The viral popularity of a newly emerged Russian subculture has in little more than a week caught the Kremlin’s eye and unsettled the authorities to such a degree that shopping malls in several major Russian cities have seen mass arrests of teenagers in the past few days. In making the...
As Russian President Vladimir Putin massed his military on Ukraine’s border in late 2021, many analysts doubted Putin would actually invade. But not Dmitri Alperovitch. “He was seeing Ukraine slip away from his orbit. And when he saw that he could no longer control it, it...
At about 1am on February 24 last year, Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, received a troubling phone call. After spending months building up a more than 100,000-strong invasion force on the border with Ukraine, Vladimir Putin had given the go-ahead to invade. The decision caught...
New York, Brussels, Paris (15/2 – 67) Led by authoritarian head of state since the 1990s, a regime change for the people in Tajikistan might take a while. In any case, changes and growth often take too long. Especially when we are talking about the change of a commanding ruling power in...
At least two Ismaili home owners in Mountainous Badakhshan were fined one month’s average wage each for hosting prayers in their homes. The regime banned such meetings in late 2022. Officials told elders on 14 January in Khorugh not to allow prayers in homes, that local people must remove...
