Showing 1 - 6 of 6
Death, diamonds, Russia and Africa
News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 06/08/2018
» The murder of three Russian journalists last week in a remote area of the Central African Republic, the world's poorest country according to the World Bank, has turned a spotlight on what looks like a big Kremlin play for influence and resources in Africa. Where China has spent decades and billions of dollars trying to entrench itself there, Russia is offering its brute force and strong appetite for risk. It's already making headway.
The biggest problem of the West is dwindling trust
News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 06/01/2017
» Many Americans gasp when they see Donald Trump mockingly put the word "intelligence" in quotes when referring to the US intelligence community; it seems heretical to challenge the wisdom and expertise of institutions charged with safeguarding their security and freedoms. As a Russian, I just shrug: I have never believed a word coming from my country's intelligence services. This cultural gap is shrinking, though. Western societies are turning into low-trust ones, after the post-Communist, Eastern European model.
Integrate and treat a Muslim better, hurt Islamic State
News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 27/04/2016
» It is intuitively appealing to connect the number of fighters a country sends to the Islamic State (IS) with poverty and inequality. The more desperate and economically downtrodden people are, the more likely it is that they'll join a terrorist group, right? Wrong, recent research indicates: It's much more likely that the reasons for the IS's recruitment success are cultural.
Pope's historic meeting ends up benefitting Putin
News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 15/02/2016
» Russia's state-owned media covered the first-ever meeting between Pope Francis and Kirill, patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, as a historic event. The official news agency, Tass, even ran a real-time blow-by-blow account. The meeting's value wasn't in any ecclesiastical breakthrough: The Pope, probably inadvertently, played a part in a Kremlin propaganda gambit.
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.
MH17 probe shows no side blameless
News, Leonid Bershidsky, Published on 15/10/2015
» The Dutch report on the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was not supposed to apportion blame. Yet the report released on Tuesday by the Dutch Safety Board clearly shows that no side is innocent in eastern Ukraine's now-frozen conflict.