling for a fight. Dressed in black, the young men and women jumped up and down, straining at their rope lines, and chanting again and again: “Аста Ла Виста, беби!Аста Ла Виста, беби!” I asked a middle aged man who was detouring […]

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Russia in Syria in 2012 — Echoes of Britain in Suez in 1956?

Posted February 2nd, 2012 at 5:33 am (UTC+0)
20 comments

Is Russia living its Suez moment? In October, 1956, France, Britain and Israel attacked Egypt in an attempt to reverse President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s nationalization of the Suez Canal. The United States and the Soviet Union strong armed the three attacking nations into pulling back. Today, that conflict is widely seen as the bitter, historical […]

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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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