Free Republic

The Business of Russia | Putin's Long Reach KRASNAYA POLYANA, Russia — Here in the Caucasus, above Sochi, Russia's only subtropical city, an elite ski resort is rising beside the Layura River. The resort, a multimillion-dollar project with a hotel and conference center, cottages, six lifts and miles of trails, is a centerpiece of Sochi's improbable bid for the Winter Olympic Games of 2014. Even more improbable is the project's developer: Russia's state gas monopoly, Gazprom. Gazprom is a vast and powerful energy giant, a company now worth more than $240 billion, having gained $10 billion in value in one...

RUSSIA today is not the same country it was only six years ago, when Vladimir Putin became president. Back then, the country was unsettled, tumultuous and impoverished, but it was free. Today Russia is richer — and not free. A new model of Russia has taken shape. The state has become, essentially, a corporate enterprise that the nominal owners, Russian citizens, no longer control. Indeed, changes in legislation and limitations on political freedoms have effectively devalued the shares in this company — call it Russian State — that ordinary Russians hold, while an elite class of investors enjoys ever increasing...

MOSCOW, May 16 - A week ago, on the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and President Vladimir V. Putin appeared together in Red Square in a symbolic nod to the historical reconciliation between Germany and Russia. But a few blocks away, a museum exhibition showed how the war's dark legacies continue to divide the two countries. Shortly before Victory Day, as it is known here, the State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts put on display 552 ancient works of art, including Greek bronzes, vases and amphorae, Etruscan figures, fragments of Roman wall paintings...

Moscow MY parents named me Victor in honor of the Soviet Union's victory over Hitler, and I am proud of my name. I see no reason to cast doubt on the historical significance of that victory; for years the Russian people, who lost millions of soldiers in the war, have united around the celebration of Victory Day. Yet, as we mark the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II, we are seeing not so much a celebration as a major disagreement between millions of people, and even between nations. This city, having summoned distinguished foreign guests for the...

Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Associated Press President Bush spoke during a news conference in Riga, Latvia, with presidents Valdas Adamkus, left, of Lithuania, Vaira Vike-Freiberga of Latvia and Arnold Ruutel of Estonia. Mr. Bush called for "free and open and fair" elections in Belarus, the last dictatorship in Europe. MAASTRICHT, the Netherlands, May 7 - President Bush used the 60th anniversary of Nazi Germany's defeat to warn President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Saturday that "no good purpose is served by stirring up fears and exploiting old rivalries" in the former Soviet republics on his borders. "All the nations that...

UFA, Russia - Here on the southwestern edge of the Urals, a popular uprising against a regional government is posing one of the most significant challenges yet to President Vladimir V. Putin's political control, raising the possibility that civic protest may be spreading into Russia from its periphery. Heartened by the political upheavals in two of Russia's neighbors, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, thousands here have staged a series of demonstrations since February calling for the ouster of the president of the Bashkortostan region, Murtaza G. Rakhimov. An ally of President Putin, he has served as the leader of this largely Muslim...

EDITORIAL OBSERVER MOSCOW Trying to decipher what on earth Vladimir Putin is doing in Ukraine is keeping Moscow's embattled liberals very busy these days. Why would a president who worked so hard on his standing in the West squander what's left on a confrontation in which he has nothing to gain? Some say he has fallen under the sway of anti-Western fellow alumni of the K.G.B., who dominate his entourage. Others say that for all his Western manners, he fully shares the venerable Russian perception of Ukraine as an extension of Russia. Still others say he really believes that the...

GUEST OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR Moscow — On Monday, against the backdrop of the terrorist attack in Beslan, President Vladimir Putin of Russia held a remarkable four-hour discussion with a small group of American and Western European journalists and analysts at his official residence at Novo-Ogaryovo, outside Moscow. The meeting had been scheduled as part of a two-day conference on Russian-Western relations, but given the unfolding horrors at School No. 1, we were certain it would be canceled. Instead, President Putin turned it into a very personal exercise in public diplomacy. Why did he meet with a group of foreigners at this...

December 3, 2002 C.I.A. Hunts Iraq Tie to Soviet SmallpoxBy JUDITH MILLER he C.I.A. is investigating an informant's accusation that Iraq obtained a particularly virulent strain of smallpox from a Russian scientist who worked in a smallpox lab in Moscow during Soviet times, senior American officials and foreign scientists say. The officials said several American scientists were told in August that Iraq might have obtained the mysterious strain from Nelja N. Maltseva, a virologist who worked for more than 30 years at the Research Institute for Viral Preparations in Moscow before her death two years ago. The information came to...