With Obamacare dividing America, I thought it my patriotic duty to do a firsthand, between the hospital sheets, investigation of Putincare. So, here is my report, straight from frayed bed linens stamped Mинистерство Zдравоохранения – Health Ministry. My weekend at the Cancer Ward did not have the drama of Solzhenitsyn’s 1967 novel. But it had […]

In the Cold War days, Soviet spies in the United States faced tough tasks – identifying high value targets, and then persuading them to hand over America’s secrets. Today’s Kremlin has entered the modern age: Advertise! Russia’s English-language international media is giving glowing coverage to four U.S. government whistleblowers who came to Moscow to give […]

After Pussy Riot and “Gay propaganda,” the Kremlin now marches resolutely towards another international public relations defeat — this time with Greenpeace. To the Kremlin, Greenpeace activists are not trespassers, they are pirates. Piracy charges have been filed against everyone who was on the Greenpeace ship, the Arctic Sunrise, on Sept. 18. On that day […]

There were two hours to go Wednesday afternoon at the international conference “The Arctic – Territory of Dialogue” when the organizers, The Russian Geographical Society, announced that all foreign correspondents had to get out of the Russian Arctic by sundown. With the internet shutting down and four buses lined up to ferry all foreign journalists […]

Looking back 10 years from now, the most important news of Sept. 2013 may not be Moscow and Washington jousting over Syria’s civil war. It may well be China quietly locking down massive quantities of Central Asian oil and gas. While the world worried about Syria, China’s President Xi Jinping deftly moved through Russia’s old […]

Vladimir Putin seems to enjoy being demonized by the West. In recent months, he has earned his share: bullying gay people, cracking down on democrats, throwing girl rockers in jail, and emerging as number one friend to Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad. In Syria, Putin just performed the old Soviet trick — helping to create a […]

Western experts are right to be wary of Moscow’s sudden offer to bring Syria’s chemical warfare program under international controls, leading to its destruction. Throughout Syria’s civil war, Moscow kept its head in the sand on the issue. On Monday, just as Russia’s offer was taking embryonic shape in Moscow, National Security Adviser Susan Rice […]

Russian politicians and analysts worked overtime this week trying to create a cloud of doubt around the Aug. 21 chemical attack in Damascus. On Friday, the White House report drew on extensive intelligence information to present this picture: Syrian forces carried out chemical weapons attacks on sleeping Damascus suburbs, killing 1,429 civilians, including 426 children. […]

Friday, June 21, was the hottest day of the year in Hong Kong – a sweltering 34 degrees. But it was also a hot day for Edward Snowden, the leaker of American secrets hiding out in China’s Special Administrative Region. In Washington on that day, U.S. federal prosecutors made public allegations of unauthorized communication of […]