Word: russian
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Boris Yeltsin was a man for the unforgettable surprise. His fame rested on the panache and fortitude he showed in August 1991 when plotters attempted a coup d'état against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. They reckoned without Yeltsin, then head of the Russian Soviet Republic. Clambering on top of a tank outside the Russian White House, he defied those who wanted to return Russia to its communist traditions. Their coup might have succeeded if they had put him under preventive arrest. Instead, Yeltsin emerged as the master of the political situation. Gorbachev came back from detention in Crimea...
Robert Service is professor of Russian history at Oxford University, visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution and author of Comrades. Communism: A World History
...parade, held every May 9 to commemorate the 1945 Victory over Nazi Germany, was particularly remarkable this year. For the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union 18 years ago, Russia rolled out heavy armor and missiles on Red Square in Moscow and central avenues of major Russian cities from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok. And for the first time in eight years it was not Vladimir Putin who presided over the parade...
...procession of firepower was designed to show that Putin's eight years as President has revived Russia's mighty Armed Forces, and with it Russia's 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...
Lucas is right that the West should set aside its differences and resist Russian aggression. But we should be clear about the nature of this aggression. The new cold war, thankfully, has yet to break...