What was so shameful and embarrassing to me, an American journalist whose own Moscow-based newspaper, The eXile, had just been driven out of existence [previously] by these same Kremlin bastards, is that Sasha was rightly frustrated. A Kremlin minder right and the Western journalists wrong? What has this world come to when the Kremlin has a better grasp of the truth than the free Western media?

How to screw up a war story: The New York Times at work
posted by Anything on Jan 5, 2009 - 32 comments

Do you, or an older relative of yours, recognize any of these children? More than 70 children separated from their families during WWII, now all elderly men and women, are using the Internet to try to find some answers about their pasts, their families, and sometimes even their own names. They are soliciting help and suggestions in the comments sections on each story. [more inside]
posted by Asparagirl on Dec 19, 2008 - 21 comments

Georgia and Russia: This is the most balanced and informative discussion I've seen since the invasion over three months ago (MeFi thread). If you've been wanting to catch up, this essay and its many useful links are the way to go. The author, Donald Rayfield, is professor of Russian and Georgian and knows both countries well. (Via wood s lot.)
posted by languagehat on Nov 18, 2008 - 12 comments

When Prague Spring Gave Way to Winter. [more inside]
posted by chunking express on Sep 17, 2008 - 12 comments

Georgia offers evidence that Russia made the first move. (login NYT ; Bugmenot) [more inside]
posted by LMGM on Sep 16, 2008 - 87 comments

Why I had to recognise Georgia’s breakaway regions, by Dmitry Medvedev.
posted by stammer on Aug 27, 2008 - 138 comments

"Magnum photographer Thomas Dworzak is in Georgia for The Wall Street Journal. His photographic essays from the region span two decades and tell a moving story of the people and now war there." [more inside]
posted by chunking express on Aug 18, 2008 - 29 comments

The Russo-Georgian War and the Balance of Power- the Russian invasion of Georgia has not changed the balance of power in Eurasia. It simply announced that the balance of power had already shifted. [more inside]
posted by notsnot on Aug 14, 2008 - 75 comments

Kiuchi Nobuo - a Japanese airman in World War II, was captured and sent to a prison camp in the Ukraine. He tells his story with drawings.
posted by tellurian on Feb 5, 2008 - 23 comments

"The "American Intervention in Northern Russia, 1918-1919," nicknamed the "Polar Bear Expedition," (wikipedia) was a U.S. military intervention in northern Russia at the end of World War I." The ostensible purpose was to open an Eastern Front following the Russian withdrawal from World War I, but in practice the unit stayed to fight Bolshevism. An archive of the expedition, which gives wonderful insight into early Bolshevik Russia as well as war-weary United States, is online. [more inside]
posted by Rumple on Jan 25, 2008 - 23 comments

Uptick in Cold War-like rhetoric making you a little nostalgic for the era of parachute pants and Members Only jackets?
A cabal of Russki comrades at some pinko university have been going around collecting and resurrecting disused Soviet-era arcade games, which became instantly obsolete with the collapse of communism. Sea Wolf, Duck Hunt, Pole Position, Dogfight!
We begin bombing in five minutes.
posted by planetkyoto on Jun 7, 2007 - 28 comments

Russia on Tuesday test-launched a new intercontinental ballistic missile The points to note are:- It could penetrate any defense system, the statement did not specify how many warheads the missile can carry, it's either a decoy or something that has been developed in complete secrecy.
posted by chrisranjana.com on May 29, 2007 - 54 comments

Russia in photos: 1941-1945.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken on May 11, 2007 - 32 comments

In 1982, ten-year old Samantha Smith from Maine wrote a letter to Yuri Andropov asking whether there was going to be a nuclear war. Andropov responded, and Samantha accepted his invitation to stay at a Russian pioneer camp with Soviet children. Tragically, within the following two years both the young Samantha and Secretary Andropov passed away. (wmv)
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Dec 23, 2006 - 23 comments

A 10 minute home movie taken by an SS officer has been discovered in an English church. It shows SS officers and secretaries relaxing in the summer of 1942 in southern Russia. The last couple of minutes shows footage from a slave labor camp in that area. The footage was taken at the height of the German success in Russia, a few months before the turning point in the Russian campaign - and probably the turning point in the Second World War.
posted by bobbyelliott on Oct 26, 2006 - 51 comments

Newsfilter: Chechen war reporter found dead - Anna Politkovskaya. Courageous reporting from the "forgotten" conflicts in Caucasus. I guess she found out the truth too often.
posted by hoskala on Oct 7, 2006 - 26 comments

Pobediteli: Soldiers of the Great War. In this year of the 60 Anniversary of the Victory we wish to personally thank the soldiers of the Great War living among us, and tell the story of their heroism.
posted by monju_bosatsu on Oct 18, 2005 - 9 comments

The Emperor's Bunker. "The Japanese, with sadness and irony, stressed that Hirohito couldn't even speak properly. This was partly to do with the fact that he didn't have to speak - people spoke in his name and he was isolated from real life". "The Sun", the third part in Russian director Aleksandr Sokurov's 'Men of Power' tetralogy after the gloom of Moloch (1999), about Hitler and Eva Braun, and the despairing tones of "Taurus" (2001), focused on the wheelchair-bound Lenin in his death throes, "The Sun" seems almost upbeat. This, after all, is a film about reconciliation. More inside.
posted by matteo on Sep 13, 2005 - 21 comments

You may owe your life to this man If it weren't for Stanislav Petrov, many or even most of us reading this might be dead now - or never born, for the teens among us. At least according to this article, and the other links above.
posted by ramakrishna on Sep 5, 2004 - 34 comments

Putin says Iraq planned US attack
posted by terrymiles on Jun 18, 2004 - 64 comments

"Weapons of Mass Destruction", you say? Question: If Iraq is the vicious rat and North Korea the furious pygmy of WMD threats, where is the 800 pound gorilla? Answer - "...law enforcement officials worldwide have seized 40 kilograms of Russian-origin uranium and plutonium since 1991. Stanford researchers have also estimated that only 30 to 40 percent of the nuclear material stolen from facilities in Russia and other territories in the former Soviet Union are ever recovered by authorities." the collapse of the Soviet Union left vast stores of Nuclear weapons and weapons grade plutonium and uranium, and stocks of chemical and biological warfare agents lying about at dangerously underfunded facillities scattered through the vast expanse of the ex-Soviet realm. "Russian stockpiles of weapons and materials are the most likely source for terrorists attempting to acquire weapons of mass destruction", said US Senator Richard Lugar, Republican chairman of the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee. An international effort to destroy these stores of ex-Soviet WMD's is currently funded at a tiny fraction of the estimated cost of a possible US invasion and occupation of Iraq. (more inside)
posted by troutfishing on Mar 16, 2003 - 10 comments

Give It Up for MC Zhirinovsky Flamboyant Russian ultra-nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, renowned for his controversial views on Iraq, has had his words turned into an anti-war rap song. The song, titled "Don't you dare go shooting at Baghdad", is being launched on the internet, according to the Russian television station TVS.
posted by turbanhead on Feb 26, 2003 - 7 comments

Army for sale! Russia will back the US in it's Iraq campaign only in exchange for money. Didn't they used to be a superpower? Now they are the A-Team?
posted by wolfgangnorton on Oct 9, 2002 - 17 comments

The Ultimatum has been delivered to the UN... This conflict, simmering for over ten years is about to erupt. "In strict accordance with international law," unilatteral military action is imminent unless demands are met. Animosity has been mounting steadily for months, and Russia is ready to invade Georgia. "No one can deny today, and for ourselves we are certain, that Georgian territory is sheltering both those who are implicated in the attacks on the United States and a direct operative involved in the attacks on housing units in Russia," Mr. Putin said on Russian television, echoing the logic U.S. President George W. Bush has used to rally international support for a pre-emptive strike on Iraq. The United States said it would not support Mr. Putin if he carried out his threat to attack Chechen rebel bases in Georgia, and slammed him for suggesting he might. "The United States strongly supports Georgia's territorial integrity and would oppose any unilateral military action by Russia inside Georgia," a U.S. State Department spokesman said. This all seems rather hypocritical, business as usual new world order politics: Is the price of getting UN Security Council approval on Iraq going to be public and secret deals, and is this really about the Chechens, or about breakaway republics and Caspian Sea oil? And what about China? Will we rubberstamp their ambitions re: Taiwan, Spratley Islands, Mongolia? And finally, why Georgia? I know they put up a two-bit Olympics and never caught that one terrorist bomber, but really, Georgia?
posted by Mack Twain on Sep 13, 2002 - 25 comments

the grave of the unknown rapist. does the brutality of war result in man sinking to the depths of depravity
posted by johnnyboy on May 9, 2002 - 25 comments

Captures from a video of an attack on a Taliban BMP. All I have to say is "holy crap." Graphic. Interesting. Discuss amongst yourselves.
posted by manero on Jan 25, 2002 - 24 comments

According to this editorial, the Russians have outmaneuvered the US oil interests by encouraging the Northern Alliance to take Kabul. "The alliance is now Afghanistan's dominant force and, heedless of multi-party political talks in Germany going on this week, styles itself as the new "lawful" government, a claim fully backed by Moscow."
posted by electro on Nov 28, 2001 - 14 comments

The eXile's take on the rush to war.
posted by GriffX on Sep 26, 2001 - 6 comments

How to brew up a new cold war: arm up some rivals and burn a treaty in exchange for setting up a global missle defense system. Can anyone find an upside to this story? Why could this be a good thing for the US and the rest of the world?
posted by mathowie on May 28, 2001 - 45 comments