Claire Bigg covers Russia, Ukraine, and the post-Soviet world, with a focus on human rights, civil society, and social issues.
Putin and Erdogon have a discussion during a stroll today (INTRO) Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan kicked off two days of talks yesterday at the Black Sea resort of Sochi. Trade and energy issues dominated the talks. Putin vowed to boost energy supplies to Turkey and proposed to build new pipelines to Europe via Turkey. Both leaders also discussed a broad range of regional problems.
HIV-positive pregnant women, mothers, and their children suffer widespread discrimination and abuse in Russia, Human Rights Watch charges in a report released today. The rights watchdog accuses the Russian government of turning a blind eye to the mistreatment HIV-positive mothers and their children face in medical and child-care institutions. According to the report, growing numbers of children born to HIV-positive mothers spend the first years of their lives in hospital wards. RFE/RL spoke to Rachel Denber, the deputy director of the Europe and Central Asia division of Human Rights Watch.
An orphan in a children's home in Vladimir, some 400 kilometers from Moscow Foreigners wishing to adopt Russian children could soon have to take parenting lessons and psychological tests for emotional stability. This, at least, is what Russia’s Education and Science Ministry suggested this week following the murder of a Russian girl by her American adoptive mother. The tragedy comes just weeks after another Russian child died at the hands of his adoptive mother in the U.S. The killings have sparked outrage in Russia, where many are calling for a tightening of rules governing foreign adoptions.
At least 24 people died after a crowded shopping center caught fire yesterday in the town of Ukhta, in the northern Russian republic of Komi. Police are searching for two teenagers seen throwing a canister filled with flammable liquid into the mall's entrance. Prosecutors are examining terrorism, a settling of scores between criminal gangs, or hooliganism as possible motives for the attack.
Mikhail Kasyanov (file photo) Russian media have reported that the Prosecutor-General's Office has launched a criminal investigation into former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov for illegally acquiring an elite dacha outside Moscow. Many, however, see the nascent scandal as a warning to Kasyanov -- a staunch opponent of President Vladimir Putin and a possible runner in the 2008 presidential elections -- to steer clear of politics.
Russia’s Space Agency has signed a contract with a U.S. millionaire Gregory Olsen, who is due to become the third tourist to visit the International Space Station. The flight is scheduled for this fall and Olsen is already training hard at a center outside the Russian capital.
http://ddgx1ujg77xh4.cloudfront.net/2680C130-6B7A-4D2F-8B9B-C2192F45FC39.JPEG --> http://ddgx1ujg77xh4.cloudfront.net/2680C130-6B7A-4D2F-8B9B-C2192F45FC39.JPEG Hundreds of inmates have slashed their bodies with razor blades to protest mistreatment and beatings by guards at a prison camp in the city of Lgov, 500 kilometers south of Moscow. The prison director and his two deputies were sacked on 4 July after an investigation backed the inmates' claims of abuse. The unprecedented mass mutilation has outraged human rights groups and drawn attention to the nightmarish conditions that plague many Russian prisons.
Russian troops in Chechnya The Russian Defense Ministry has announced it will close down most military cadet faculties in universities by 2009, saying they cost too much. The decision, however, is seen by many as a move to abolish a system widely used by young men to avoid active service in the Russian Army, notorious for its poor living standards and cruel hazing rituals.
Putin and Hu at the Kremlin today Chinese President Hu Jintao is in Russia for a four-day visit, during which he hopes to secure greater access to Russia's oil and gas, and boost trade exchanges. During talks today at the Kremlin, Hu and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, also signed a joint declaration against what they perceive as the growing influence of the United States in Central Asia and its domination of global affairs.
Galina Starovoitova at a rally in October 1998 The St. Petersburg City Court passed sentence today on six men accused of taking part in the murder of Galina Starovoitova, a State Duma deputy who was gunned down in the staircase of her apartment in 1998. The judges sentenced two of the defendants to 20 and 23 1/2 years in prison and cleared the other four. The announcements bring to an end the first chapter of a highly political trial that has stretched over 1 1/2 years.
Uzbek President Karimov (file photo) Moscow, 29 June 2005 (RFE/RL) -- Uzbek President Islam Karimov, who is in Moscow on an official visit, sdaid that last month’s violence in his country was planned from abroad. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov are backing his claims. Karimov has also made thinly-veiled accusations that the West orchestrated the unrest to strengthen its presence in Central Asia.
Russia has announced it is pulling out of a long-awaited border treaty signed in May with Estonia. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the Estonian parliament has gone back on its promises by ratifying the treaty after adding a preamble that refers to Soviet occupation. Negotiations, he said, will have to start anew.
De Hoop Scheffer and Putin in Moscow today Russian President Vladimir Putin held talks today in Moscow with NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer. Discussions focused on joint efforts in fighting terrorism and the drug trade, as well as regional issues, particularly Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Balkans. Yesterday, Putin criticized what he called the "extremely low" effectiveness of efforts to rid Afghanistan of "international terrorists" and the narcotics trade. Putin said terrorist training camps are still operating on Afghan soil with the "direct involvement of some special services."
A raid carried out by special security forces of the Russian army on a Chechen village inhabited by ethnic minorities on 4 June is turning into a major scandal. In the wake of the brutal raid, hundreds of ethnic Avars, a group indigenous to Chechnya, fled to safety toward the neighboring province of Daghestan. Now, a representative of Russian President Vladimir Putin is calling the raid an act of sabotage against the Russian state.
Contestants at the competition's 21 June finals in Moscow The Russian Army these days tends to be associated with the war in Chechnya, brutal hazing rituals, tiny salaries, and fading glory. President Vladimir Putin has been eager to add shine to the country’s demoralized armed forces and attract increasingly reluctant conscripts. On 21 June, military officials staged a grand show in Moscow aimed at showing the army's human face. Or, to be more precise, the army's prettiest face. RFE/RL reports on the Russian Army’s second-ever beauty pageant.
Nikolai Goshko A court in Smolensk, in western Russia, has sentenced a radio journalist to five years in prison for defamation after he broadcast accusations that three top-ranking local officials ordered the murder of his former boss, the director of an independent radio station in Smolensk. Russian and foreign media watchdogs both have expressed shock at the sentence. They say its harshness is unprecedented and illustrates a wider clampdown on media freedom in Russia.
Critics accuse Vladimir Putin's government of concentrating power at the top Russia's Constitutional Court has agreed to hear the first case protesting a law initiated by President Vladimir Putin that scrapped the popular election of regional governors. The plaintiff, a geologist from the Siberian town of Tyumen, says his rights were violated when his region's parliament granted the local governor another term without consulting the public.
Boris Berezovskii (file photo) Exiled Russian media baron Boris Berezovskii has revealed plans to reshuffle his respected newspaper "Kommersant-Daily" and launch a similar broadsheet in Ukraine. A strong foe of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Berezovskii says he is eager to extend his media activities to Ukraine following its recent Orange Revolution. Experts say the tycoon hopes to use his new publication to stir up similar political change in Russia.
One year ago, Manzura Kholkuzeva worked as a nurse in her native Tajikistan. But poverty and bleak career prospects pushed her to the Russian capital in search of a better life. Today, she cleans offices in central Moscow for a few hundred dollars a month. Manzura considers herself one of the lucky ones. Tens of thousands of migrants from the former Soviet Union live in appalling conditions in Moscow, exploited by corrupt police and unscrupulous employers.
Does the world only see the worst of Russia? Russia wants to shake off its "bear" image, and it is planning to do so by launching a new English-language satellite television station, Russia Today. Russian authorities, who are heavily subsidizing the project, announced today that Russia Today will start broadcasting before the end of the year in the United States, Europe, and some Asian countries. In Russia, the venture has inspired a mix of interest and apprehension, raising fears that the station will turn into a Kremlin propaganda machine.
Load more
