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 as usual’ stance? Valery Kalnysh wonders.
Mass protests against President Yanukovych and his government are continuing in Kyiv and throughout Ukraine. Ivan Katchanovski assesses their size and the likely outcome.
Far-right agents provocateurs have been infiltrating the Euromaidan protests in Ukraine, and provoking the police and protesters to violence. Anton Shekhovtsov reports
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?
How do we (and Ukrainians) make sense of what is happening in Ukraine? Is the hashtag #euromaidan of any help in understanding Ukraine's choice between the EU and Russia?
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.
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.
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 interest in addressing. But people still have to live there.
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.
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?
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.
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 they should have? Stephen F Jones reflects
