In 2008, Russian President Vladimir Putin laid out his development strategy for the distant future: the year 2020. With that year upon us, we look at how closely Russia has adhered to Putin's vision for a wealthier, freer country.
Even after the EU and the United States adopted sanctions barring investment in Crimea, scores of EU companies have continued to do business on the peninsula, often through murky ownership structures, a new investigation by Current Time has found.
Amidst restraints on civil rights and economic prospects, young people appear increasingly willing to emigrate from Russia, according to a recent opinion poll by the Levada Center, an independent Russian pollster. . Fifty-three percent of surveyed Russians between the ages of 18 and 24 stated that they would like to move abroad – a sharp increase from 31 percent in 2017.
One man's obsession with the collective farm he ran for more than a quarter of a century led to the creation of a unique open-air museum in a village in southern Russia.
If fully developed, China’s Belt and Road Initiative has been projected to cost more than $1 trillion. But in neighboring Kazakhstan, Chinese investment doesn’t impress everyone. This autumn has been marked by protests across the country against Chinese loans and investment, including 55 planned Chinese enterprises. With trade and financial ties growing yearly between the economic superpower and the resource-rich Central Asian nation, these demonstrations could well continue.
After five years of conflict in eastern Ukraine, the port of Mariupol is struggling to survive. With the loss of coal exports and Russia choking access to the Sea of Azov, the port's maritime traffic has been cut in half. But Mariupol hopes Chinese investment can revive its sinking fortunes.
In southern Kyrgyzstan, entire regions live off illegal coal mining. The work is dangerous. Six miners died in an accident in October. But locals say there is no other work for the region's men.
A family of eight lives in a rickety house just meters from a landfill in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek. In these adverse conditions, mother Zhazgul Raimbek Kyzy is working to make sure her kids have the opportunities to study that she never had.
Russia's remote Altai region is not just about a tentative gas pipeline to neighboring China. People here are now heading to the mountains in thick snow to cash in on other riches that literally grow on trees: pine nuts. Russia is the world's largest supplier of pine nuts. For locals, it's a rare chance to make money, but the work is hard, cold, and dangerous.
Arslanbob is an ancient walnut forest on the slopes of the Tian Shan mountains in southern Kyrgyzstan. Every fall, the locals, mostly ethnic Uzbeks, harvest walnuts for sale at Central Asia's biggest walnut market.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's long-awaited September 26 meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump has provided much cause for comment by Ukrainian social media users, ex-Ukrainian presidents, and officials -- and not always for the reasons you might assume.
Load more
