Russia
ForesightNews world briefing: upcoming events 12- 18 December
A weekly round up of world events from Monday, 12 December to Sunday, 18 December from ForesightNews By Nicole Hunt US President Barack Obama hosts Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al Maliki for talks in Washington on Monday, with discussions focusing on strengthening the ‘strategic partnership’ between the two countries. The summit comes ahead of a […]
Russian blogger arrested after post-election protests
Russian blogger and anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny has been arrested after participating in post-election protests in Moscow against the Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. The BBC has a good profile of Navalny which explains how his Livejournal blog gained traction for exposing corruption: "The popularity of his blog allowed him to start mobilising internet users to take an active part in […]
Russia: A Mafia State?
Download this episode View in iTunes Watch event here. By Thomas Lowe The panel painted a largely sombre picture of present-day Russia, overshadowed by a resurgent FSB secret service and their close allies, the oligarchs. Author of Mafia State and Guardian correspondent Luke Harding began by explaining what it is like to be considered an […]
FULLY BOOKED Russia – A mafia state?
In 2007 Luke Harding arrived in Moscow to take up a new job as a correspondent for The Guardian. Not long after, mysterious agents from Russia’s Federal Security Service, the successor to the KGB, broke into his flat. He was followed, bugged, and even summoned to Lefortovo, the FSB’s notorious prison.
Luke Harding will be joined by a panel at the Frontline Club to discuss his experiences as The Guardian’s Moscow correspondent and what they tell us about Russia today.
Inside Unreported World
By Rebecca Omonira-Oyekanmi Watch the event here. The filmmakers, from Channel 4’s acclaimed foreign affairs series Unreported World, spent two weeks secretly documenting President Bashar al-Assad’s violent crack down on opposition to his regime. Before turning off the camera, reporter Ramita Navai quietly explains that their Syrian fixers plan to hide from the militia […]
What’s coming up at the Frontline Club
Tonight’s event with Nawal El Saadawi, the veteran Egyptian feminist campaigner who yesterday recieved the Women of the Year Outstanding Achievement Award is sold out, but you can watch it online from 7pm. Next week we will be joined by the Guardian’s Luke Harding and the BBC’s Angus Roxburgh to discuss their experiences reporting from Russia and whether the country is a Mafia […]
ForesightNews world briefing: upcoming events 10 – 16 October
A weekly round up of world events from Monday, 10 to Sunday, 16 October from ForesightNews By Nicole Hunt The two men charged with the April 2010 murder of South African white supremacist leader Eugene Terre’Blanche go on trial in Ventersdorp on Monday. Chris Mahlangu and an unnamed teenager are accused of killing the leader […]
The week ahead at the Frontline Club
Don’t forget the September Club Quiz tonight! Next week we will be discussing the aid operation in Somalia and how effective it can be in a country caught between political instability, conflict and violence. For In the Picture this week we will be joined by Norwegian photojournalist Espen Rasmussen who, for his project TRANSIT, travelled to 10 different countries recording the lives of […]
ForesightNews world briefing: UN General Assembly’s General Debate
By Jasper Smith, senior international and security affairs reporter, ForesightNews USA Once a year, the world’s leaders descend on New York for the UN’s blue ribbon event, the cumbersomely-titled UN General Assembly’s General Debate. This year, the build-up has been dominated by the Palestinian Authority’s planned bid to become the 194th member of the UN, […]
ForesightNews world briefing: upcoming events 12-18 September
A weekly round up of world events from Monday, 12 September to Sunday, 18 September from ForesightNews By Nicole Hunt The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors meets in Vienna on Monday, with Iran likely to be high on the agenda following last week’s report expressing increased concerns over ‘undisclosed nuclear related activities’ […]
David E. Hoffman: Reagan, Gorbachev and the Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race
By Camilla Groom Watch the event here. With detailed insider knowledge David E Hoffman told the story of how the president of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev and the US president Ronald Reagan prevented the escalation of the Cold War into a full-blown conflict. As a reporter for the Washington Post Hoffman followed Reagan throughout […]
From the archive: Russia and terrorism
Following yesterday’s terrorist attack in Moscow’s airport, this First Wednesday discussion provides a thorough analysis of Russia and terrorism in the wake of last year’s attacks on the city’s Metro. The panel were: Irina Demchenko, UK bureau chief of the Russian news agency RIA Novosti: Dr Bobo Lo, senior research fellow at the Centre […]
Russia’s secret services: power gone out of control
Download this episode View in iTunes By Sara Elizabeth Williams A dark picture of Russian democracy emerged at the Frontline Club last night as Susan Richards spoke with journalists Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan about power, accountability and Russia’s secret services. Soldatov and Borogan, co-founders of secret service watchdog site Agentura.ru, are the authors of […]
Fully Booked- The New Nobility: Russia’s Secret Services Revealed
The FSB, Russia’s replacement for the KGB, has accumulated powerful backers and increasing authority ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Co-authors of a new book entitled The New Nobility, Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, will be at the Frontline Club to discuss Russia’s shadowy security services with Susan Richards of Open Democracy.
Russian war correspondent discovers journalism is more dangerous at home
In this New York Times article we learn of the fate of Mikhail Beketov who dared to investigate corruption in Moscow. Beketov, a former army officer, had reported from both Afghanistan and Chechnya but Russia proved to be more dangerous. As his paper, Khimkinskaya Pravda, wrote about the dealings of local officials and questioned party […]
First Wednesday: Exporting Russia’s radical Islam to the West
By Heather Christie Is Russia’s radical Muslim movement related to the global jihad movement? Or are the targeted attacks executed in Russia fundamentally different from those that take place in the West? That tricky question was debated at April’s First Wednesday event at the Frontline Club, after the recent Moscow metro bombings. If you couldn’t […]
First Wednesday: Is there a common enemy?
By Julie Tomlin We’ve started putting together April’s First Wednesday event: After the bomb blasts in Moscow on 29 March and in Dagestan two days later, we will be talking about Russia and its response to the recent terrorist attacks. We are currently working on inviting guests to speak about that. The focus of the […]
Russian suicide attacks: Where does this leave the War on Terror?
By Ewan Palmer How serious is the threat from terrorism to the modern world? The suicide bombings in Moscow and Dagestan this week altogether killed 51 and, despite the likely localised inspiration for the attacks, fears of more violence elsewhere in Europe have been raised once again. But is there any justification for the current […]
Reporting the Moscow Metro bombings
ПоÑмотреть на ЯндекÑ.Фотках (Link to Tatiana Krasnova’s album) Two female suicide bombers were believed to be responsible for the deaths of 38 commuters in Moscow at rush hour this morning. Russian officials say that 60 people were also injured in the attacks at Lubyanka and Park Kultury Metro stations. There are more details here […]
War reporting fail
A Georgian TV channel caused panic at the weekend after a mock up news report suggested Russian troops had invaded the country and President Saakashvili had been killed. Many viewers had missed a warning that went out before the broadcast. The video below is Russia Today’s report on the biggest (non)-story so far this year:
Summer and something of a seaside independence
Earlier in August I had the opportunity to film in Abkhazia with Matthew Collin – Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Georgia and fellow Frontline blogger. It’s now one year since Russia recognised Georgia’s breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states. The first time I visited Abkhazia was in December 2006 to produce radio […]
Truth: The first casualty of the Russo-Georgia War
Today, I’ve been multi-tasking: spending some time spying (with permission, I should add) on the BBC’s news operation, keeping one eye on the tennis, and reading a very interesting paper on the media and the Russian invasion of Georgia. I can’t really talk too much about the former (yet) and I don’t suppose many of […]
Who killed Politkovskaya?
The case against those accused of killing Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya outside her Moscow apartment in October 2006 collapsed this Thursday as the jury aquitted all three suspects. One day later the presiding judge, Yevgeni Zubo, ordered the Russian Investigative Committee reopen the case, “The fact that no one at all has been held accountable […]
Surviving a Kidnapping in Chechnya
In 1997, Camilla Carr and Jonathan James were kidnapped and held for fourteen months in Chechnya. Speaking neither Russian nor Chechen, armed with good intentions and a car full of toys, the two Britons had volunteered to help traumatised children in Grozny. They were soon kidnapped, and this book – The Sky is Always There: […]
Stalin’s children
I have read many sagas of Russian families, but Stalin’s Children: Three Generations of Love and War by Owen Matthews has facets that make it poignant. It is both tragedy and love story by a distinguished chronicler of the East. Matthews has covered Moscow for Newsweek since 1997 and has witnessed the Chechen, Bosnian and […]
Guns for Russian reporters
Alexander Lebedev, co-owner of Russia’s Novaya Gazeta newspaper, has requested the Federal Security Service (FSB) issue firearms to journalists at the paper. The highly unusual request comes after Anastasia Baburova, a 25 years old journalist with the Gazeta, was murdered earlier this week. The paper previously employed Anna Politkovskaya who was also gunned down in […]
Anastasia Baburova shot dead in Moscow
Anastasia Baburova was shot dead in Moscow in broad daylight today along with Russian human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov. Baburova was killed as she tried to intervene when Markelov was attacked. The freelance journalist in her mid-20’s worked for Novaya Gazeta newspaper, the same newspaper as Anna Politkovskaya who was also shot dead in Moscow […]
Politkovskaya suspect offered to surrender
Rustam Makhmudov, the main suspect in the murder of Anna Politkovskaya outside her Moscow apartment building in 2006, offered to turn himself in six months ago according to a lawyer for the suspect’s brother, Six months ago, Makhmudov passed a message through his relatives from an undisclosed location that he would turn himself in if […]
Politkovskaya trial opens Monday
The trial into the killing of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya in 2006 opens in a Russian military court on Monday. The family of the slain journalist have long campaigned for an open trial, but that looks unlikely, “We will demand that the trial be open. My mother was a journalist and I think it’s impossible […]
Scott Taylor on reporting from the Caucasus
Canadian war reporter Scott Taylor talks about getting into the Caucasus to report on the South Ossetian conflict. The editor of Canadian military magazine Esprit de Corps found the situation on the ground far from straightforward, Before setting out from Stavropol, I had been assured by the Russian authorities that we would have no problems […]