The Belarusian president’s latest election victory and the violent crackdown after it clarify the national challenge he faces, says Natalia Leshchenko.
It is said that Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenka never misses an opportunity to surprise partners and foes alike. But the outcome of the last weekend’s presidential elections in Belarus may have taken by surprise even the country’s long-standing ruler.
In some card games, the aim is to collect as many cards as possible; in others it is to get rid of cards that have been dealt. There are regimes where the point of the rules is that they should be observed and others where simply they are there to be broken. This is Russia, explains Kirill Rogov
The Okhta Centre protestors have achieved the relocation of the project to another part of St Petersburg. But it will be built, as will the much protested motorway through Khimki Forest, maintains Mikhail Zakharov. Protest movements are facing the serious possibility of running out of steam.
oDR is proud to publish Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s final speech at his trial, which belongs in the tradition of great statements. It is a fine and eloquent summary of the larger problem Russia faces of being unable to modernize because of its governance. The court is expected to start pronouncing the
All authoritarian regimes come to an end at some point. In Russia they tend to implode. The Putin regime is displaying many of the signs of impending collapse. Andrei Piontkovsky wonders whether the destruction of statehood can be avoided this time.
On Sunday, Belarus goes to the polls, ending an election cycle that has seen all the usual assumptions turned on their heads. In the first of a two part analysis, David R. Marples and Uladzimir Padhol concentrate on a Russia-Europe tug-of-war that has dominated the campaign. Part II looks at the c
Journalist Oleg Kashin was recently brutally beaten up. To ram the message home, the fingers on his writing hand were broken, as well as his jaw and shins. He had been active in protesting the building of a highway through the Khimki forest nature reserve. Now he reflects on the authorities’ handl
The second week of December promises to be highly symbolic for all those interested in human rights in Russia. Today is Human Rights Day, and in five days time the verdict in the second trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky will be handed down. Simon Cosgrove looks forward, reflects back and salutes the c
The presidential election in December is unlikely to usher in a new president, young people feel no link to their Soviet past, and the wolf Lukashenka isn’t about to turn vegetarian. European Poet of Freedom Uladzimier Arlou is a towering figure in Belarus; here he talks to Ingo Petz.
The contest between rival “Soviet” and “European” discourses fuels a dead-end debate about Belarus’s elusive national identity. It is time instead - whoever wins the presidential election on 19 December 2010 - to change the question, and find what Belarusians have in common. A shared archetype is
Since 2008 Russia and Poland have engaged with each other in a way that would previously have been inconceivable. Some issues remain to be confronted, but they are not insurmountable. Other Russian neighbours would do well to take note, maintains Dmitri Trenin
