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The Zone
The northern territory of the Perm region is known as 'the Zone'– a remote region of prison camps and correctional facilities. Ola Cichowlas came to know it quite well….Russia’s prison camps are the...
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The transnational lone-wolf terrorist
When Ukrainian postgraduate Pavlo Lapshyn was sentenced for racially-motivated murder and terrorism in the West Midlands, the response from Ukrainian media was to distort facts; from authorities to...
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Prayers for the dead
In Kyiv, Metropolitan Pavel – aka ‘Pasha the Merc’ – has succeeded in closing down Ukraine’s only specialist HIV/AIDS clinic, which was inconveniently located in the grounds of the Pecherskaya Lavra. A...
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Russia’s spinning moral compass
Vladimir Putin’s latest political course as president – from the jailing of Pussy Riot to the law against gay ‘propaganda’ – strikes many as being one defined by the Russian Orthodox Church. But is it...
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Georgia through a glass, darkly
Since the break-up of the USSR, the South Caucasus has trodden a chequered path, both political and economic. Is democracy really what the people want? Or just what Western donors and investors think...
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Has Siberia had enough of Russia?
With Siberia’s enormous natural resources being mercilessly exploited by Russia, and now China as well, Aleksei Tarasov wonders if the region might some day amount to more than someone else’s...
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A cock and bull story
Genitalia have played an important role in recent Russian politics: last year Pussy Riot, this year Pyotr Pavlensky who has made a very public spectacle of his private parts in Red Square. Is he just a...
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Petersburg, the city with a split personality
Today’s Russia is like a huge ice floe — broken off from contemporary life and drifting further and further from Europe into a dank and gloomy past. St Petersburg, or ‘Peter’, epitomises this duality...
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Chemfest in Russia’s ‘chemical capital’
Russia’s industrial cities are more than a blot on the landscape. They are the source of appalling chemical pollution, a problem that neither the authorities nor the oligarch owners seem to have any...
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Is Ukraine its own master?
The world was waiting for Ukraine to take its first step towards joining the EU this week, but a few days ago its president announced a not-entirely-unexpected U-turn. Valery Kalnysh reports from Kyiv....
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Russia’s intimate salons
It’s well known that in Soviet times prostitution, and any sex for that matter, didn’t exist – officially, at any rate. But times have changed. Mikhail Loginov looks at Russia’s oldest profession....
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From a #euromaidan in Ukraine
How do we (and Ukrainians) make sense of what is happening in Ukraine? Is the hashtag #euromaidan of any help in understanding the choice being made between the EU and Russia, or yet another symbol of...
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Ukraine's Black Saturday
Yesterday was Black Friday in the west – people out shopping; in Ukraine, today will be remembered as Black Saturday – people running for their lives. Have the Ukrainians been shopped by the...
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Provoking the Euromaidan
Far-right agents provocateurs have been infiltrating the Euromaidan protests in Ukraine, and provoking the police and protesters to violence. Anton Shekhovtsov reportsThe U-turn on the Association...
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Sizing up Ukraine's Euromaidan
Mass protests against President Yanukovych and his government are continuing in Kyiv and throughout Ukraine. Ivan Katchanovski assesses their size and the likely outcome.Over the last few days,...
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The fate of Ukraine's revolution is in the hands of the opposition
The intensity of the public protest rallies in Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities has peaked. Will the opposition be able to withstand the government, which has regrouped and is maintaining a ‘business...
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A way out for Ukraine
As the standoff between the government and the protesters continues in Kyiv, Sergii Leshchenko suggests what might be done to break the impasse. Barricades are everywhere. The air is thick with smoke...
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What chance for Ukraine's ‘united opposition’?
As the Ukrainian government steadies itself following the violent surge of protest in Kyiv, the opposition must now present a united face if it wants to achieve anything. Realistic? Annabelle Chapman...
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Ukraine’s choices
The current conflict in Ukraine tends to cast the country’s future choices in terms of membership of either the EU or the Russian Customs Union. The former is unlikely and the latter unworkable. But...
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Publish and be decapitated
In the West we talk metaphorically about ‘losing our heads;’ in Ukraine, it has been a state-ordained punishment. How have Ukrainians been denied the free journalism that the end of Soviet imperialism...
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