Word: sovietize
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...chief, first in Ukraine and then in Russia, the beefy Vitaly Fedorchuk was known as a thug. Thought to be behind kidnappings and murders as the "Butcher of Ukraine," he later persecuted Russians who had too much contact with foreigners before finally becoming highly visible as the Soviet Union's top cop in the '80s. His efforts at first seemed to foreshadow perestroika-like reforms: he exposed official corruption and condemned drunkenness. But Western analysts called his heavy-handed tactics "neo-Stalinist." In the late '80s Mikhail Gorbachev sidelined him. Fedorchuk...
...million. Russia plans build a major gas storage facility in Serbia, making the country a key base for Russian energy supplies to Europe. This consolidation of ties with Serbia achieves two Russian strategic goals: taking over national energy assets of European countries; and keeping erstwhile allies of the Soviet Union from being drawn into the Western fold. To emphasize warming ties, travel between Russia and Serbia will no longer require visas...
...Balkans is not the only theater in which Moscow is strongly reasserting its presence. This week, just as Georgia's breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia formally appealed to Russia, the U.N., the E.U. and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) a loose association of post-Soviet countries to recognize their independence. Russia has pointedly abandoned the economic sanctions, clamped on Abkhazia in 1996 to punish its separatism. The Parliament of the Russian Republic of Alania-North Ossetia already voted to incorporate South Ossetia. Next week, the Russian Duma will consider Abkhazian and South Ossetian appeals to join Russia...
Bout was both a product of the post-Cold War era and a master of its chaos. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the industrious 25-year-old saw an opportunity to turn dozens of military cargo planes that were sitting unused on military runways into a multimillion-dollar transport business...
...realized it was wasteful flying into Africa with empty planes. According to Merchant of Death: Money, Guns, Planes and the Man Who Makes War Possible, a book on Bout written by Douglas Farah and Stephen Braun last year, Bout began to fill his Africa-bound aircraft with stockpiles of Soviet weapons to sell to some of Africa's most notorious regimes and rebel groups. As his business expanded, Bout found himself selling weapons on both sides of the conflicts. In the 1990s, according to Farah and Braun, Bout was flying in guns to the Northern Alliance and the Taliban government...