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Keywords: Russia

  • INTERNATIONAL

    Murky law in Crimea land grab

    • Justin Glyn
    • 21 March 2014
    6 Comments

    While pro-Russian and pro-Western media have been spinning the Crimea crisis as either a heroic exercise in righting a past wrong or a land grab by a new Hitler, the legal position is far from straightforward, and there is more than enough hypocrisy to go around. The Crimean issue is perhaps best analysed not through the prism of international law but rather that of age-old great power politics.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    West wasting breath huffing and puffing over Crimea

    • Tony Kevin
    • 05 March 2014
    18 Comments

    Tony Abbott's 'We warn the Czar' statements were ludicrously over-the-top, though clearly he was responding to a Washington appeal to friendly allies to say something. I hope Australia will not continue to overplay its hand in the Security Council. There is no point in gratuitously offending Moscow on an issue that is outside our strategic area of interest and raises no human rights concerns whatsoever.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Mistaken for Jewish in cold, grand Moscow

    • Howard Willis
    • 19 February 2014
    6 Comments

    On the occasions I got into detailed discussions with strangers in Moscow, a pattern emerged. Saying I was Australian prompted a polite request for clarification: 'But your ancestry?' The reply that I was fifth-generation Australian was treated as an evasion, or met with the assumption that my ancestors were 'bandits'. Generally, Muscovites took a second look at me and the box they ticked was 'Jew'.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    The baleful life of Stalin's favourite actress

    • Brian Matthews
    • 31 January 2014
    7 Comments

    When her husband was arrested and imprisoned indefinitely as an outspoken opponent of Stalin, she became depressed and alcoholic. Film director Grigori Aleksandrov rescued her by choosing her to star in Moscow Laughs. She became his mistress, later his wife, a screen star and, perhaps most important of all, she attracted Stalin's benign attention.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Dissecting Syria turbulence

    • John Langmore
    • 19 September 2013
    8 Comments

    This has been a turbulent two weeks. One's attitudes have oscillated through anger and despair to a glimpse of hope and ended with renewed confidence in Obama's values and intentions. What a time for Australia to be chairing the Security Council! My impression is that our diplomats are working with professional skill, commitment to the rule of law and to peaceful conflict resolution.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    The distraction of red lines in Syria

    • Evan Ellis
    • 27 August 2013
    5 Comments

    In some ways the intense focus on chemical weapons and red lines is diversionary. Enough blood has been spilt to paint a thousand red lines. 100,000+ people have been killed already. Is it somehow easier on the International Community’s conscience to think of families being ripped apart by artillery shells than dying from chemical warfare? 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Hearing God in Soviet Russia

    • Michael Sariban
    • 23 October 2012
    4 Comments

    When ideology smashed the cathedrals, turned icons into rubble, congregation into crime, religion fell down in a heap, or seemed to ... Most people believed they knew better: countless lips kept doggedly whispering the fine-print headlines of saints. If the State was a rock, religion flowed round it.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Russia's liberal wind of change

    • Dorothy Horsfield
    • 04 April 2012

    Among Westerners and locals alike, Moscow seems to be afloat on scurrilous innuendo, focused on Putin's bully-boy tactics, fondness for young women and pathological greed. Still, since the eruption of street protests after last December's parliamentary elections, the narratives appear to be shifting.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Russia's concern for besieged Syrian Christians

    • Benedict Coleridge
    • 14 February 2012
    12 Comments

    Russia's opposition to military intervention or orchestrated regime change in Syria runs deeper than mere contemporary strategic interest. Its interest in Syria and the broader Middle East stems also from its historical conception of itself as the protector of eastern Christians.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    The truth about China the climate scapegoat

    • Sean McDonagh
    • 14 December 2011
    12 Comments

    Countries including the US, Russia and Japan refuse to sign any binding treaty to significantly reduce their greenhouse gas emissions unless China does the same. Their simplistic argument that China is now the number one emitter in the world overlooks important data.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The good journalist and the assassins

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 12 December 2011
    17 Comments

    In Australia free speech is understood as freedom from legal constraint. In the Bolt case, it was defended for commercial reasons. A better understanding of the cost of free speech can be seen in Russian journalist Alexander Minkin's description of an attempt to kill him.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Good journalism and Murdoch's pie-gate

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 21 July 2011
    1 Comment

    Rupert Murdoch's News International has found itself with more than egg on its face over the News of the World scandal. As this case reveals journalism at its most prurient and base, a new film pays tribute to journalism at its most noble and courageous. 

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