Writing on oDRussia yesterday, Almut Rochowanski argued that Kremlin’s repression of NGOs could work in their favour by encouraging domestic giving. Her mistake was assuming Russian NGOs are able and free to replicate Western membership-based fundraising models, which they are not, says Michael Allen.

The annual Best of Russia photography exhibition has opened in Moscow’s Winzavod Centre for Contemporary Art. Reviewing the past five years of images, Jeremy Noble was struck by how explicitly the photographic eye reflects a country in the throes of radical change. 

In Putin’s Russia, NGOs funded from abroad are now officially considered ‘foreign agents’. However a recent poll suggests that the Russian public’s attitude to them is rather less one-sided. Vladimir Zvonovsky reports from Samara. 

Celebrated Russian activist Valery Abramkin has died aged 66. Here we republish extracts from a lecture delivered in 2006, which contains many fascinating insights into the rules of behaviour, hierarchies and relationships within Soviet and Russian prisons. (With a foreword by Mary
McAuley.) 

A monastery near Moscow has opened its doors to the city’s homeless — in exchange for food and shelter, the men help out on the farm. Marina Akhmedova spent some time among the labourers, discovering how they ended up on the streets, and finding out what they think of the meaning of life. 

Vladimir Putin’s attempts to draw the countries of central Asia into his fledgling Eurasian Union creates a dilemma for some of them: if they take up his offer, they might lose their valuable trading links with China. Li Lifan and Raffaello Pantucci discuss their options.

Are China and Russia destined to form an alliance against the West? Unlikely, thinks Thomas Koenig: any future relationship will be based on economics, rather than politics.