Russia's War Against Ukraine
OP-ED
P.J. O’Rourke: Inside Putin’s Russia
A woman walks past a board listing foreign currency rates against the Russian ruble outside an exchange office in central Moscow on December 12, 2014. The ruble sank Friday to fresh record lows of 71 against the euro and 57 against the dollar as oil prices plunged further, prompting apparent intervention from Russia's central bank. AFP PHOTO / KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV
This is the strangest book of note I have ever read. And that’s as it should be, since the subject is Russia, the strangest country of note I have ever visited.
Peter Pomerantsev has written the most bitter indictment of a nation’s politics and society going wrong since William Shirer’s 1941 Berlin Diary. Pomerantsev has also written a calm and incisive report on the current state of affairs in Russia. Yet it reads like a comedy of manners, a dark and grotesque comedy of manners, a State Department white paper co-authored by Evelyn Waugh and Franz Kafka. And not only that, but Nothing Is True is a bildungsroman, too.
