Georgian refugees from Abkhazia ask whether they will ever be able to go home

 

On a visit to the separatist republic of Abkhazia a week before the Russia-Georgia war in August 2008, openDemocracy/Russia editor Zygmunt Dzieciolowski was aware of growing tension. If war did break out, the locals knew that they would be the ones who paid the price.

In August 2008 oD/Russia's editor was in Georgia.  He interviewed Mikheil Saakashvili, as it happens just twenty hours before the war with Russia broke out.  Zygmunt was assured by the President that there were no plans for military action, but later that night he felt very sure that the war could begin at any moment.

A new Black Sea state emerges from the Georgia-Russia war. But how independent is it?

 

openRussia takes off: Zygmunt Dzieciolowski in Sukhumi meets Abkhazia's president, while Boris Dolgin in Russia looks at the lessons of a dirty war for both sides

Georgia's president is young, alert, confident. But is he a leader for dangerous times?

The Kremlin-backed youth movement mixes idealism, nationalism and power

Russia's "unity day" celebration on 4 November is a classic invented tradition

Russia's president plays a game of long-term power

At 80, the flame still burns for perestroika's intellectual pioneer (archive)

Poland under the Kaczynski twins is in the grip of political madness. A new lexicon makes sense of it

The treatment of Tajik and Uzbek migrant workers in Moscow is a mirror of Russia’s own problems

The former world chess champion Garry Kasparov faces an epic struggle against formidable opponents, reports Zygmunt Dzieciolowski

Boris Yeltsin rollercoaster ride as late-Soviet gadfly and early-Russian president left his people sadder and wiser, says Zygmunt Dzieciolowski.

A trip to an oil-rich city in western Siberia gives Zygmunt Dzieciolowski a fresh insight into the blend of surprise and familiarity that defines Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

The Kremlin has learned how to concentrate power by apparently dispersing it, reports Zygmunt Dzieciolowski.

Russians love their national drink to death, and the state and black market can reinforce its ruination of health and relationships, says Zygmunt Dzieciolowski.

A poisoned Russian defector in London is only the latest official enemy to be targeted, reports Zygmunt Dzieciolowski.