As Viktor Bout starts his 25-year jail sentence in the United States, the question on the minds of movie goers worldwide is: will the convicted Russian arms merchant take a visit from Nicolas Cage? In the 2005 Hollywood movie, Lord of War, the American actor played a Ukrainian-American arms dealer who made his fortune selling […]

One generation ago, I reached the level in Russian language studies at Yale University where the next course looming in my face was: “Soviet Newspapers.” Faced with spending winter afternoons in a windowless basement classroom with CIA wannabes as we parsed Pravda and Izvestia, I ran away to Rio (literally). For today’s junior Kremlinologists, there […]

God bless the American soldiers in Afghanistan. This message of good cheer came from an unexpected corner this week: Russia Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, addressing the entire Duma in Moscow. First, he set the deputies up by denouncing NATO as “a relic of the Cold War.” Applause, applause. Then, before the clapping could fade, he […]

This year, for the first time, Russia is expected to top Germany as Europe’s largest car market. With car purchases increasing by 20 percent in Russia this year, the Center of Automotive Management predicts that Russians will buy 3.2 million vehicles during 2012, slightly more than Germany. So how are Russia’s roads? According to the […]

In Moscow, adults are snapping up school notebooks for children. Why? The cover has a heroic image of Stalin. The Stalin notebook is part of a “Great Names of Russia” series. On one level, it is depressing that many Russians do not seem to know that “Stalin,” was born Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, a Georgian. (Please […]

Americans living in Moscow are suffering from mental whiplash. During Russia’s recent presidential election, we enjoyed the moral high ground. Our politicians, we thought smugly, would never stoop to reviving the Cold War to wake up their conservative bases. But, in a city where snow fell on April Fool’s Day, it’s dangerous to walk with […]

It used to be that journalists had a monopoly on blunt talk about U.S.-Russian relations. Since we are not diplomats, we don’t have to be diplomatic. Then missile defense flared this week as the burning issue between Washington and Moscow. On Monday, an open microphone in Seoul caught U.S. President Barack Obama asking Russia’s President […]

In early September 2002, one year after American troops entered Afghanistan, I reported newspaper stories from Kandahar, the main city of the Pashto-speaking southern part of Afghanistan. I drove in from Quetta, Pakistan, and stayed 10 days at the “best” hotel on Kandahar’s main street. For one report, I spent a morning walking the street […]

Just when politics here were starting to look boring again, along comes an outrageous girl band to rattle Russia. With their day glo balaclavas, bright tights and summer dresses on the white snow, the angry girls call themselves Pussy Riot. They’re starting to make President Vladimir Putin look like Dwight Eisenhower. He was the American […]