As Vladimir Putin is apparently preparing to return to the Presidential seat in 2012, PR campaign in his support is gaining strength sometimes almost reaching the level of cult of personality. On October 6, a day before Putin's 59th birthday, he got an unusual gift from several female students of...

Today's Kommersant publishes a fresh interview with Vladimir Putin, where the dictator comments on opposition rallies:

Look, all our opponents support a Rechtsstaat. What is a Rechtsstaat? It is obedience to the existing law. What does the existing law say about [Dissenters'] Marches? You need to get a permission...

The building of autocracy in Russia is done in small steps. One brick was added to the wall this Friday by the State Duma. An act that further restricts public gatherings and protests in the country passed in its first hearing.

A lot of pessimists In Russia and abroad say that our country is so badly lost, so hopeless that you can't really change anything "from below," i.e. on the citizens' level. I consider them just as wrong as the opposite extreme—bullish optimists who see no problems in Russia and believe...

Yabloko, which had claimed to be the last registered democratic party in Russia, has officially broke up with the opposition. Its convention adopted a resolution last week that bans Yabloko's members from participating in any opposition organizations, movements or coalitions.

Kremlin's most hated "troublemakers" like The Other Russia and...

Another protest rally was dispersed Saturday night by Moscow police. The action was a part of the so called Strategy 31 -- a campaign in support of freedom of assembly guaranteed by paragraph 31 of the Russian Constitution. This basic right to hold peaceful demonstrations is routinely violated by the...

Natalya Estemirova, a prominent Russian human rights activist and a representative of Memorial, one of the most respected human rights NGOs in Chechnya, was kidnapped and killed last week. She just left her home in Grozny, Chechnya, in the morning of 15...

He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past. 1984

Russia now has its own little Ministry of Truth. Dmitry Medvedev issued the decree to create a new body with a long but meaningful name: the Presidential Commission for Prevention of Falsification of...

Some countries are just more lucky than others. Moldova wasn't lucky enough to be known in America or Western Europe. Indeed, it's a small East-European ex-Soviet country, poorest on the continent, and there's little of interest about it. Except maybe for the fact that Moldova is the only place in...

A well-known attorney, Stanislav Markelov, and a young journalist, Anastasia Baburova, were assassinated on Monday not far from Kremlin. The murderer shot the lawyer in the head with a silencer, the reporter tried to catch the hitman but was also shot dead.

Markelov had represented victims in many public political...

On Sunday, December 14, Russia's biggest cities had to see one more episode of a political face-off between the democratic opposition and the government. Dissenters' Marches were planned in Moscow and in St. Petersburg. The Moscow march had been illegally banned by the authorities. They said that somebody else had...

Four men, two of them are officers of Russian special services and two others are Chechens, are being tried in the Moscow District Military Court now. They are accused of organizing the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, one of the most outrageous crimes in Russia's recent history.

Who was Anna Politkovskaya?