Dyumen “took” Crimea two years ago. Now he’s “taking” a Roma settlement in Plekhanovo It’s all happened before, of course: Gas and electricity are disconnected. Frozen Roma mothers and grandmothers wail and curse in desperation. OMON troops, SWAT teams and…
Columns
It’s remarkable how some terms can migrate from their original semantic meaning to become symbols of some political or ideological struggle. Some terms, like ‘class struggle’ or ‘proletarian revolution’, for example, were politically loaded at conception rendering their politicization understandable….
Another homophobic witch hunt under way
The recent sensational legislative initiative aimed against “coming outs” refers to public demonstration of any relations, which the deputies who had proposed this draft law, find “perverted”. Any means are thought to be appropriate for them in order to justify…
It is rather obvious who is to blame: the Russian government is to blame for the war, disaster, devastation, thousands of dead and millions who have lost their homes. But what’s worse and feels bitter is that the Russian society,…
Out in the cold
In December last year I visited Donetsk region in Ukraine once again (the towns of Slavyansk, Kramatorsk and Dzerzhinsk) in order to see how half a year of war had changed the life of the local population, especially the…
Discrimination based on HIV status in Russia
Since the discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) attitudes towards people with HIV both on the part of the state authorities and the general public in many countries of the world has been changing – from complete rejection, stigmatization…