For the crowd on Sakharov Avenue, Vladimir Putin has passed his “Emperor Has No Clothes” moment. So, faced with naked power, they offered him condoms. Condoms inflated like balloons. A condom wrapped around his head like a grandmother’s shawl. A condom shaped like a rocket ship carrying a Putin image to outer space. A Putin-condom […]

Westerners wonder why images of Stalin ominously pop up at Russian protest rallies. Like most people, Russians cherry pick from their history. Almost 60 years after Stalin’s death, what appeals to some Russians is not Stalin, the mass murderer, but Stalin, the manager who had incompetents shot. After six months that brought us the sinking […]

Is Dmitry Rogozin a secret agent of a clandestine Tea Party/Occupy Wall Street alliance, infiltrated into the halls of NATO? Mr. Rogozin is Russia’s Ambassador to NATO. By day, he is known as a vocal, articulate advocate of Russian national interests. But, by night, is he a secret advocate of the interests of American taxpayers? […]

At Centrale, an Italian thin crust pizza restaurant, a European soccer match was on the big screen, American pop music wafted out of the sound system and Olga was nibbling on her Norwegian salmon carpaccio. I asked her how many foreign countries she had visited. “Italy, Switzerland, France, Turkey, Egypt, Greece, Spain – four times, […]

They call it Russia’s Great December Evolution — a peaceful counterpoint to the Great October Revolution of 1917. Civility, friendliness and unity in disgust with Russia leadership were the hallmarks of Moscow’s mass meeting to protest what was called blatant election fraud. Nationalists with Czarist flags marched next to Communists, next to aging dissidents — […]