Andijan, Germany and Europe

The armoured personnel carriers stormed Babur Square in Andijan with lightning speed on Friday 13 May 2005, bringing death without any warming. The uniformed men riding atop the vehicles fired purposefully and indiscriminately into the crowd of more than a thousand men, women and children gathered under the monument to the Mongol ruler Babur. In an instant, Uzbekistan's authoritarian president, Islam Karimov, had drowned the anti-tyranny demonstration in blood.

Georgia, Abkhazia, Russia: the war option

What does it take to persuade the European Union that what Russia is doing in Georgia's breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia merits more than a gentle reproach?

Robert Parsons is international editor of France 24. He earned a doctorate at Glasgow University for a thesis on the origins of Georgian nationalism. He was the BBC's Moscow correspondent (1993-2002), and worked at RFE/RL as director of its Georgian service, senior correspondent and chief producer for multimedia projects.

Also by Robert Parsons in openDemocracy:

"Russia and Georgia: a lover's revenge" (6 October 2006)

"Georgia: progress, interrupted" (16 November 2007)

"Georgia's race to the summit" (4 January 2008)

"Mikheil Saakashvii's bitter victory" (11 January 2008)

The freedom of institutions

One of Dmitry Medvedev’s first pronouncements in his new role as President was about freedom of speech. At Polit.ru, which is the oldest Russian socio-political website,we have a name for the new project we are launching in conjunction with the well-known international website Open Democracy. It is the Freedom of Institutions. There is good reason for this. We want to make it clear that we believe the question of freedom to be crucial in today’s world. And the establishment of institutions is a key part of the answer.

Georgia’s democratic stalemate

The so-called "rose revolution" in Georgia, when peaceful street protests against falsified parliamentary elections sparked in November 2003 eventually forced out the incumbent president, Eduard Shevardnadze, created optimism that the country would move towards full democracy. More recent events suggest that the path remains elusive.

European missile defence: the America-Russia-Iran knot

At the Nato summit of heads of state in Bucharest on 2-4 April 2008, the issue of missile defence will figure high on the agenda. The odds are that, without any meaningful parliamentary debate within or between European states, Europe will quietly go along with the United States proposal to instal missile-defence interceptors in Poland and a powerful radar system in the Czech Republic. Moreover, but it appears that further steps will then be taken to integrate this strategic US "national missile defence" system with "theatre missile defence", currently being developed by Nato countries at an annual cost of €1 billion euro ($1.58 bn).

Russia's post-election balance

Dmitry Medvedev has won his predictable landslide as the new president of Russia. His victory in the election of 2 March 2008 was never in doubt, given the Kremlin's preference for coronation over competition. The Kremlin even overcame earlier reservations about Medvedev outscoring the 64% won by the pro-Vladimir Putin political formation United Russia in the Duma elections of December 2007 (with Putin himself at the head of its list). The preliminary official result of the presidential poll gives Medvedev 70.2%, and his 52.2 million votes exceeds the 49.6 million Putin won in 2004.

Russia’s Potemkin election

I've been conducting my own personal election poll over the last couple of weeks - every time I go for a drink with Russian friends, or meet people at a party, I ask them if they are going to vote in the parliamentary elections on 2 December 2007. I also called up every young Russian acquaintance in my mobile phone and asked them: "Are you going to vote? If so, who for? If not, why not?"

We are recruiting a Russia editor

Russia’s immigration challenge

For the last three years Mansur Mirzayev, a 22-year-old Uzbek, has been living in Moscow. He came to the Russian capital from the poverty-stricken province of Andijan - which was, after his departure, the scene of a notorious massacre by the state forces of Islam Karimov in May 2005. No jobs were available there in the region of Uzbekistan close to the border with Kyrgyzstan, so together with a number of local people Mansur decided to take the risk of moving to Russia.

Europe and Russia: the accountability test

By 2030, over 60% of European gas imports are expected to come from Russia. This creates a strong economic interdependency that is, however, today surrounded by security threats and political mistrust. Much of this tension was on display at the summit between the leaders of Russia and the European Union in Samara on 18 May 2007. Some of it might be dispelled if these leaders - and the media which tracks their every move - paid attention to the issues addressed at another current international gathering: the seventh world assembly of the global non-governmental organisation Civicus in Glasgow on 23-27 May. There, almost 1,000 civil-society organisations will discuss how civil society can improve accountability.

Russia's unequal struggle

I met Marina Litvinovich for the first time when she was in her early 20s, in 1999. Times were difficult. Boris Yeltsin's era was about to end, and Russia was getting ready for parliamentary and presidential elections. Marina was hired by Gleb Pavlovsky, a Kremlin advisor, as part of the campaign aimed at stopping the coalition between Moscow's mayor Yuri Luzhkov and Russia's ex-prime minister Yevgeny Primakov, who believed they had a serious chance to gain power.

Russia's restricted voices