Showing 1 - 7 of 7
Secretive Russian billionaire vents to US conservatives
News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 13/03/2018
» It's not every day that a Russian billionaire submits a op-ed piece to the Daily Caller, the conservative US website. When the billionaire in question is as media-shy as Oleg Deripaska, something extraordinary is going on. As the unfortunate recipient of an oversized role in the "Trump-Russia" scandal, he has had enough and is not quite sure how to defend himself.
Welcome to the year of censored social media
News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 04/01/2018
» This year, don't count on the social networks to provide its core service: an uncensored platform for every imaginable view. The censorship has already begun, and it'll only get heavier.
Facebook too big a platform to allow fake users
News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 10/08/2017
» There's something in common between the amazing story of "Nicole Mincey", the pseudonymous Twitter user with 146,000 followers who was retweeted by US President Donald Trump and then disappeared overnight along with a few other online personae, and a recent prank by a Berliner frustrated with his inability to get Twitter to remove hate speech. The common element is the obvious solution to both problems, which rarely surfaces in discussions of trolling, fake news and cyberbullying.
The key to tackling North Korea is Vladimir Putin
News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 19/05/2017
» The idea of a grand bargain between the United States and Russia is less popular in Washington than ever before. And yet one of the biggest foreign policy problems for the US -- that of North Korea -- cannot be resolved without Russia's participation. In recent years, Russian President Vladimir Putin has made sure to rebuild a close relationship with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, and it's no longer enough to talk to China to mitigate the Stalinist state's aggressiveness.
US-EU trade negotiations getting hung up on politics
News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 31/08/2016
» Germany's vice-chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel, says talks about a major trade deal between the European Union and the US have failed, though "nobody is really admitting it". That statement should be taken with a grain of salt, but the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) appears to be doomed, at least until after elections in the US and major European countries.
Don't trust Putin's troop pullback
News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 16/03/2016
» President Vladimir Putin's unexpected announcement that Russian troops would pull back from Syria shouldn't be taken at face value: he's made similar announcements in the past to show Western negotiating partners how constructive he can be. He always has a hidden agenda.
Putin waging war on too many fronts
News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 26/11/2015
» Has Vladimir Putin finally overreached? The Russian president is confronting several simultaneous crises. Over the weekend, Ukrainian activists blew up high-voltage transmission towers and cut off electricity supplies to Russian-held Crimea. In St Petersburg, his home city, on Tuesday a column of 600 heavy trucks was crawling toward the city government building to protest tolls on Russian roads (a son of a close friend of Mr Putin has a financial interest in the system). And on the Turkey-Syria border, the Turkish air force downed a Russian bomber.