The other day, I saw a pretty classic drunken fight. I was just at the beginning at what I assumed would be a delicious nap - having drunk a concoction that contained heated-up rum, coconut milk and...
A few months ago, I insulted someone horribly. Darting about outside in a helpless panic, I had accosted a young man who was, by the looks of him, just trying to get home after a long day. "Do you...
It was only a matter of time before ousted Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov became re-cast as the victim of "the dark forces that govern Russia" (as one person put it to me in an e-mail, preferring not to...
Nobel laureate Ivan Bunin once wrote a brilliant story that is the very definition of "shot." In it, a nobleman riding alone sometime in autumn is nearly run down by a drunk peasant on his horse. The...
Liza Fomkina and her aunt - a woman suffering from a disability - went missing on September 13 after taking two dogs on a walk in Orekhovo-Zuevo, a town in the Moscow region. The aunt's body was...
By the time my birthday rolled around this year, I was away from Moscow for a while - taking care of family business, mostly. Because the situation surrounding the health of a relative in Kiev was...
The train was departing at 11: 23 p.m. At 11:06 p.m., I had just bounded out of my building, and was standing on the side of the road, hand outstretched. A small sedan heeded my desperate call. "Can...
Welcome to the re-launching of Natalia's column. It will run every other Sunday, and will now be more personal, for we have decreed that it will be so. Forever and ever - or until she gets bored with...
For those of us who read John Le Carré novels and fancy ourselves to be espionage buffs, the FBI's dramatic bust of an alleged Russian spy ring last week provided an opportunity to show off our...
If (when?) Iran gets the bomb, the following things will happen: Israel’s ability to deter or react to Hezbollah gets tighter; The U.S. will have to balance Israel’s desire for action with China...