Section: The Atlantic (USA)
Maslenitsa 2019 Celebrations
Maslenitsa is an ancient ceremony—a farewell to winter celebrated since pagan times in Slavic regions in Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and other countries. Maslenitsa, or Pancake Week, is both a folk and religious holiday tied to Shrovetide, the carnival before Lent. Some traditional festivities include the burning of effigies of “Lady Maslenitsa,”...
Nadler’s New Investigation Into Trump Is the One to Watch
Donald Trump insists that the investigations into his campaign’s ties with Russia are all a “hoax.” But an expansive probe that goes beyond Russia was launched by the House Judiciary Committee on Monday, and could lay the groundwork for impeachment proceedings, potentially posing the biggest threat to date to his presidency.Jerry Nadler,...
The Atlantic Hires Mike Giglio as Staff Writer Covering National Security
Mike Giglio will join The Atlantic as a staff writer covering national security with a focus on U.S. intelligence, editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg and editor of TheAtlantic.com Adrienne LaFrance announced today. Giglio comes to The Atlantic from BuzzFeed, where he served as senior national security correspondent. He begins with The Atlantic in...
The Loud Silence of Mueller’s Manafort Memo
A nation is waiting, with no clear sense of timing or resolution, to learn if its leader is a foreign agent of a hostile power. But the director of this epic tale seems determined to jerk everyone around.Expectations of imminent revelation are routinely deflated. At best, you get a modestly illuminating footnote. The most careful Twitter scholars...
Americans Don’t Need the Mueller Report to Judge Trump
Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report could come out as soon next week, CNN reported on Thursday. Unless, of course, it doesn’t—after all, there have been various suggestions for months that the end was in sight, and the Justice Department said Friday there would be no report next week. And anyway, none of this matters if newly...
This Week in Anti-Semitism
The week began with Alain Finkielkraut taking his mother-in-law to Sunday lunch in Paris. As he returned to his apartment on the Left Bank, he crossed through a crowd of Yellow Vest protestors. They recognize the well-televised philosopher. Despite the fact that he has professed sympathy for their grievances in his punditry, his presence enraged...
A Global Geopolitical Crisis Comes to Moldova
CHISINAU—Change comes slowly here in the Moldovan capital. Beyond the neon signs for fast-food restaurants such as McDonald’s or cellphone providers such as Orange, the drab, gray streets could easily form the backdrop of a gritty Cold War spy movie.This former Soviet republic is within Europe’s eastern borderlands, where the...
A Mind-Boggling Soviet Nostalgia Project
PARIS—It’s the most bananas artistic undertaking of this century. DAU, as the project is known, is a Soviet thought experiment that brings together A-list artists, word-class scientists, a handful of famous actors, Cambridge Analytica (almost), and a lot of Russian money to create 13 feature-length films, as well as an online experience and...
Photos of the Week: Hair Dress, Frosty Bison, Bajadasaurus Pronuspinax
A moment at a piano on the front lines in Ukraine, motorcycles on the ice in Kazakhstan, snow monkeys in hot springs in Japan, President Trump’s State of the Union address, World Hijab Day in Kyrgyzstan, eel fishing at night in Japan, a Titan missile silo in Arizona, a Super Bowl celebration in Boston, a “Year of the Pig” parade in Hong...
How Russia Exported Kleptocracy to America
For two years, in the early 1990s, Richard Palmer served as the CIA station chief in the United States’ Moscow embassy. The events unfolding around him—the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the rise of Russia—were so chaotic, so traumatic and exhilarating, that they mostly eluded clearheaded analysis. But from all the intelligence that...
