President Medvedev recently sacked the longstanding Moscow mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, despite his closeness to Putin. This move, redolent of Soviet politics, won him no points and now the activities of the new mayor are threatening to affect Putin too. Regular changes of government are essential, explai
Kazakhstan’s 2010 chairmanship of the OSCE has not passed without controversy. Reforms promised at the beginning of the year never happened, press harassment continues and things could get worse when Kazakhstan is no longer in the glare of international scrutiny, laments Ryan Gallagher
Is the December presidential election going to be more of the same? Lukashenka has been president for 16 years, but this time he is playing at democracy. Could his game get the better of him? Olga Birukova fears probably not, but a recent survey might be cause for hope.
10 years ago former tennis prodigy Viktor Potemkin (not his real name) decided to come off heroin and leave the criminal world. He did this using the detox approach. Now he teaches, and trains future tennis stars. He talked to Mumin Shakirov.
Was the Crimean War really a crusade or was it motivated more by Russia’s need to have access to the Black Sea? Dominic Lieven reviews Orlando Figes’ new history of the conflict.
Charming old buildings in Georgia’s capital Tbilisi, often listed, are being pulled down and the city disfigured. International organisations are pouring grants and loans into rebuilding projects, but there is little accountability and no building control, laments George Nonidze.
Tolstoy died on 20 November 1910, but official Russian celebrations of the centenary have been muted. Rosamund Bartlett asks why. Could it be that the Soviet ‘taming’ of Tolstoy still informs attitudes to him today and might the Orthodox Church have something to do with it too?
Kyrgyzstan’s October parliamentary elections revealed a number of teething problems in law and systems, write Alexey Semyonov, Baktybek Abdrisaev and Kuban Taabaldiev. The Kyrgyz electoral bodies would be well minded to adopt an holistic approach to solving them — from the introduction of technolo
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 out
Subsidised articles and broadcasts spin the official line and the erosion of media freedom is gathering speed in Ukraine. President Yanukovych may ‘order his ministers to look into’ the situation, but they’re all hand in glove, laments Iryna Kolodiychyk
Voting at the recent local elections in Orenburg Oblast was listless and perfunctory. Voters don’t know the candidates, who in their turn make no attempt to remedy the situation, so why should people turn out to vote for them? Elena Strelnikova tries to make sense of the election process
What do you need to succeed in business?A mixture of luck and good judgement, according to Mikhail Fridman, one of Russia’s richest men and currently head of the Alfa Group.Gorbachev’s 1980s reforms made private enterprise possible – Fridman and others like him did the rest, as can be seen from th
