The ‘rationalisation’ of medical and social services in rural Russia has compelled people to acquire new skills in order to survive, but life for the weakest is very hard – and very expensive.
Ukraine has a new holiday – 8 May, Day of Remembrance – and a new symbol, the poppy. But 9 May remains, as a reminder of the fact that war is ‘never a pretty story.’
Amidst all the pomp of Victory Day, a personal story of a life lived before, during and after the event which has come to define Russian history.
Truth may well be the first victim of war, and fair-minded and dispassionate accounts of events in Ukraine are rare.
As Russian nationalism continues to varnish foreign and domestic policy motives, diaspora loyalties take on fresh significance both at home and abroad.
Maidan could have set Ukraine's media free, but one year on, the press remains dependent on the oligarchs.
Derbent, the oldest city in Russia, was supposed to mark its 2000th birthday – or was it 5000th – this year, but bureaucratic wrangles and ineptitude have meant a postponement of the celebrations.
Russia’s elite has played the cultural conservative card for several years now, and events in Ukraine mean that Russia’s reactionary bent is likely to continue.
70 years after the end of the Second World War, the Russian government is obsessed with Nazism as never before.
While political demonstrations are on the slide, economic protests are on the rise in Russia. Can the two be united?
The disintegration of the Soviet Union has given birth to a new and difficult reality in Georgia.
Is the Ukraine conflict shifting Russia's Middle Eastern policy from real strategy to scoring cheap points?
