A couple of weeks ago, on the train between Vladivostok and Ulan-Ude, I befriended a 28-year-old army officer who was celebrating the end of his 10-year commission and heading back from Khabarovsk to his wife and child in the capital

In a Mexican restaurant in Novosibirsk, the unofficial capital of Siberia, the young are arguing with the old. Two recently politicised young women, made bold by vodka and one too many mojitos, are railing against the presidential campaign of their

When the Soviet Union fell, not all of the statues fell with it. In Moscow, in August 1991, protesters were quick to dispose of Lubyanka Square’s Iron Felix, the 15-tonne representation of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the secret police,

Seven months out from this year’s APEC conference, secured for Vladivostok by Vladimir Putin, whose likely return to the presidency next month means he will ultimately get to attend it, too, the city is a hive of construction activity. Standing

More than a month has passed since Russia’s Muscovite opposition last took to the streets to protest the results of last December’s State Duma election. It takes to them again tomorrow, February 4, which coincidentally also marks the official beginning

Faced with a story about last month’s post-election protests in Russia, as well as about those scheduled to take place at the beginning of next, the pun-inclined headline writer might feel moved to paraphrase the great Peter Greenaway, or at

Killing time between protests — between December 10’s post-election rally and this weekend’s repeat performance — I have been reading Vladimir Putin comics. That such a genre exists is amusing, but hardly surprising. Putin has been the While both substances work according to the

Moscow-based Western correspondents spent the better part of this year holding out hope that Dmitry Medvedev might remain in the Kremlin for a second term and continue pushing his pseudo-liberal platform. Not that they ever attached that qualifying prefix, of