Word: kremlins
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...getting the business oligarchs to bankroll his campaign. In return, they got their hands on oil, gas, nickel and aluminum, and grew even richer. Democracy had been one of his slogans before he came to power, and he continued to celebrate it in principle. But the sleazy reality of Kremlin affairs brought democratic ideals into disrepute long before he resigned in favor of Vladimir Putin...
...national pride. "The victors gave us great reason to believe in our national strength, self-reliance and freedom," new Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said in his V-Day address. His thinly veiled comparison of the Nazi aggression 63 years ago with NATO's eastward expansion today echoed a favorite Kremlin propaganda theme for whipping up Russia's resurgent nationalism. Medvedev also condemned "any ethnic or religious enmity." That was perhaps an all but tacit reference to one bitter irony to this year's commemoration: in the first four months of 2008, Russian neo-Nazi attacks against members of ethnic...
Lucas details a 1984-style "History According to the Kremlin" now being taught in classrooms, according to which Josef Stalin, the greatest mass murderer in history, was a patriot who did what had to be done to defeat fascism. And he also examines the Kremlin's repeated use of its ample energy resources to threaten its Western-oriented neighbors. Most troubling is what Lucas calls "pipeline politics" - Moscow's plans to build the Nord Stream gas pipeline from the Shtokman Field in the Barents Sea to the German city of Greifswald; and its attempts to derail Western plans to install...
...West is losing the New Cold War," Lucas writes, "while having barely noticed that it has started. Mr. Putin and his Kremlin allies have seized power in Russia, cast a dark shadow over the eastern half of the continent, and established formidable bridgeheads in the main Western countries. And the willingness to resist looks alarmingly feeble...
...weak to wage a cold war. Outside Moscow, St. Petersburg and a handful of other cities, most Russians live in Khrushchev- and Brezhnev-era hovels. The economy is diversifying but not diversified; for now, the oil and gas markets largely decide how much money flows into the Kremlin coffers. And the military is a wreck; Lucas points out, for instance, that the navy now has just 20 seaworthy surface ships...