Julia Pettengill
Friends of Russia or Friends of Putin?
BY JULIA PETTENGILL
The recently-established lobby group Conservative Friends of Russia (CFOR) is doing little to dispel suspicions that its sympathies lie with the Russian government.
Russia’s Win-Win Election
One week after Russia’s fraud-ridden local elections, Russian opposition parties have achieved an anomaly in that country’s politics by holding what appear to have been free and fair elections to the Coordination Council new decision-making body of the opposition movement.
The Kremlin Plays Old Tricks With Pussy Riot
This week, the Moscow City Court released Yakaterina Samutsevich, one of the convicted members of the anti-Putin punk collective Pussy Riot. Samutsevich was given a suspended sentence on appeal, while the two-year sentences of Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alkhina were upheld.
A Pyrrhic Victory for Georgian Democracy
The opposition party Georgia Dream has won a convincing victory in Georgia’s parliamentary elections.
Online Only: The Silencing of Alexey Navalny
The thorn in the side of Russia’s kleptocrats stands accused of nonsensical criminal charges that amount to nothing more than the bullying of a mafia state
Abandoned in Moscow
What will it take for the Obama administration to realise that their treasured “Reset” is the foreign policy equivalent of Monty’s Python’s dead parrot? The insults and harassment heaped upon Michel McFaul, the American Ambassador to Russia, apparently aren’t enough.
Online Only: Back to the USSR
To its shame the international community has acquiesced in the Kremlin’s mafia-style state capitalism. This appeasement stifles any chance of democratic progress
ONLINE ONLY: Perennial Palestinian Pawns
As US Congress threatens to withdraw aid to the Palestinian Authority, its role as the Middle East’s political victim is reprised yet again
Mama Grizzlies
The rise of conservative feminism in the US shows that gender doesn’t determine political affiliation
Trial and Terror
The use of federal courts for terrorist trials highlights the hypocrisy of Obama’s counterterrorism policies
How Top Boys topple down crime’s ladder
Too many prisoners rejoin society with no education, stable housing or job prospects. No surprise that more than half reoffend within a year
In the bleak midwinter
Christmas can be a bleak time of year. While some feel isolated, others are overwhelmed by the need for a perfect family Yuletide when their reality is different
My warnings to our spy watchdogs
Britain is under attack from Russia. And the government is blocking a Parliamentary report that details it