The imprisonment of military researcher Igor Sutyagin for alleged espionage has long troubled Russian human rights campaigners, writes Zoya Svetova. He is now free, but only after agreeing to agree he was a spy. Those familiar with Russian prisons will understand why he acted as he did, but he fac
At the recent Kinotavr film festival — "Russia's Cannes" — the main competition featured no less than three films dealing with the hitherto ignored plights of Russia’s migrant workers. For various reasons, all three films fell short of painting a realistic picture of the situation. But their produ
On 15 July 2009 Natasha Estemirova was kidnapped outside her flat in Grozny, bundled into a car, driven away and shot. One year later Tanya Lokshina still grieves for her, reflecting how difficult it is to come to terms with her death
The proxy contest for influence between the European Union and Russia in a wide arc of states encompassing eastern Europe, the Caucasus and central Asia is changing shape, says Katinka Barysch.
Translating Alexander Pushkin’s novel The Captain’s Daughter launched Robert Chandler on a journey of revelations into this ‘most subtly constructed of all nineteenth-century Russian novels’. The story leads Chandler to reflect on the fate of translators: as mediators between two cultures, maybe t
Russia’s greatest poet Alexander Pushkin is notoriously hard for non-Russian speakers to appreciate. So Susan Richards welcomes a concise new biography of the poet by his translator Robert Chandler which strips the varnish off
The new constitution which the Kyrgyz people voted in on 27 June 2010 seeks to break the presidential pattern of government. But the recent violent upheaval has left the government weak. America and Russia both need Kyrgyzstan to thrive as a country ruled neither by despotism nor fundamentalism. T
On the eve of a Customs Union agreement between Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, Russian state television began an information war against Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko. By the ferocity of this campaign, it seems Russian leaders have finally lost patience with their one-time ally.
President Yanukovych is steadily demolishing the gains of the Orange Revolution. This turn towards Moscow looks uncomfortably like an attempt to placate the Tsar with tributes
The accusations against Khodorkovsky have collapsed now that two senior establishment figures have testified. He may still be found guilty. But the absurdity of this trial is eroding public confidence in Putin’s regime.
The poet Andrei Voznesensky died on 1 June. One of the former “big 4” Soviet poets, he managed to hang on to his cult status until the 1990s as that of the outspoken Joseph Brodsky rose ever higher. The poet Elena Fanailova reviews his position in the pantheon of Soviet writers and assesses his co
The political atmosphere that surrounded the constitutional referendum in Kyrgyzstan shows that the country’s crisis is not over, says Sureyya Yigit in Bishkek
