The world was waiting for Ukraine to take its first step towards joining the EU this week, but a few days ago its president announced a not-entirely-unexpected U-turn. Valery Kalnysh reports from Kyiv.
Russia’s industrial cities are more than a blot on the landscape. They are the source of appalling chemical pollution, a problem that neither the authorities nor the oligarch owners seem to have any interest in addressing. But people still have to live there.
Today’s Russia is like a huge ice floe — broken off from contemporary life and drifting further and further from Europe into a dank and gloomy past. St Petersburg, or ‘Peter’, epitomises this duality most of all.
Genitalia have played an important role in recent Russian politics: last year Pussy Riot, this year Pyotr Pavlensky who has made a very public spectacle of his private parts in Red Square. Is he just a prick or is the balls-up Mr Putin’s?
With Siberia’s enormous natural resources being mercilessly exploited by Russia, and now China as well, Aleksei Tarasov wonders if the region might some day amount to more than someone else’s colony.
The complicated relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan that have erupted since the break-up of the USSR belie the fact that in the past the two nations often coexisted more or less harmoniously. Maxim Edwards visited the mountain mausoleum of Baba-Hadji, an ancient symbol of erstwhile good relat
Since the break-up of the USSR, the South Caucasus has trodden a chequered path, both political and economic. Is democracy really what the people want? Or just what Western donors and investors think they should have? Stephen F Jones reflects
Vladimir Putin’s latest political course as president – from the jailing of Pussy Riot to the law against gay ‘propaganda’ – strikes many as being one defined by the Russian Orthodox Church. But is it really so?
In Kyiv, Metropolitan Pavel – aka ‘Pasha the Merc’ – has succeeded in closing down Ukraine’s only specialist HIV/AIDS clinic, which was inconveniently located in the grounds of the Pecherskaya Lavra. A new clinic has yet to open, and now all the patients can do is pray…
When Ukrainian postgraduate Pavlo Lapshyn was sentenced for racially-motivated murder and terrorism in the West Midlands, the response from Ukrainian media was to distort facts; from authorities to remain silent; and from British journalists to pin blame on UK society. These approaches obscure the
While lightning and neglect are taking their toll on Russia's wooden churches, a growing volunteer movement is making its mark in saving this precious cultural heritage. Architectural restoration expert Alexander Mozhayev reports.
The northern territory of the Perm region is known as 'the Zone' – a remote region of prison camps and correctional facilities. Ola Cichowlas came to know it quite well….
