Columnists »

Deeper Than Oil: An ode to Russia! or My neighbor Viktor

Weekly column by Marc Bennetts

My neighbor, Viktor, likes to listen to opera until the early hours of the morning. This makes it difficult to fall asleep, as his living room is above my kitchen, where I do most of my drowsing.

Transmissions from a Lone Star: Whatever happened to the Fort Hood shooter?

Weekly column by Daniel Kalder

After living here for four years, American culture still seems LOUD. Cable TV abounds with angry heads yelling at each other, while radio and the Internet are flooded with toxic invective.

Musings of a Russophile: "Never Talk to Strangers"

Weekly column by Frederick Andresen

Russia’s defensive xenophobia would not have so singularly prevailed had the country been in the crucible of conflicting European thought over the past centuries. Geography and religions precluded that.

Uncertain World: A quarter-century of going in circles

Weekly column by Fyodor Lukyanov

Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and U.S. President Ronald Reagan first met in Geneva 25 years ago. Their meeting on November 19, 1985, did not produce any tangible results but ushered in an era of perestroika in Soviet foreign policy that led to the end of the Cold War.

Due West: Looking into the Russian-Japanese island spat

Weekly column by Konstantin von Eggert

“If you have two sides, and one of them says that there is no problem to discuss, while the other says that there is, it actually means that there is a problem. So, although the official Soviet position is that the so-called Northern territories problem does not exist, in fact it does.”

Features & Opinion »

Russia and NATO discuss Afghanistan and mutual security issues

RIA Novosti military commentator Ilya Kramnik

The November 20 summit of the NATO-Russia Council (NRC) in Lisbon, Portugal resulted in three critically important military decisions.

Ahmadinejad the philosopher vs the Kremlin's pragmatists

RIA Novosti political commentator Dmitry Babich

The status of the Caspian Sea was up for discussion at the recent summit of the Caspian littoral states in Baku. This is one of the most complicated issues of the 21st century, and it is one that has a direct bearing on Russia's economic future.

Obama's final push for New START

RIA Novosti political commentator Andrei Fedyashin

U.S. President Barack Obama signaled from his bully pulpit that he intends to push for Senate ratification of the New START arms reduction treaty with Russia before the end of the year, while his Democrats still enjoy a large majority in the Senate.