Section: The Economist (The United Kingdom)
Great patriotic war, again
ON MAY 9th 150 Russian military aircraft will streak across the Moscow sky, 16,000 troops will march through Red Square and three intercontinental ballistic missiles will be put on display, all in celebration of the 70th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany. Vladimir Putin, the national leader with a fast-developing...
Fight the good fight
FROM the Sea of Azov to Aleppo, fighters from the western Balkans are at war. So worried are their governments that laws have been passed to make fighting abroad illegal, and their security services co-operate with foreign ones to monitor them. The numbers are small, but the Balkans looms relatively large on foreign battlefields. Orthodox...
How Vladimir Putin tries to stay strong
A RELATIVE hiatus in the fighting in eastern Ukraine (at least until this week) and a relative stabilisation in the Russian economy are prompting two questions. Is the worst of the war over and might better economic news calm the Kremlin—or is this a lull before a new storm? The economic situation is not as bad as many predicted four months ago....
Belarus and the great bear
UNTIL science unlocks the secrets of time travel, the world will have to make do with Belarus. Little seems to have changed in this landlocked country of 10m souls, tucked between Poland and Russia, since it emerged blinking into independence after the Soviet disintegration in 1991. Statues of Lenin dot the wide, well-ordered streets of Minsk,...
In the fold
AFTER Viktor Yanukovych, who was then president, fled Ukraine in February 2014, Russian flags began appearing around the Lenin statue in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city. Pro-Russian activists clashed with supporters of the Maidan revolution, and some spoke of a “Kharkiv People’s Republic”. But while separatism caught fire in...
Nemtsov Bridge
Remembered with love MEMORY has long been the subject of fierce and often deadly ideological battles in Russia. Those who control the past also control the present. Following the murder of Boris Nemtsov, a liberal opposition leader, on a bridge by the Kremlin, a fight for his memory, and for the Russian flag, is taking place. In Soviet times,...
President v oligarch
FOR the past year, Ukraine’s government has enlisted the help of the country’s powerful oligarchs in fighting its war against pro-Russian separatists. This week a new war opened up, pitting the government against one of the very oligarchs it had relied upon. On March 25th Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine’s president, forced Ihor...
Aux armes, journalistes!
WHEN Russia was preparing to annex Crimea a year ago its television broadcasts, portraying the protesters who had recently overthrown Ukraine’s regime as a neo-Nazi rabble, softened the peninsula’s defences as effectively as any artillery assault. One month later, when Russian-backed rebels overran Donetsk, in eastern Ukraine, one of...
Quitting dreams, chasing dreams
ONLY a few years ago, politicians in the European Union, and in the poor and war-ravaged countries in the continent’s south-east, felt that between them they were creating a virtuous circle. With EU help, poor Balkan lands would improve their governance and streamline their economies; in due course they would be rewarded with EU entry....
When relief looks barely enough
THERE was relief in Ukraine’s corridors of power on March 11th when the International Monetary Fund (IMF) approved its long-awaited bail-out for Ukraine. The fund’s promised loan amounts to $17.5 billion over four years. Other donors have pledged several billion more. The first tranche has already brought in a badly needed $5 billion,...
