Ukrainians have accepted the loss of Crimea, but discrimination against dissenters has already started and partial mobilisation makes them very apprehensive that they may be called on to defend their future in more traditional ways.
Vladimir Putin says that Crimea is another Kosovo. Angela Merkel says that they are completely different. Who’s right?
In his 18 March speech, Vladimir Putin cited the International Court of Justice 2010 opinion allowing Kosovo to declare independence as justification for Crimean separation. The cases are, however, very different.
The Highway Code does little to protect Russian citizens, especially pedestrians. High-ranking officials or people with connections get away, sometimes literally, with murder in today’s Russia and there is no redress for them under the law.
On 6 March the Russian Federation’s Constitutional Court began hearings on whether a law affecting thousands of NGOs is in fact unconstitutional. But many civil rights campaigners believe that whatever the outcome, it will be too late. на русском языке
Asked to name Russia’s most troublesome region, most people would plump for Chechnya. But its neighbour Dagestan is now officially the most dangerous part of the Federations.
Ukrainians are having to pay a high price for the success of their revolution, and it is as yet by no means clear what exactly that victory will bring them. The problems in Crimea must be resolved and economic collapse must be averted – two very tall orders.
Russia’s Meskhetian Turks, exiled from their homeland seventy years ago, have to put up with ignorance, prejudice, discrimination and violence on a regular basis. A travelling exhibition, now in the US, shows pictures of their suffering – past and present.
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.
What is happening in Ukraine has provoked outrage and shock in the west. But do we really understand what we’re talking about?
Fears of terrorism surrounding the Sochi Olympics have seen much talk of ‘Black Widows’ and the 'Caucasus Emirate,' but do these headline-grabbing terms obscure the real nature and origins of terrorism in the North Caucasus?
The murder of a young boxer in Omsk two months ago opened a real can of political worms, with the local Roma community in particular becoming the butt of neo-Nazi threats
