It has been ten years since Azerbaijan became a member of the Council of Europe, but no one is in the mood for a party. The country’s media remains shackled, dubious laws continue to be used punitively, and political opponents are still sent to prison. The Council needs to take its membership criteria more seriously, suggests Giorgi Gogia.

President Yanukovych has awakened the spirit of nationalism in Ukraine, writes Roman Kabachiy. In all probability, this was a deliberate operation, executed to allow the “guarantor of the nation” to triumphantly rid his countrymen of radical nationalism.

Will Kyrgyzstan’s progress towards democracy, initiated after the April Revolution, be undermined by victory of the non-democratic parties at the recent parliamentary elections? Or might possibly these parties surprise everyone and accept the changes? Asel Doolotkeldieva weighs up the probable outcomes.

Bill Bowring is well known to anybody interested in international law, and especially in human rights in Russia. Professor of Law at Birkbeck College and a practising barrister, it was he who in 2002 established the European Human Rights Advocacy Centre, which has since helped many applicants, mainly from Chechnya, to take their cases to the European Court of Human Rights. In 2008 Bowring published his book “The Degradation of the International Legal Order?”. Masha Karp talks to Professor Bowring about this book, about justice in Russia and about the relation between theory and practice in his work.