When I checked into Simferopol’s deserted Hotel Ukraina, nobody imagined that a Russian invasion was being considered and would be completed within a week.
Protest
Ukraine’s Zombie Revolution
“We had advanced socialism,” said Boris Dekhteryenko. “It was a happy childhood. Ice cream cost 20 kopeks, and a miner could earn enough in a month to buy a Lada.”
Putin the Predictable
For Vladimir Putin, mimicking opponents is a key to power. At home he oversees a sham democracy. His foreign policy is best described as “condemn and copy.”
Why Putin Took Crimea
Russia’s seizure of Crimea wasn’t an act of an expanding empire but of an archaic regime throwing up a last line of defense against Westernization.
Putin’s Moscow is Anxious, Gilded and Hollow
Moscow is always a surprising kind of place. I expected Putin’s us-against-them nationalism to be more strident than ever. But I find the city uncharacteristically subdued and anxious about the future.
Students, Not Spooks, Effect Regime Change
You can bankroll a coup but you can’t buy a popular uprising.
Khodorkovsky and Me
It was a very strange feeling to find out that Mikhail Khodorkovsky had landed in Berlin. I’d moved to the German capital in part to kick the adrenaline addiction of reporting from Russia. I was tired of the news always coming to me.
Winning by Losing
“I’m trying to understand: is this a demonstration of victory or defeat?” Alexei Navalny asked. The crowd gave him a resounding answer. In recent years, the words “Russian opposition leader” connoted “loser.” No longer.
Don’t Tear Down This Wall
A quarter of a century after Ronald Reagan called on Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall, a new generation of Berliners is taking to the streets to preserve it.
Barbarians at the Gate
There’s a refugee camp in the center of Berlin filled with people who have fled conflicts around the world. They sleep in tents and eat donated food. Almost all of them are breaking German law just by being here.
