After Russia invaded Ukraine, around a million Russians left the country and moved abroad, fearing mobilization or in protest against the war. While most of the new exiles are involved in different types of political or social activism, a small minority has decided to take up arms against their own people. They have organized into battalions fighting on the side of Ukraine.

In mid-March this year, Russians in the Belgorod and Kursk regions took to the polls to vote for their president to the tune of shots and explosions. Just days before the election, the two regions bordering Ukraine fell under relentless attack from Ukraine-based Russian military units. This was the third time that Russian citizens fighting under the command of GUR – Ukraine’s military intelligence unit – had made an incursion into their homeland following the Bryansk and Belgorod raids in March and May last year, respectively.

A review of Dark Shadows: Inside the Secret World of Kazakhstan. By: Joanna Lillis. Publisher: I.B. Tauris, London, 2019.

Russia, with its cheap electricity and talented tech professionals, has become an important hub for cryptocurrency. And it seems the Russian authorities are starting to see the benefits of blockchain technology, especially in terms of overcoming US sanctions.

“Can you see this bag?” Sanjarbek Nasirbekov, an Uzbek technology expert and bitcoin trader, asks me pointing to a black sporty backpack resting on a hanger. We are sitting in his Tashkent office on the third floor of a hip co-working space with a gym and a game room, sipping afternoon tea. “This is where I carry the cash when I go to Moscow,” he explains. Sanjarbek’s trips to Russia with the black backpack began when his business started growing and his clients’ demand for bitcoin increased. At the time, buying two bitcoins per day from his Moscow-based partner was no longer a sustainable option. Sanjarbek needed more. And his Russian partner could help him.

Interview with Petr Kratochvil, director of the Institute of International Relations Prague. Interviewer: Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewska.

An interview with Denis Sokolov, a Russian expert on North Caucasus. Interviewer: Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewska.

AGNIESZKA PIKULICKA-WILCZEWSKA: As someone who specialises in the North Caucasus and has done a lot of work in Dagestan, how would you describe the youth there? What kind of dreams do young Dagestanis have?

DENIS SOKOLOV: Certainly everyone has a different dream, but I would say that young people in Dagestan are rather ambitious and they dream of success, which means different things for different people. One can also notice some divisions among young Dagestanis. Most of the youth there are increasingly oriented towards the Arab world, towards the world of Islam, especially the descendants of those who came from rural communities and the mountainous parts of Dagestan. They dream about having a career or owning a business because financial success and the ability to feed your family are very important. Today’s youth adhere to family values, Islamic traditions and, in some degree, the values of Dagestan’s rural communities, although they are gradually disappearing.

A review of Inside Pussy Riot – an immersive theatre performance at Saatchi gallery, London.

On February 21st 2012, a group of five women wearing colourful balaclavas entered the Moscow Cathedral of Christ the Saviour and pulled off a 40-second show which changed their lives forever. Calling on the Virgin Mary to chase Putin away, the feminist punk band Pussy Riot protested against the growing authoritarianism, corruption and human rights abuses in Russia. Three of the band members – Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich – were immediately detained and then sentenced to two years at a labour colony for hooliganism motivated by religious hatred. After an appeal, Samutsevich’s sentence was suspended.

An interview with Bhavna Davé, a senior lecturer in Central Asian politics with the department of politics and international studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Interviewer: Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewska

"The upcoming Summit is an opportunity to build on our achievements to-date and to inject new dynamism into our partnership. We need to be ambitious, but also realistic and credible", says Johannes Hahn, EU Commissioner for European Neighbourhood Policy & Enlargement Negotiations.

This piece originally appeared in Issue 2/2017 of New Eastern Europe. Subscribe now.

On March 8th women went on strike. Thousands of people took to the streets in 55 countries to protest against inequality, patriarchy and violence against women. Polish women, the initiators of the idea, who protested throughout the 2016 under the label of Black Protest, organised marches and demonstrations in over 80 cities. The biggest one took place in Warsaw were around 17,000 people took to the streets, while Kraków's March of Fury gathered close to 8,000 participants. Women brough red gloves, umbrellas - the inherent element of protest, and pots and lids to make noise and express their demands. These included maintaining the existing standards of preinatal care, better sexual education in schools, subsidised IVF treatment, and equal pay for men and women, among others. 

It has been a busy day for Yulia Pimenova. While we are walking around the premises of station Kharkiv, passing by a pile of UNICEF boxes and a long queue of people waiting for the organisation’s support, Yulia stops by every now and then to reply to a question of an elderly client, answer an urgent phone call, or give some quick advice to her colleague.