Germany-Russia ties in danger over Cyprus
MOSCOW: Kremlin anger over its losses in the Cyprus bailout could put the nail in the coffin of the “special relationship” shared by Germany and Russia, German businessmen and advisers increasingly fear.

Lenin’s body nearer exit
JUST one in four Russians thinks the body of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin should remain ensconced in its dark mausoleum on Red Square, according to a poll released on Wednesday.

Tit-for-tat response to US law: Russia moves to ban adoptions by Americans
MOSCOW: Russia is threatening to ban Americans from adopting Russian children in retaliation for a new US law that forbids Russian officials accused of human rights abuses from travelling to the US.

Russia accuses US of using ‘cold war tactics’
MOSCOW: Russia has accused the United States of engaging in cold war tactics and threatened tit-for-tat retaliation after the US Senate passed a bill banning Russian officials accused of human rights abuses

An ‘extremist’ exhibit?
RUSSIAN prosecutors are investigating whether the Hermitage museum in St Petersburg is guilty of extremism after hosting an exhibit by the British artists Jake and Dinos Chapman.

Putin: world’s richest ‘galley salve’
MOSCOW: To hear Vladimir Putin tell it, he works like a ‘galley slave’, pouring blood, sweat and tears into toiling for the Russian people with little personal gain in return.

Gorky Park shines again
BEHIND majestic columns adorned with hammers and sickles, Moscow’s Gorky Park once stood as a testament to Russia’s post-Soviet decay: dirty and forgotten, tinny techno pumping from its loudspeakers as

Russia: shame of punk trial
MOSCOW: By the end of the first week of Pussy Riot's trial, everyone in the shabby Moscow courthouse was tired. Guards, armed with submachine guns, grabbed journalists and threw them out of the room at will. The

Pussy Riot trial puts Putin crackdown in spotlight
MOSCOW: Three special forces troops, Kalashnikov rifles draped across their chests, stood guard outside the courtroom. Inside, an equally ominous pitbull kept watch from in front of the judge's desk as journalists piled into a shabby wooden room inside Moscow’s notorious Khamovnichesky court