... inefficient. The global drug trade, estimated at $300 billion annually, has produced no lasting fortunes. Everything is squandered or lost. Efficiency is achieved by establishing and following rules, but criminals are lawless by nature. The notion that mafia thugs live by a special "thieves' law" is a legend. For example, Godfather Vyacheslav Ivankov, murdered in Moscow in 2009, was himself the worst offender against the law's most-sacred precepts.
Over the past 12 years, Russia has become...
... website.
Kobzon, a legendary Soviet crooner and State Duma deputy for the ruling United Russia party, was denied a visa to the United States earlier this week. He has been unable to visit the U.S. since 1995, when his visa was revoked on suspected mafia ties, except for a brief trip in 2000 as part of an official delegation.
Lavrov said the latest refusal was based on accusations of organized crime links and "apparently" also of drug trafficking, but said they were unfounded and stemmed...
... the famous box-like Lada cars made AvtoVAZ a magnet for corruption and an albatross around the neck of the state.
Criminality reached an apogee in the 1990s after the Soviet Union collapsed, with cars being stolen the moment they left the factory. Mafia distribution networks sold them on for huge profits.
Murders connected to the nexus of corrupt managers, city officials and mafia bosses at AvtoVAZ continued until after Renault first bought into the company in 2008. Vyacheslav Shirshov, a purchasing...
The Investigative Committee has opened an inquiry against self-exiled businessman Boris Berezovsky, who recently pledged a $1.5 million bounty for the arrest of Vladimir Putin.
Horror film "Chernobyl Diaries," with its ghostly tale of terror near the infamous, abandoned nuclear plant hits theaters after protests that it sensationalizes a disaster that had tragic human consequences.
Laos, a small nation dependent on aid and rice farming, wants to join the World Trade Organization. WTO powers including the United States, China and the European Union want it to.
The U.S. ambassador and the U.S. State Department said they were surprised by blistering criticism from the Foreign Ministry regarding comments McFaul made to students last week.
After global leaders conclude the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in September, the purpose-built $2.3 billion conference center on a remote island off the coast of Vladivostok will become a university.
Boldness of the sort displayed by U.S. President Richard Nixon in opening discussions with China is needed now in the negotiations over Iran's nuclear program.
Ukraine may never recover all of the billions of dollars it has spent to co-host next month's European football championship, and the outlay might complicate its chances of servicing its debt.
A tabloid claims that Russian intelligence agencies are investigating the possibility that the U.S. military may have brought down the Sukhoi Superjet that crashed in Indonesia.
Sweden’s Loreen won the Eurovision Song Contest in Azerbaijan on Sunday before an international TV audience of 100 million, days after angering Azeri authorities by meeting rights activists critical of the host country’s human rights record.
Russia's group Buranovskiye Babushki has made it into the finals of the Eurovision Song Contest in Baku, Azerbaijan, bringing the elderly folk singers from a far-off Russian village to the attention of more than 100 million viewers around the world.
Ukraine's ruling party has triggered violent protests with a move to upgrade the official role of Russian, a sensitive issue opponents say will split the country.
Sergei Udaltsov and Alexei Navalny emerged from prison Thursday, while a dramatic standoff erupted at a State Duma hearing over a bill that would hike fines for illegal demonstrations.
Following the president's order to cut the number of officials entitled to use flashing lights to skirt through traffic, several incidents of alleged abuse involving high-profile figures have come to light.
As Moscow gears up to celebrate its victory in World War II, 67 years ago Wednesday, the shadow of political conflict shrouds the capital as hundreds of arrests cloud Victory Day festivities.
A stunning 121-megapixel snapshot of the Earth was taken by a Russian weather satellite in what is thought to be the highest resolution picture of the planet ever taken from space.
Search and rescue helicopters and volunteers struggling through thick forest and mountainous terrain spotted bodies but no survivors on the Indonesian mountainside where a Sukhoi Superjet 100 crashed by the time darkness forced an end to the search Thursday night.
A tabloid claims that Russian intelligence agencies are investigating the possibility that the U.S. military may have brought down the Sukhoi Superjet that crashed in Indonesia.
A 46-year-old furniture magnate was killed with six gunshot wounds to the head and chest early Sunday as he arrived in his Mercedes at his home in the Moscow region.
Three thrill-seekers who climbed two Vladivostok bridges earlier this week and took photos from the top were fined 300 rubles ($10) each for trespassing.
President Vladimir Putin on Monday announced the makeup of the new Cabinet answering to Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, with three-fourths of the members having been replaced.
A dark cloud was cast Wednesday on the revival of Russia’s aviation industry when a Sukhoi-built Superjet 100 with 50 people on board disappeared from the radar screens of Indonesian flight controllers.
On Monday, Vladimir Putin will take the presidential oath of office for the third time. After 12 years in power, Putin has increased his control over the country's major institutions, the siloviki and state bureaucracy.
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