There’s a furious lobbying campaign going on in Washington over a blacklist of oligarchs close to Russian president Vladimir Putin, due to be published by the Treasury on Jan. 29.
US president Donald Trump came to office promising an isolationist foreign policy, which put “America First,” above the rest of the global order. He has actively rejected taking global leadership.
Anxiety in Moscow is deepening over an imminent new US sanctions list.
The Levada Center has long served as a crucial member of Russian civil society. The pollster has published the country’s only independent surveys, since it split from state-run VTsIOM in 2003, providing unique insights into Russians’ views about politics, economics, culture, and much else besides.
Donald Trump’s love of secretive shell companies has been well documented. He makes extensive use of them for his own businesses and since his election 70% of his company’s property sales have been made to limited-liability corporations (LLCs), according to USA Today.
A lot of eyebrows were raised when a last minute perk was thrown into the Trump administration’s tax bill on Dec. 17, giving a tax break to people profiting from certain kinds of real estate sales—like Donald Trump.
There have long been whispers about Trump’s property sales to wealthy Russians, and his hundreds of millions in credit from Deutsche Bank, made just as the bank was conducting a massive Russian money-laundering operation.
Three days after US attorney general Jeff Sessions officially recused himself from the probe into the Trump campaign’s Russia ties, Sessions tried to discredit then-FBI director James Comey, according to a richly reported New York Times story (paywall).
Turkmenistan is the gold standard when it comes to dictatorial stereotypes. The small central Asian country’s previous leader built a giant rotating gold statue of himself in the center of its capital, renamed months of the year after his family members, and changed his own name to Turkmenbashi—”father of all Turkmen.”
As soon as Utah senator Orrin Hatch announced he would retire this year, speculation mounted (paywall) that Mitt Romney, a longtime critic of president Donald Trump, would vie for his place.
When the US government sanctioned Chechnya’s despotic leader Ramzan Kadyrov for human rights abuses Dec. 20, he seemed pleased, calling it an “award” from America and declaring himself “a great man.”
Alexey Navalny has had a tough week.
No matter your political stripes, president Donald Trump’s “American carnage” inauguration speech wasn’t a cheery watch. The new president raged:
World chess organizing body FIDE thought it had achieved a breakthrough. In November, FIDE said there would be ”no need to wear a hijab or abaya” during the 2017 World Chess Championship being held in Saudi Arabia, “a first for any sporting event” in the country.
As the first year of Donald Trump’s unorthodox, tumultuous presidency draws to a close, there are some moments that will be etched into our memories for years to come.
Donald Trump doesn’t set much store by diplomacy. He’s disemboweled the State Department, said secretary of state Rex Tillerson is “wasting his time” (paywall) by talking to North Korea, and threatened to cut aid to countries that vote against the US at the UN.
The Kremlin was distinctly unhappy about US sanctions placed on Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov and four other Russian citizens on Wednesday (Dec. 20): ”We consider these sanctions illegal [and] we consider them unfriendly,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, adding it was “highly probable” that Moscow would reciprocate.
If you thought the notorious Fyre festival would be the biggest event debacle of 2017, think again. The organizers of London’s Giant Cheeseboard event learnt a crucial lesson this weekend: Don’t mess with Britons’ love of ripe French cheeses.
The European Parliament is, by several measures, the most diverse legislative chamber in the world.
Brussels, Belgium
Brussels, Belgium
Brussels, Belgium
The run-up to US president Donald Trump taking office saw a lot of talk about his myriad conflicts of interest. As the president-elect refused to meet the most rudimentary measures of transparency (such as releasing his tax returns), ethics experts from both parties tore into him. Former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum railed about kleptocracy. The government ethics chief later resigned with the same warning.
Brussels, Belgium
