For my Mexican friends, I have good news. You think your bureaucracy is bad. You think your rules are byzantine and your officials are corrupt. Well, yes. They...
I began this list for friends, but it now includes a whole bunch of new subscribers. So first: Hello everyone. I keep talking about the differences between...
My apologies: that this note is a week late, and that the next one is hot on its heels. Some places acquire a mystical sheen after appearing in the press too...
This week's piece comes from Ukraine - the "borderland", its name means (see Anna Reid's book of that name for an excellent short history), and it is indeed...
Being in the wrong place at the wrong time is something of a skill of mine. When Princess Diana was killed I was away (in Russia, as it happens) and I came...
Greetings all, Writing this week about a Chechnya made me think twice about working as a journalist in the Middle East, which is one of my vague ambitions. (To...
My quote of the week is from Grigory Yavlinsky of the Yabloko party in an interview with BusinessWeek. They were asking him how the Russian government could...
My piece a week ago on Chechnya (appended below) made me wonder again about what in Soviet times, at least, was called "the nationalities question". The phrase...
One of Moscow's great mysteries to me is its 24-hour culture. 24-hour money-changers and drugstores I can understand. But then there are round-the-clock...
First, anyone still interested in why Russians fear and loathe Chechens should look at this article from the Moscow Times about how Russian film has gone from...
The Quantum Theory of Putin The other day, among a small group of Russia observers who had gotten momentarily bored with talking about Russia, someone asked me...
First, my apologies for not replying to everyone who sent comments on the quantum theory of Putin. Thanks for them all, especially from the scientific types...
Dotty theories seem to be the order of the day. Having devised the quantum theory of Putin I moved boldly onwards to last week's Economist story, the lightbulb...
Anyone who follows the foreign press coverage of Russia closely may notice that stories from Grozny, the Chechen capital, come in waves. This is because the...
Sorry for the long stretches between bulletins; this is largely due to my being on the road a lot. Not long after the school-trip mission to Chechnya, I spent...
This week's Economist piece on Islam in Russia yielded one of my oddest interviews so far, on which more below. It's also a counterpoint to the one about...
"Privyet, rebyata!" Hi, guys! They were about the only Russian words Paul McCartney knew by heart. But he knew how to use them. After the first song he bounded...
What I forgot to say about the Paul McCartney concert was that afterwards I went to a party held by some British friends for the Eurovision song contest. (Many...
Belatedly, a chunk of recent articles. In last week's piece about the disconnection of the last "independent" TV station, TVS, I seem to be at odds with most...
Every time there's an explosion in Moscow, my sister in Jerusalem sends me a text message to ask if I'm OK. Sometimes she even hears about it before I do. For...
The exactly one year that I've spent in Russia feels like a lot less. One reason, I think, is that however much I may have learned, the process of untangling...
We spent several minutes just arguing about what to call him. "A senior member of the presidential administration" - no, too specific. "A source close to the...
There is a tradition of crises in Russia in August, and also a tradition of going away for the holidays. Russia broke the first tradition, and I broke the...
This week I was in Chechnya, on which more soon. For now, this week's clutch of articles, beginning with a leader about how undemocratic Russia is. Re-reading...
Here, after being held for a long time, is the outcome of a trip I took this summer along the land that divides Russia from the new EU. Borders are always...
Russia seems to be descending into a surreal parody of itself, as if to prove that the madcap Moscow that Bulgakov described in "The Master and Margarita"...
And where was I while Russia was being rocked by the Yukos affair? As you may remember from last year's theatre hostage crisis, I make it a policy to be in the...
One problem with The Economist's analytical style is that it doesn't create any motivation to be on the spot when epoch-making events are taking place. All...
On Monday, a suicide bomber triggered her half-kilo of explosive fifty yards from the Duma. "Excuse me, where's the Duma?" she reportedly asked people on the...
I came back from holiday doubtless carrying an assortment of Mexican viruses, but I am still trying to work out how one of them could have made the species...
