Claire Bigg covers Russia, Ukraine, and the post-Soviet world, with a focus on human rights, civil society, and social issues.
World War II veterans around the world are preparing to mark the anniversary of the end of the war in Europe weekend, but former Soviet partisan Vasily Kononov is in no mood to celebrate. He is bracing for a decision by the European Court of Human Rights, which will rule on May 17 whether post-Soviet Latvia had the right to jail him for alleged war crimes. Moscow has warned of dire consequences if the court rules against the man hailed in Russia as an anti-Nazi hero.
On March 29, as many as 40 lives were abruptly ended when two suicide bombers detonated bombs in the Moscow subway. The victims included office workers, students, and migrant workers, all brought together on the doomed trains by coincidence and bad luck.
A nearly forgotten Soviet-era singer has become a global sensation after one of his music clips from the 1970s went viral on the Internet.
Thousands of Russians are preparing to take to the streets on March 20 for nationwide rallies against worsening living conditions and official corruption. But not all activists will join in. Some, like prominent civil rights lobbyist Vyacheslav Lysakov, say civil disobedience is the wrong tactic.
Penza has become the latest Russian city to join the tide of protests that has swept the country in recent months. Some 2,000 people gathered in the central Russian city to protest low pay, surging prices, and an ineffectual local government.
Chechnya is facing a mounting epidemic of tuberculosis. Official indifference, low awareness, and a medical infrastructure battered by two wars have allowed TB to flourish in the North Caucasus republic.
Some descendents of the Romanov dynasty are challenging a decision to close a probe into the last tsar's murder and say it's time for Russia to make amends for its blood-soaked past.
A tabloid journalist in Russia calls for babies with mental retardation or other developmental disabilities to be euthanized, highlighting widespread prejudice against the disabled in Russia. The case comes amid a wider debate about the country's looming population crisis, with critics saying the country must learn to take better care of all of its citizens.
The European Court of Human Rights has found Georgia guilty of denying financial compensation to a family that suffered Stalin-era repression. The landmark ruling could pave the way for other repression victims in Georgia to seek damages and raises difficult questions about the historical responsibility for Soviet crimes.
It's been 150 years since the birth of one of Russia's most enduring literary talents. More than a century after his death, Anton Chekhov is one of the most widely translated and imitated writers in the world.
Hearings began today in the case of Aleksei Dymovsky, the so-called "YouTube whistle-blower" cop, who was charged with fraud and abuse of office following his public claims of corruption within the police ranks in Novorossiisk. What are the implications of the Dymovsky case on Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's program of police reforms in Russia?
Russia has ratified long-awaited legal changes that will allow the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg to streamline and speed up its work. The decision makes Russia the last of 47 Council of Europe member countries to approve the reform. What's behind the decision?
There's an unlikely new face on Chechnya's television: Chrystal Callahan, a Canadian model who traded the catwalk for a TV career in the war-battered republic. While some are grateful to Callahan for giving international media exposure to a little-known population, others accuse her of riding the propaganda machine of Chechnya's iron-fisted leader, Ramzan Kadyrov.
It's been a roller-coaster year for the dollar. The onset of the global financial crisis initially benefited the dollar, as investors fled riskier markets for the relative safety of the U.S. currency. As economies showed the first signs of recovery, however, investors reverted to shunning the dollar in favor of investments that promised higher returns.
An ongoing dispute over the timing of Christmas is once again the source of a political controversy in Moldova. This year, the dispute has led to a bitter standoff between the government and the Orthodox Church -- an incident that highlights the church's growing clout in ex-Soviet countries.
Crime-watchers say racist violence in Russia has fallen sharply over the past year. But even with the decline, the incidence of hate crimes still remains shockingly high. Experts caution that the lull in violence could signal a shift in tactics by ultranationalist groups.
Russian authorities are hunting for clues in the bombing that derailed a Moscow-St. Petersburg train, killing 26 people and wounding more than a hundred. One survivor recalls her ordeal amid the death and destruction.
More than 1 million Internet users have now viewed the YouTube videos posted by a former Russian police officer denouncing corruption in his old workplace. Other former law enforcement officers have since posted videos complaining about rampant abuses. The clips highlight a growing trend of Russians taking their grievances to the Internet.
Nowhere was the fall of the Berlin Wall celebrated more enthusiastically than in East Germany's "restricted zone," a high-security area that ran the length of the East-West border. Residents of the zone lived with harsh travel bans and nightly curfews for more than 40 years.
Physically, little today is left of the Berlin Wall, the potent symbol of Germany's Cold War division. But the psychological barrier between East and West still runs deep two decades after the wall's destruction.
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