The Perm region once boasted well-managed forests, protected and processed for the common good. Today those forests lie abandoned or looted in the name of progress. The locals aren’t happy, but what can they do, asks Roman Yushkov?
Twenty-five years after the Chernobyl disaster, Barys Piatrovich recalls the tension of unknowing that gripped him and those around him during the days that followed. Today, barely any of the Chernobyl evacuees are still alive. Spread throughout the country, they died alone and unnoticed, statisti
Soviet times were hard for the indigenous people of the Russian Far East, but perestroika allowed them to reunite with their Alaskan cousins. The ensuing cooperation started with culture, and expanded to scientific research and mapping the bowhead whale. Sarah Hurst tells the story.
Business is rarely just business in Russia, and the recent deal between Rosneft and BP is surely a case in point, says Mikhail Zakharov. The reason why it is happening is a combination of pragmatism, opportunism and national pride.
Where the world's tiger population once numbered 100,000, it now stands at 3,500, with several species facing extinction. Stanley Johnson was an attendee of the first Global Tiger Summit in St Petersburg last month. He was surprised at the level of agreement among the world elite.
The plan to construct a section of the new Moscow-St.Petersburg motorway through the legally-protected Khimki Forest Park will destroy a rare eco-system. Dogged local resistance has turned this into a national, even international issue. But it has not derailed the plan The article was first publis
The Russian heat wave has been going on for weeks. From her dacha Elena Strelnikova gives a wry account of officials on freebies, water shortages and the catastrophic effects of the lasting heat on fruit, crops, milk yields and life in the Orenburg Region in general.
Daniel Metcalfe's book ‘Out of Steppe’ describes his journey through Central Asia. In this excerpt he describes the Karakalpak landscape around the Aral Sea. The Soviet tourist destination, previously the centre of a successful fishing industry, is now depopulated, polluted by the chemicals used t
Lack of personnel and organizational incompetence have seriously hampered the Russian response to forest fires, writes Greenpeace's Alexei Yaroshenko. Worryingly, fires have reached some Chernobyl-affected regions, and many other villages have been essentially abandoned to their fate.
With the Amur tiger population facing extinction, organisations from Russia and abroad have been working to save them. They don’t always agree as to how this should be done. Then there are the politics, Mumin Shakirov observes. Perhaps the Year of the Tiger will be auspicious for the Amur big cats
