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 Europeans?
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.
Peaceful protesters holding up signs and chanting are not a threat to national security. The authorities and security officials are a threat to people’s security.
This weekend marks the 20th anniversary of Campsfield, the immigration removal centre which heralded a mass expansion of detention and opened the door for profit in immigration control in Britain. Yet outside the prison and within, there are voices of dissent, says Bill MacKeith.
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 prick or is the balls-up Mr Putin’s?
While our fingers point at cohabitation and house sharing, and our minds are troubled by the imposition of a particular lifestyle, we tend to overlook a larger project of social restructuring.
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….
In July 2012, a mix of flash flooding and gross negligence conspired to kill nearly 200 in Southern Russia. One man has been fighting since then to get justice for his dead son. Lyolya Vlasenko reports.
On Friday, a Russian news agency had its publishing licence revoked, supposedly for publishing two ‘profane’ Youtube clips. For Daniil Kotsyubinsky, however, the episode was but the latest example of a 'summary execution' — intended as a warning to any would-be political independents.
Protests against the proposed mining of nickel and copper in the heart of Russia’s Black Earth belt have been escalating, and so has the media smear campaign against the protesters. Konstantin Rubakhin, an activist himself, sees this as a positive sign.
Russia is devoting considerable effort to trying to ensure that the Sochi Winter Olympics are safe and secure. Mark Galeotti wonders whether the real concern is not an attack on the Games but the consolidation of the security state.
Today, 25th October, marks the tenth anniversary of the arrest of Mikhail Borisovich Khodorkovsky, now Russia's most famous political prisoner. A short while ago, Ben Judah wrote to him asking about the circumstances of his imprisonment, and how that experience has changed him. This is what he sai
