Russia

Strong-arm tactics have become a systematic means of pressure, especially against Russian political prisoners. A Mediazona investigation tells the stories of those who have been subjected to violence in Russian prisons to extract forced confessions.

What are the repercussions in Asia of the deployment of Kim Jong-Un's troops in Ukraine? Prof Andrew Yeo told AsiaNews that geopolitical lines are being redrawn. Ukraine may be encouraging North Korean soldiers to desert, but support for Ukraine in South Korea is a divisive issue. For its part, China is trying to avoid being identified as part of the Russia-North Korea bloc.

Nostalgia for the Soviet simplification of the world, even shared by the opposition, is pervasive while ‘making America great again’ resonates in the Caucasus or Siberia as much as the infantilized world of Massachusetts.

Once again this year, despite bans and restrictions, the celebration of the “Restitution of Names” of Soviet-era victims was held in more than 100 cities in Russia and abroad, gathering at different places and times than usual to evade police controls. Meanwhile, Moscow authorities report that plans are afoot to remove the Lubyanka Stone for “renovation work” on the square.

The war in Ukraine is forcing the peoples of these countries to make a clear choice, against their own conscience. Moldovans want a place in the world, not just in the "Russian world", to which they already belong. Even more heart-wrenching is the choice Georgians have to make this weekend, deciding their country’s future in addition to picking their representatives in parliament.

A new crackdown by the Parliamentary Commission for Migration Policy. They are targeting bodies that issue compulsory certificates of knowledge of the Russian language and history and the Internet sites that help obtain illegal documents. Unauthorised stay on Russian territory also becomes an aggravating circumstance for any violation of a rule.

‘There are no serious problems between our countries,’ assures Dushanbe, and in regional organisations, Tajiks are the first to support the Russians' arguments. But in the meantime, disappointment is growing over the Russian authorities' relations with migrants who have suffered outrage and violent forms of discrimination since the Krokus City Hall bombing.

In 1846 Nicholas I went privately to Rome to see Pope Gregory XVI to beg him not to give in to the liberal and republican temptations that were also taking hold in the Holy City. And the desire to ‘defend the values’ of Christian Europe led him to the Crimean War. Today, on the contrary, Pope Francis with the ‘humanitarian diplomacy’ mission of Card. Zuppi to Moscow sees the world's crisis in the light of the Gospel.

The referendum in which 71% of voters in Kazakhstan approved the construction of a new nuclear power plant is seen as a great opportunity for the Russian company Rosatom, one of the giants of the Russian economy that is resisting the weakening war phase and is currently building 20 reactors abroad.

According to ex-President of Dagestan Abdulatipov, today's nationalisms in the former Soviet Caucasus seem to nullify traditions, harking back to medieval origins of feudal disintegration, without taking into account the ‘historical, cultural and human experience of inter-ethnic and inter-religious integration’.

Russian fossil fuel producers are investing in new technologies in the conviction that at least until 2050 extractive materials will remain crucial in the world economy. Renewable energies will be used more and more, but in parallel with the oil share, as cars become increasingly popular in Africa and Latin America.

Russian economists insist on the prevalence of ‘locality’: a marketing strategy common to all sovereignisms, but one that works in a very limited way in Russia, being a country that is not exactly advantaged in its agricultural and industrial production capacities. And which - from gastronomy to so many aspects of social development - has historically always assimilated elements from abroad.