But kids in other classes called me names. That was racist for sure and they insulted me. I still get impolite questions like, 'So are you from Africa, or something?
I usually give a sarcastic reply or just ignore them. But when you play for a Russian team there are always comments on social media pages: Is she really Russian? Has there been a mix-up? People think it's funny when a black girl plays for Russia. But now I shrug it off. Why do they call me names? The answer is simple: it's not me that's wrong, it's the people around me. Throughout her life she felt she looked different. It depends on the situation. Very occasionally I've been called chernaya - "a black" - but it was always by a very ignorant person.
There have been clashes, but more often about my personality than the colour of my skin. There have certainly been times when people called me 'chocolate' and other things like that.
Alena believes the problem of racism in Russia is different from the USA. Ignorance of history misleads them into some delusion of superiority. It's interesting that there aren't protests against it. Maybe Russian society hasn't woken up to it yet. Being black in Russia. Image source, Roy Ibonga's personal archive. Here are some of their stories. Roy Ibonga, economics student, Image source, Roy Ibonga. Isabel Kastilio, marketing manager, Image source, Isabel Kastilio. Isabel dreamt about walking down the street without people staring at her.
What's changed since George Floyd's death? Viewpoint: Why racism in US is worse than in Europe The stories behind the statues targeted in protests.
Maxim Nikolsky, journalist, Image source, Maxim Nikolsky. Kamilla Ogun, basketball player, Image source, Kamilla Ogun. When Kamilla moved to Moscow aged 12 she experienced less racism. Alena El-Hussein, linguist, Image source, Alena El-Hussein's. Alena El-Hussein says she has felt different throughout her life.
Related Topics. Published 28 May Roadside stands peddled everything from soft drinks and vodka to weapons and ammunition. Equipped with bandoliers and large knives in their belts, they looked more like gang members than professional soldiers. I drove past burned-out houses and shops in the little town of Samashki, where these same troops, reportedly drunk and eager for revenge after their losses in the war, had the week before massacred Chechens, mostly women, children, and elderly men.
In Grozny itself, 40 square blocks had been leveled by Russian bombing during the war—a campaign that left thousands dead. The city looked like a smaller version of Stalingrad in It was a terrible sight. And here was Boris Yeltsin, who had so courageously defied the hard-liners in August and buried the Communist system for good, exposed as an infirm leader unable to restore order. So was the promise of a U. When I left Moscow after my first tour, in early , I worried about the eventual resurgence of a Russia stewing in its own grievances and insecurities.
I just had no idea that this would happen so quickly, or that Vladimir Putin—then an obscure bureaucrat—would emerge as the embodiment of that peculiarly Russian combination of qualities. We can have effective relations, but not just on your terms.
Putin had been president for five years then. He seemed in many ways the anti-Yeltsin—younger, sober, fiercely competent, hardworking and hard-faced. Surfing on high energy prices and the benefits of some smart early economic reforms, as well as the ruthlessly successful prosecution of a second Chechen war, he was determined to show that Russia would no longer be the potted plant of major-power politics.
Bush, a form of partnership suited to his view of Russian interests and prerogatives. But this kind of transaction was never in the cards. Putin fundamentally misread American interests and politics. It had little inclination to concede much to a declining power. Before long, the excesses of Putinism began to eat up its successes. Corruption deepened, as Putin sought to lubricate political control and steadily monopolize wealth within his circle.
In October , I joined Rice in a conversation with Putin, in front of a roaring fire at a Russian presidential compound on the outskirts of Moscow. Rice had passed the time calmly, watching a Russian sports station on TV; she betrayed no annoyance when we were finally granted our audience.
Like most of the Russian political elite, Putin expected deference from smaller neighbors, and Saakashvili was passionately undeferential. But he can get quite animated if he wants to drive home a point, his eyes flashing and his voice rising in pitch. Having to look up at the secretary did not improve his disposition. Putin kept up the pressure. On a dreary February afternoon in , as snow fell steadily outside my office window, I wrote a long personal email to Secretary Rice, emphasizing that Putin would see any move toward NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia as a serious and deliberate challenge.
The prospects of subsequent Russian-Georgian conflict would be high. Throughout this period, domestic repression was building. Two weeks before Putin and Rice squared off in front of the fireplace, Anna Politkovskaya, a fearless journalist who had covered the wars in Chechnya and a variety of abuses in Russian society, was gunned down in her Moscow apartment building. I recall the day well—a cold autumn afternoon, dusk settling, snowflakes in the air, long lines of mourners about 3, altogether shuffling slowly toward the hall where her casket lay.
Not a single representative of the Russian government showed up. The following year, in a blunt private conversation with me, Putin accused the U. Putin had handed off the presidency to Dmitry Medvedev and become prime minister, but he remained the ultimate decision maker.
Why not ask Putin for his candid assessment of what he thought had gone right, and what had gone wrong, in Russian-American relations over the past decade? Maybe letting him get some things off his chest would set a good tone. The president nodded. I sat wondering about the wisdom of my advice and my future in the new administration.
He said it was in neither of our interests to let our disagreements obscure those areas where we could each benefit by working together, and where U. We should explore the possibilities of cooperation, he explained, without inflating expectations. Putin was wary, but said he was willing to try.
Slouching a little in his chair, his legs spread wide, he looked every bit the sullen and surly kid in the back of the classroom an image that Obama once, undiplomatically, used himself in public. She asked him to talk a little about his highly publicized efforts to save Siberian tigers from extinction. He stood up and asked Clinton to come with him to his private office. I trailed them down several hallways, past startled guards and assistants. Arriving at his office, he proceeded to show the secretary, on a large map of Russia covering most of one wall, the areas he had visited on his Siberian-tiger trips, as well as areas in the north where he planned to go that summer to tranquilize and tag polar bears.
With genuine enthusiasm, he asked whether former President Clinton might like to come along, or maybe even the secretary herself? I had never seen Putin so animated. Expert analysis on the issues that shaped the election. President Trump came into office determined to improve ties with Russia. But the rest of the executive branch and the U. Congress have pursued tough policies toward Russia, imposing rafts of sanctions and expelling diplomats.
The U. At the best of times, U. Moreover, there are global challenges such as terrorism, climate change, governing the Arctic, and dealing with the COVID pandemic that necessitate working together. The challenge is to find an acceptable balance between cooperation and competition and to compartmentalize the relationship in a more effective way than at present.
After the USSR collapsed, many in the United States assumed that once the Russians had thrown off the shackles of Soviet communism they would want to join the West and become more like Americans and Europeans. S sent political and economic advisers to work with officials and people in the nascent private sector to promote democracy and markets.
Today, Russia defines its security perimeter not as the borders of the Russian Federation, but as the borders of the former Soviet Union. It demands that the United States and Europe acknowledge this. Under President Vladimir Putin, Russia has become a centralized, authoritarian state and has returned as a global player, competing with the United States for influence. Although it is weaker than the U. Washington and Moscow have fundamentally different ideas about what a productive relationship would look like.
There have been two periods in recent history when cooperation between the U. Relations began to sour when Putin returned to the Kremlin in , convinced that Hillary Clinton had been behind the demonstrators who had protested his return to power. The next year, Putin granted political asylum to Edward Snowden, the disgruntled NSA contractor who stole millions of classified documents and fled to Russia via Hong Kong.
Obama then canceled a planned summit with Putin. Following months of popular protests, the pro-Russia Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych fled to Russia and was replaced by a pro-Western government.
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