Presidential elections are looming in the Abkhazia, the breakaway republic which Russia recognised as an independent state after the Georgia war. This time, Russia has backed off from playing a candidate, says Ivan Sukhov. But whatever the outcome closer integration with Russia will continue.
The region is gripped by swine flu panic, much of it orchestrated, in the opinion of Elena Strelnikova. But every cloud has a silver lining – we’re all having unscheduled holidays
Landmark victories in defiance of the Russian government have made the European Court of Human Rights the most popular legal institution in the country. Many cases fail at the initial committee stage. Grigory Dikov finds a huge disconnect between the capabilities of the Court and the hopes of the
At the OSCE summit 10 years ago this week, Russia and NATO agreed a deal on troop and armament withdrawals from Moldova. It remains unratified, as Russia still has a military presence there. But if it follows through with reform, things may start looking up for this tiny country caught in a frozen
Control of St.Petersburg’s television station, once free-thinking and vibrant, has been handed to producers from Moscow. Considered by Russians to be the country’s cultural capital, it will once more become the provincial city it was in Soviet times, says Dmitry Travin.
Russia’s blogosphere reacts to the crash of the Moscow-St Petersburg train that killed 26 people on 27 November. Survivors describe their harrowing experience. Liberal politicians have no doubt that the innocent will be framed for this terrorist act. Others fear that this tragic event will trigger
The souring of Iran's key relationship with Russia is a crucial factor behind its decision to build ten nuclear sites, in defiance of the UN Security Council. Hossein Asgarian reports from Teheran on the way Russia has reneged on a raft of earlier commitments.
Through the Orange Revolution in 2004 Ukraine turned its back on authoritarian politics and started on the bumpy road towards democracy, says Andreas Umland, reviewing the cream of recent scholarship in this second article marking the fifth anniversary of that event. That was what really riled the
In the second of two articles on Russia’s Muslim strategy, Walter Laqueur observes that hostility to the United States and its allies inclines Russia’s elites towards an anti-Western alliance. This blinds them to threats close to home. These are, above all, demographic: while Russia’s population s
Life in Oryol has changed little since Ivan Turgenev wrote about it 160 years ago, though the villages he described are disappearing. Earlier this year President Medvedev removed the governor who had been in place for 16 years and some of his officials are now on trial. The resulting snap election
Turkish reactions to the Zurich agreement with Armenia have been mixed. But they will tolerate it if it yields concrete results – on Turkey’s negotiations for EU membership, above all
The Kremlin holds that Muslim countries are Russia’s natural allies against the West. Yet this policy is riven with contradictions, reflects the distinguished commentator Walter Laqueur in this two-part review. In the first article he examines Russia’s foreign policy since the fall of communism. I
