I used to see them fairly often in airports, nicer hotels or restaurants. Living in Eastern Europe, first as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ukraine and later working for a non-profit in Russia, I’d become adept at spotting other Americans in public. I sized them up, taking into account the color and style of their…
Russian President Vladimir Putin has granted citizenship to Gerard Depardieu, the French movie star who is quitting his homeland to avoid a tax hike on the rich, the Kremlin said on Thursday. The “Cyrano de Bergerac” actor bought a house across the border in Belgium last year to avoid a new tax rate for millionaires…
Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused a member of the punk protest band Pussy Riot of having committed an anti-Semitic act. During a televised discussion on Nov. 15 with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Moscow, Putin said that one of the members of the band had “hanged a dummy of a Jew and said that…
A local Russian lawmaker from President Vladimir Putin’s ruling party reportedly opposed making public transportation free for Holocaust survivors. Andrei Yershov of the Smolensk city council in western Russia admitted to making the explosive comments during a free-ranging council debate Oct. 16, AFP reported. A recording of that meeting – a tape that has gone…
Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Israel in late June with the ostensible purpose of helping to unveil a monument to the Soviet soldiers who helped defeat Nazi Germany. But Putin’s motivations for this trip to the Middle East were not so innocuous. In fact, they underlined the degree to which his ambitions for the region…
It has now been 38 years since President Ford signed the historic Jackson-Vanik Amendment, a piece of legislation that will soon expire. At this moment, as the future of the amendment is under debate in Congress, it is important to look back at the role it served as one of the most potent weapons for…
It’s official. This summer, Russian president Vladimir Putin will be taking a trip to Israel, his first since 2005. It’s the consummation of a relationship that has been fostered by Israel’s Moldovan-born foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, who also recently described Israeli-Russian relations — after 20 years of diplomatic contact — as “very positive.” That may…
I was at my local grocery store this weekend, standing in line at the checkout. I saw that the line next to mine was moving faster. With stealthy Soviet queue analysis skills acquired only by years of living with Russian parents, I scanned the lines, assessed the length of time, and made a beeline into…
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