Letters are a life-line for Tolya. The army’s a mysterious entity, unknowable by anyone outside it, the conscript reflects. Awful though it is, he wouldn’t have missed it. He’s learned a lot. And even (possibly) made a friend
Andy Mycock on ideas for a British civic service programme
The longer the war continues in Afghanistan, the more likely it is that disparate Taliban groups will unite and join forces with international Islamist militant groups
Before Kenya can succeed in stemming the radicalisation of its Muslim minority, the US will have to change its Somali policy
Ivo Josipović, the professor-composer who has just won the Croatian presidential election, brings real hope to the Western Balkans
Bosnia is saddled with a peace settlement for a constitution, and that is getting in the way of building a functioning state
Anastasia Baburova and Stanislav Markelov were gunned down in a neo-Nazi contract killing a year ago. In this moving tale Andrei Loshak tells us why he and his friend, who also suffered neo-Nazi violence, will be going on the Moscow march in their memory
In this third excerpt from his letters, our Russian conscript ends up in hospital, with time to reflect on what lies ahead. He reflects on the bullying of the ‘bitches’ by the ‘grandpas’. So deeply entrenched is it, he reckons, that the army would fall apart without it.
In this second letter home our new conscript Tolya is starting to settle in to his two-year stint in Russia’s army. He tells us about the food and how he has learnt to avoid being beaten up.
An accidental explosion in Karachi kills seven suspected militants. A drone attack kills 18 in Waziristan. A suicide bomber kills many in Afghanistan. Haitian aid is arriving too slowly. And Iranian hackers target China’s biggest search engine. All this an more, in today’s security update…
