RFE/RL RUSSIA REPORT
04.12.2012
A review of RFE/RL reporting and analysis about domestic and foreign-policy developments in Russia.For more stories on Russia, please visit and bookmark our Russia page . |
 Waiting For Vlad The Wise Is Putin the Tough Guy about to turn into Vladimir the Wise? More  Tenacious Russian Activist Girds For Yet Another Battle Russian human rights activist Stanislav Dmitriyevsky is no stranger to harassment, persecution, threats, and attacks. More  Legendary Russian Animator Dies At 95 Tributes have been pouring in for the legendary Russian animator Fyodor Khitruk, who has died in Moscow at the age of 95. More  Foundations Laid For Massive Chechen Mosque The foundations for a massive new mosque have been laid in the town of Shali in Russia's Chechen Republic in the North Caucasus. More  Russian Commander's Accused Killer Pleads Not Guilty Yusup Temirkhanov, an ethnic Chechen, is charged with killing Russian Army Colonel Yury Budanov, who was convicted of murdering a Chechen girl. More  Prokhorov's Life Story Takes A Comic Turn A 22-page comic book -- "Orbit: Mikhail Prokhorov" -- hit the shelves recently. It shows the metal Russian magnate-turned-politician in a largely positive light, even comparing him to Batman’s alter ego. More  Rumblings In The Republics: New Russian Nationalities Policy Sparks Outcry A new nationalities policy sets guidelines for policies affecting Russia's nearly 200 ethnic groups. Its drafting has provoked intense concern among them that the status of non-Russian nationalities could be diminished. More  Podcast: Antigraft Campaign? Clan War? Chaos? The state-controlled media is calling it a campaign against corruption. But in Russia, nothing is ever that simple. More  Global AIDS Crisis Eases, But Not In Former Soviet Union Ahead of World AIDS Day on December 1, the United Nations released a cautiously optimistic report suggesting the epidemic has begun to stabilize or even shrink in nearly every part of the world. But the countries of the former Soviet Union are an exception to the trend. More  A 'Kompromat' War Of All Against All What happens when an anti-corruption campaign that is really a purge of the elite turns into a clan war? More  Climate Change Melts Away Obstacle To Arctic Shipping For China, Russia With record lows in Arctic ice levels permitting a robust increase in shipping, Russians and Chinese saw an upside to ice melting in the Arctic. More A court in Moscow has designated videos made by the feminist punk protest group Pussy Riot as extremist. More  EU To Press Russia, Kazakhstan On Rights The new EU special representative for human rights, Stavros Lambrinidis, has vowed to raise human rights issues in his meetings with Russia and Kazakhstan. More  Daghestani Brothers Struggle To Bridge Religious, Political Divides Russia's North Caucasus republic of Daghestan has been coping with a low-level insurgency, as well as a tense conflict between the Sufi and Salafist branches of Islam, for years. RFE/RL's North Caucasus Service spoke to two brothers -- one of whom practices the officially accepted Sufi Islam while the other has converted to the banned Salafist faith -- about how their religious differences have strained their family bonds. More  Commentary: The Femen Effect On Feminism Four years and a new office in Paris later, the Ukrainian activist group Femen, which professes to use “sextremism” to fight against patriarchy as manifested by dictatorship, the church, and the sex industry, more closely resembles a girlie show. More flash than substance. More |
