The annual meetings of world leaders, the so-called G8 summits, are often criticized for raising high expectations, but delivering few practical results. Adding to this negative image is the very way the summits are conducted: held in secluded...

There is a funny-sounding Russian word, “fufloh.” It could be translated in English as “junk”, “crap”, or “rubbish.” In addition, “fufloh” wears a scent of falsification; in colloquial Russian, “fufloh” equals to “pulling a...

Sen. Barack Obama has announced that he would opt out of the public financing (and the spending limits attached to it) for the general election. Good for him! I think there is a profound confusion in terminology when it comes to presidential...

Critics of Russia’s Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, can on occasion impress us with a vitriolic tirade – usually articulated in a rude language – but not with the common sense or the knowledge of basic facts. Take, for example, a...

Conventional wisdom holds that the Russian language consists of about half million words, with roughly 150,000 of them listed in the multi-volume Large Academic Dictionary. Naturally, no one uses such a monstrous vocabulary. A record seems to belong...

Western promoters of “democracy” around the world have all the reasons to celebrate the results of the May 21 parliamentary elections in Georgia. The United National Movement (UNM), the party of the “pro-Western” president, Mikheil...

Originally, I was about to pass over Oleg Kozlovsky’s epic published by the Washington Post on Monday. Even by WP’s notoriously abysmal standards of Russia coverage, giving space to a petty criminal (“At age 23, I have been arrested more than a...

The Kremlin has made public Dmitry Medvedev’s, Russia’s new president, itinerary for his first international trip as the head of state. Later this week, Medvedev is traveling to Kazakhstan and China. In June, Medvedev will meet Angela Merkel in...