It is clear Viktor Yanukovych's recent moves against his predecessor Leonid Kuchma were driven by not by justice, but a mixture of revenge, intimidation and diversion. The Ukrainian President may well discover that his ulterior strategies are flawed, and that he is simply playing into the hands of
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.
Despite its position out on Europe’s eastern flank, Belarus has historically and culturally been at the heart of European civilisation. Sooner or later, its time will come to rejoin the family of democratic nations, writes Uladzimir Arlou
Volgograd has had many incarnations, but is best known as Stalingrad for the great WWII battle that raged in and around the city. Local journalist Oksana Zagrebnyova gives a wry update of life in Volgograd in the run-up to the Duma elections and the city’s relative indifference to a possible chang
After months of slow-burn, the British phone "hacking" scandal (where the News of the World was shown to have gained illegal access to celebrity voicemails) has taken a dramatic turn. Rupert Murdoch's tabloid has finally admitted its guilt, and with that revealed a web of cover up and cronyism inv
In the opinion of film director Andrei Konchalovsky the true herald of liberal reform in the Soviet Union was Yury Andropov, not Mikhail Gorbachev. Irina Borogan asks if this is the same Andropov who headed the KGB through two of its darkest decades, who crushed dissidents by incarcerating them in
Half-Chechen, one-time aide to Khodorkovsky, sometime novelist and current-day political technician, Vladislav Surkov’s life story lacks anything but colour. Yet the adjectives most usually attributed to his political figure are “grey” and “shadowy”. Richard Sakwa reviews a collection of speeches
Optimistic reports of the Kremlin embracing liberal party politics have proven highly exaggerated. Such an agenda lacks the full support of the ruling elites, and as such is doomed to failure, explains Andrei Kolesnikov.
The re-opening of the investigation into the 2000 murder of journalist Georgiy Gongadze is motivated more by President Yanukovych’s wish to cut a positive figure in the West and solve domestic problems than by a desire for justice. Ordinary Ukrainians, meanwhile, are more likely to regard it as pa
Wikileaks has finally settled the controversy over who attacked whom first in the Russo-Georgian war of August 2008, with papers firmly pointing to a miscalculation by Georgia and its superpower friend. For Hans Mouritzen, however, such historical details are dwarfed by a more significant subseque
For over 30 years the Warsaw Pact was a threatening presence on the European political scene, but on 31 March 1991 it was disbanded with little pomp or circumstance. Alexander Cherkasov looks back over significant events in its history.
