In the sleepy Crimean capital Simferopol, tension is building between supporters and foes of the central government in Kiev.
Russia
Into the Wild
“Everything’s for fucking sale.”
The Olympic Land Grab
Officials in Sochi introduce a new Olympic discipline.
Skating in a Swamp
The Olympic Park has sprouted up on a drained wetland that until a few years ago was a state farm.
The Pearl of Sochi
Fleecing tourists is the name of the game.
At Putin’s Dacha
Putin’s love of Sochi is the sole reason that Russia’s only subtropical city will host the Winter Olympics.
Russian Riviera
Sochi was just a provincial backwater when I first visited.
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.
The Baddest Town in Russia
I ask my driver about the “bandits” who hide out in the mountains and attack the police. “The bandits are in Moscow,” he replies. “The boys in the woods are just regular guys. They don’t touch us. They’re against Russia.”
Proxy Warlord Interview
“You’ll be forced to write what’s expected,” Alvi Karimov says. “If it’s raining, you’ll write the sun is shining. Who wants to know that it’s peaceful in Grozny and that women don’t wear headscarves?”
