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Nina L. Khrushcheva
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 15, 2020
Trump and Putin by the book
Both leaders were long prefigured in classic works of political satire.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 2, 2020
Russian derangement syndrome
The Democrats and American media's obsession with the Kremlin's antics is becoming self-defeating.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 29, 2020
The fog of COVID-19 war propaganda
Leaders like Trump and Putin have their own reasons for using martial rhetoric.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 6, 2020
The assassin's false creed
History shows that targeted killings do little to either deter war or minimize it.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 30, 2019
The silence of the GOP lambs
Even as Donald Trump's presidency fast approaches the abyss, leading members of the Republican Party have stayed largely silent.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 16, 2019
When Leninists overreach
Russia and China now appear increasingly isolated on the world stage and the question now is whether they have gone too far.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 12, 2019
Should Russia hug China?
Engaging a far superior strategist in his drive against the West may be a gamble that Putin — and Russia — soon regret.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 12, 2019
Wagging the dictator
Russian and Chinese firms are increasingly bringing pressure to bear on policymaking.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 10, 2019
Russia's press poses a problem for Putin
Semi-authoritarian regimes don't fully control the people's behavior and Russia's media is stirring more anger than outsiders may expect.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 13, 2018
Has Trump turned the tables on Putin?
Donald Trump has dragged everyone —including Vladimir Putin — into his reality-TV world in which sensation, exaggeration and misinformation all serve his only true goal: to be the center of attention.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 18, 2018
The world's new disappeared
Those governments reviving the old and effective tactic of kidnapping to silence opponents may yet regret their decision.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 18, 2018
Has Putin's popularity bubble burst?
The strongman's approval rating is dropping as Russians worry more about their futures.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 16, 2018
Explaining Erdogan's economic quackery
What is it about authoritarians that leads them so consistently down the rabbit hole of charlatanism and conspiracy theory?
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 2, 2018
The West's crisis of ethical leadership
The behavior of some Western leaders is making Russia and China seem reasonable.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
May 29, 2018
A new keeper of Vladimir Putin's secrets
With the nomination of Alexei Kudrin to the government's central budgeting body, Putin's long-term plan for preserving his power and legacy seems to be taking shape.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 5, 2017
The return of the madman theory
America's madman doctrine is back with a vengeance, but this time it's far less clear if it's merely an act.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 17, 2017
Trump stumbles into Putin's Syrian backyard
The U.S. has stepped into a gaping power vacuum in the Middle East.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 23, 2015
United with Putin against terror?
Putin sees the Paris terrorist attacks as an opening for Russia to improve its ties with the West, and he wants to take advantage of it. The West should not shut him out.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 24, 2014
Putin nears a tipping point
By overplaying its hand in Afghanistan and lying to the world about the downing of a Korean Air Lines flight 31 years ago, the Soviet regime exposed and accelerated the rot that made its collapse inevitable. There is no reason to believe in a different fate for Vladimir Putin's effort to re-establish Russia as an imperial power.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 11, 2014
The silver fox of dictatorship and democracy
The reality of the times was that Eduard Shevardnadze was both a democrat and a despot. His death brings closer to the end the Gorbachev generation of reform communists who presented a stark contrast to the dour Brezhnev-era hard-liners, spurring (mostly inadvertently) the collapse of the Soviet empire and the long transition to democracy.

Longform

Professional cleaner Hirofumi Sakurai takes a moment to appreciate some photographs in a Gotanda apartment whose occupant died alone. 
The last cleanup: Life and death in a lonely Japan