... revenue that involved the construction and financing of Trump’s marquee SoHo property in New York City. The main partner driving this project way Bayrock, was a company run by Tevfik Arif, a man who in the Soviet-era was an economic official for the USSR. His point man for the deal, Felix Sater, was a convicted Russian mobster; financing involved money from an Iceland firm known for drawing money from Putin-linked Russians, as well as from a financier hailing from the former Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan ...
Having never officially observed an election in Brazil former U.S. president Jimmy Carter and the organization he founded to promote ethical democracy have given unequivocal support to president (sic) Michel Temer and his team in their efforts to safeguard Brazil's democratic values.
The endorsement, signed by Carter, congratulated prominent electoral law specialist Torquato Jardim on his appointment as Temer's new Transparency Minister. It went on the official government website...
This year will see the 25th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s breakup and the emergence of new Russia on its ruins. Time is ripe for taking stocks and mapping a road into the future.
A group of members of Russia’s Council on Defense and Foreign Policy (CDFP) has presented to the state and society its vision of the country’s future foreign policy. We believe that resuming a creative foreign policy discussion will be useful. Amidst massive worldwide propaganda it is easy to fall into...
The disintegration of the Soviet Union created a decade-long illusion that the era of ideologies and ideological struggle was over and the world was moving towards a single system of values based on Western liberal democracy and capitalism. Europe and America fascinated the world with their freedom and winning political system.
The perception about the final victory of Western values was backed up by America’s massive military supremacy but most importantly by Western countries’ affluence...
... albeit for different reasons: progressives and democrats had one set of motives; retrogrades and communists had a contrary set of motives. Neither the Baltic nor the South Caucusus republics, nor even Ukraine could have caused as big a country as the USSR to disappear so quickly. Only the will of the Russian establishment – the old one that was trying to hold onto the reins of power by distancing itself from Gorbachev, the experimenting General Secretary, and the new one that wanted to assume ...
Putting the State Together Again and External Assistance: Losses or Gains?
More than two decades after the collapse of the USSR, the phrase “the post-Soviet space” is still widely used in expert and political discourse, despite attempts to replace it with another definition”
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such as the “Newly Independent States” or “Eurasia”.
At first glance, the concept ...
... film.
Donovan (Hanks) negotiates and bluffs his way around the traps and pitfalls set by both organizations, and the fabled East German “Stasi” (ministry of state security) and their puppet justice minister.
Holding to the tradition of USSR-style “historical revisionism,” to this day the Kremlin has never acknowledged that Fisher was a spy on behalf of the Soviet Union operating in the United States. It is known, however, that Fisher was a Soviet citizen. A heavy smoker,...
... win.
The aggressive actions of Japan, which occupied Manchuria in 1931 and unleashed large-scale hostilities against China in 1937, served as a preamble for World War II. The Soviet Union became the only state to provide real assistance to China. The USSR delivered modern warplanes, tanks, artillery systems, small arms, machine guns, communications and various types of military materiel to China. About 5,000 Soviet military experts, including a large group of pilots, were involved in combat operations....
The 40th anniversary of the signing of the Helsinki Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe passed almost unnoticed in Russia. Probably because the date falls during the most systemically unstable period in Europe since the declaration was signed.
The Final Act was a large-scale compromise, not so much in terms of concrete details, but in the agenda itself. The Soviet Union got what it initiated the whole process for — confirmation of its post-war European borders...
... preserving and developing modern society, including the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, which shattered the Soviet-American relationship. It is common knowledge that the situation was eventually resolved by the leaders of the two global superpowers, USSR and the U.S., but little is known about the activities of the KGB’s Washington station in those hours. RIAC met with Natalia Asatur-Feklisova, daughter of Alexander Feklisov who headed the station in 1962-1964, to find out why he also deserves ...
