Translation of an exclusive interview with Syrian President Bashar al_Assad:

“Have they not realised that since the Vietnam War, all the wars their predecessors have waged have failed? Have they not learned that they have gained nothing from these wars but the destruction of the countries they fought, which has had a destabilising effect on the Middle East and other parts of the world? Have they not comprehended that all of these wars have not made people in the region appreciate them or believe in their policies?”

How Russia consistently undermines the U.N. in order to keep a multi-billion dollar monopoly on the sales of helicopters and airplanes.

How Georgia halted its drug epidemic, but not its addicts–and what the U.S. might learn from their efforts.

Kosovo’s leaders have been accused of grotesque war crimes. But can anyone prove it?

A profile of Alexey Navalny, a Russian anti-corruption crusader.

On Moscow’s Bolshoi Ballet, its uncanny knack for reflecting changes in Russian politics and culture, and the recent acid attack on its artistic director.

How Moscow State university discriminated against Jewish applicants using deceptively simple problems.

A profile of Bidzina Ivanishvili.

Published originally in GQ Russia.

The author attempts to interview Grigori Perelman, a reclusive mathematical genius.

Inside the puppet trial of the decade.

Life inside a provincial Russian drug den. Originally appeared in Russky Reporter.

A profile of Eugene Kaspersky, KGB-trained online security mogul.

A CIA veteran remembers his Soviet nemesis, Leonid Vladimirovich Shebarshin, who was the chairman of the KGB for a single day during the 1991 coup against Gorbachev, and committed suicide in Moscow in March.

The highest-ranking CIA officer to be convicted of spying passes the tricks of the trade along to his son.

Scientists quarrel about the fate of animals living in the 1,600 square mile exclusion zone.

Putin v. Khodorkovsky:

Almost a decade ago, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, then the owner of the Yukos Oil Company and Russia’s richest man, completely miscalculated the consequences of standing up to Vladimir Putin, then Russia’s president. Putin had Khodorkovsky arrested, completely miscalculating the consequences of putting him in prison. During his eight years in confinement, Khodorkovsky has become Russia’s most trusted public figure and Putin’s biggest political liability. As long as Putin rules Russia and Khodorkovsky continues to act like Khodorkovsky, Khodorkovsky will remain in prison—and Putin will remain terrified of him.

In court and visiting prison with the parents of young Russian Nationalists who’ve killed.

The lavish display and heavy drinking concealed the deadly serious North Caucasus politics of land, ethnicity, clan, and alliance.

In a cable brought to light by Wikileaks, the Ambassador to Russia describes a raucous three-day Dagestani wedding attended by Chechnya’s president Ramzan Kadyrov.

On Astana, the grandiose new capital that Kazakhstan built on the site of a remote Tsarist fort, and its striving young inhabitants.

Protests against the Putin regime are already drawing over 100,000 in sub-zero weather; what will they become when spring arrives?

Pavel Galitsky, 100 years old, blogger and Skyper, survivor of 15 years in Stalin’s Siberian Kolyma mines.

Hanging out in Moscow with Russia’s yuppie, 20-something journalist revolutionaries:

In other words, the protest was being brought to you by the same people you would have relied on, weeks earlier, for restaurant picks.

Looking for holes in the world’s nuclear security.

From a childhood in the Kremlin to a trip to New Delhi carrying the ashes of her Indian Communist lover, defection at the U.S. Embassy… “finally to decades of obscurity, wandering and poverty.”

On nostalgia for Communism.