With Russia’s housing stock in trouble, many people struggle to find a suitable home. For the people of Koltyshevo just outside Moscow, it’s a crumbling manor house.
While Vladimir Putin has given Ramzan Kadyrov a free hand in Chechnya, the relationship between Moscow and Grozny is far more complicated than it first appears.
In the Soviet Union, anyone without an official job could be charged with ‘parasitism’ and sentenced to internal exile. Now Belarus has revived the idea. на русском языке
Against a background of possible legislation against 'foreign agents' and 'gay propaganda', Sunday's anti-LGBT rally in Bishkek does not bode well for the small Central Asian state.
Passing laws against gender-motivated violence and gender inequality is not the same as putting them into practice.
The oligarchs have joined forces to railroad a new labour code that strips Ukrainian workers of their already modest rights.
How to play hardball: Ukraine's parliament has revoked the agreement between Russia and Ukraine on the movement of Russian troops through Ukrainian territory to Transnistria.
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.
The relationship between religion and ethnicity on the one hand, and civic assimilation on the other, is far less harmonious than Putin’s magniloquence asserts.
There are currently 59,000 women in Russian penal establishments. For many of them prison is not so much a punishment, more a way of life. на русском языке
If the EU is serious about helping Ukraine, both parties should focus on the country’s most glaring problem, and the Maidan’s principal demands – justice and the rule of law.
Just like in business, the centre of Russia has transferred a range of its functions to a regional political ‘contractor’. But now the tail is starting to wag the dog.
