In Russia, 23 February is celebrated as Defender of the Fatherland Day. But despite a law entitling them to decent housing, many World War Two veterans in Siberia have little to celebrate.
Whatever their outcome, the events in Ukraine seem likely to be of greater long-term import than the ‘Orange Revolution’ in 2004. But a long-term what?
Modern urban versus traditional rural Afghanistan, then and now. Time may have moved on, but the problems are big enough to be extremely concerning.
Twenty five years ago today, Soviet General Boris Gromov oversaw the final withdrawal from Afghanistan. How will the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) leave Afghanistan?
Protest in Ukraine initially seemed to reveal a country sharply divided into the pro-European west and pro-Russian east. But there are signs that shared issues of civil rights and democracy are gaining ground on traditional differences.
27 January, anniversary of the Red Army’s liberation of Auschwitz in 1945, is widely marked as International Holocaust Remembrance Day, but Russia pays little attention to it. Why in a country so deeply affected by this genocide, has raising awareness of it been an uphill struggle?
New Year is by far Russia’s most important and lavishly celebrated public holiday. But as Russians prepare to celebrate it, Putin is trying to impose austerity on the public sector. With mixed results, reports Mikhail Loginov.
Russia today is a hybrid state, combining democratic institutions with authoritarian practices, which coexist in a continual state of tension. Richard Sakwa analyses its contradictions and suggests how the constitutional state can re-assert itself against the arbitrariness of the regime.
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 most of all.
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 colony.
The complicated relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan that have erupted since the break-up of the USSR belie the fact that in the past the two nations often coexisted more or less harmoniously. Maxim Edwards visited the mountain mausoleum of Baba-Hadji, an ancient symbol of erstwhile good relat
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….
