For the past six months, Western journalists in Moscow have represented the political situation in Russia as a simple dichotomy between good and evil, right and wrong, democracy and authoritarianism: in short, between the non-systemic opposition, spearheaded by figures such

As Russia’s political climate freezes over again, with Vladimir Putin less than a month away from being preserved in the Kremlin like the country’s soon-to-be-cloned mammoths were preserved in ice, Moscow has nevertheless begun to thaw. At Patriarch Ponds, where

A stone’s throw from Kazakhstan, within spitting distance of the Caspian, and an overnight train ride to the troubled republics of the Northern Caucasus, Astrakhan comes as a welcome relief to the weary, frostbitten traveller. After the egg-and-sugar snow of Nizhny

Every couple of years, when a few more Communists and Soviet nostalgics have gone to their graves, Russia toys with the idea of finally sending Vladimir Lenin to his. The remaining Communists and Soviet nostalgics usually kick up a fuss

That the so-called Russian Spring should have come to an end on the most pleasant day of the season thus The uk cialis sales main reason why many new bloggers give up after just a few months is the realisation

The snow, the flashbulbs, the group of OMON thugs materialising from behind a statue of Alexander Pushkin, the sudden realisation that the middle of a frozen pond probably wasn’t the smartest place for the opposition’s leaders to hole up. You

Within 24 hours of Vladimir Putin’s presidential election victory, widely seen as inevitable and even more widely marred by allegations of fraud, riot Oysters And Whichever Fatty Fish Oysters are famous for their effects, although men suffering from heart conditions

Never has the result of an election been more uncertain. Or, rather, the result of the result. Because while Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was widely expected to win yesterday’s presidential poll — which he did in a Various additional viagra side