Tributes are flooding in to the renowned Russian human rights lawyer Yury Schmidt, who has died aged 75. Schmidt devoted much of his career to defending critics of the Russian government and others accused of political crimes, from environmental whistleblowers to oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
The imminent withdrawal of Radio Liberty from medium wave broadcasting has dented the image of American public democracy, which is perceived as kowtowing to the autocratic will of the Kremlin. The outcry has, predictably, been ferocious. Kristina Gorelik looks back at the Soviet and more recent pa
