Russia

It was 2 a.m. when Russian gunmen broke in and took away 21-year-old Milana Ozdoyeva. When Sara, her three-year-old daughter, tried to grab her mother’s hand they shoved her aside. Milana’s son, who was 11 months old, just stared uncomprehendingly. ‘They were wearing masks and camouflage,’ Milana’s mother told me. ‘They forced us all to the floor at gunpoint. Milana was too terrified to speak. She just looked at me and mouthed the words “mama”. It was the last time any of us saw her.’ The kidnapping and subsequent killing of Milana took place in Chechnya on 19 January 2004. Her sin was to have been married to a man

Russian forces have reportedly been ordered to watch last year’s state-funded propaganda film Sky. The Kremlin-funded drama follows the lives of Russian airmen in Syria, where an estimated 18,000 people are believed to have died in Moscow’s bombings. With jets soaring through the sky and explosive special effects, it tells the story of Oleg Peshkov, a pilot shot down by a Turkish fighter plane. When Hollywood makes its own action flicks about the war in Ukraine, directors may settle for a different kind of hero. Instead of strapping military men jumping into cockpits, it is becoming increasingly clear that Kyiv owes much of the credit for its fierce defence to drones. While in

Russia is now 33 days into a war it expected would last 72 hours. Given the relative failure of the invasion, it is surprising anyone in the Russian security establishment has much time to spare for side projects. Yet, yesterday’s news that the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich was poisoned during informal peace negotiations with the Ukrainians would suggest otherwise. While details are murky, according to the investigative journalism collective Bellingcat, billionaire Abramovich was engaged in shadow negotiations in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, earlier this month when he and his two Ukrainian interlocutors fell ill. The men later received medical treatment in Istanbul. Since the story broke, there has been a

Yerevan, Armenia ‘This is our land,’ Anna says, looking out over her roadside flower shop. ‘Lenin promised it to us.’ Her father was born across the mountains in Russia, one of around 100,000 displaced Armenians only able to return home after world war two. ‘But thanks to Lenin, we have our own country. A free country – at least for now.’ As the fighting in Ukraine stretches into its first month, another conflict between two former Soviet states might not be far away. Last year, a brief but bloody war broke out between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh, which had been autonomously governed by ethnic Armenians over