Anna Nemtsova

Meet the family leading Russia's opposition.

Russia's top antinarcotics official, a former KGB officer and ally of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, speaks about why his country must help its southern neighbors fight drugs.

Yulia Tymoshenko isn't afraid to be a martyr. She may soon get her chance.

The Kremlin plays a dangerous game by pandering to far-right hate groups.

Natalya Zabolotna wants to make Ukraine a top destination for Modern Art.

In a spectacularly public falling-out, the Kremlin's favorite court ballerina turns on Russia's ruling party.

A leader of the People's Freedom Party elicited the Kremlin's scorn, and a New Year's jail sentence.

Angry protests underscored that even after 22 months of hearings, not many in Russia understood how prosecutors could accuse Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his codefendant of stealing billions of dollars' worth of oil from their own company.

America's coming withdrawal from Afghanistan will leave a large power vacuum in Central Asia—one that both Russia and China are keen to fill. China has the overwhelming economic clout, while Russia has the longstanding political and cultural ties to its former empire.

In 2004, Chechnya's president, Ahkmad Kadyrov, the face of the Kremlin Chechenization project, was assassinated and his son Ramzan took power. Ramzan went much further than his father: human-rights groups have accused him of ordering torture, abductions, and killings, both inside Chechnya and on dissidents abroad.

The video shows a gun barrel jutting from the rear window of a shiny black Lada sedan as it cruises slowly down Putin Prospect, a new boulevard of designer shops in the Chechen capital, Grozny. Spotting a pair of young women in long skirts but without headscarves, the vehicle's occupants open fire.

Rain poured over the crowd gathered for a rock concert in Moscow's central Pushkin Square last month. Police sealed off the square, searched everyone coming in, and infiltrated the crowd with plainclothes officers.

Russian women are habitually beaten with legal impunity—in a country with no support system for victims of domestic violence. So it was horrible but hardly surprising when my friend's husband got drunk and killed her.

Abkhazia, one of the breakaway provinces over which Russia and Georgia fought in 2008, has been colonized by Russia's state security services. And the locals are hardly thrilled.

Between 2004 and the end of July, Ella Pamfilova served as the Russian president's adviser on human rights. But she left that post to protest a wave of violent attacks against human-rights activists. In the past year three of them have been murdered, and four others have had to flee the country.

When Dmitry Medvedev was elected president of Russia, he publicly criticized the country's human-rights record and called for reform. But last week, he was dealt a stunning blow when his chief adviser on human rights resigned over a new wave of attacks on activists.

Roza Otunbayeva became Kyrgyzstan's acting president in April after the violent ouster of Kurmanbek Bakiyev by angry crowds. Last week, after an explosion of interethnic violence in the country's south, she appealed to Russia to send peacekeeping troops. She spoke to NEWSWEEK's Anna Nemtsova by phone from Bishkek.

The Kremlin is once again nurturing adoration of Joseph Stalin.

Moscow is lending a hand on the fight against the Afghan drug trade—but its cooperation comes with a price.

Viktor Ivanov is one of Russia's leading Siloviki, a group of ex-KGB officers close to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Since 2008 he's been a senior member of Russia's National Antiterror Committee.

Nikita Belykh is radically remaking Russia's vast Kirov region. The country's democratic future may depend on his success.

Why, years after the cold war, the Kremlin's still obsessed with getting respect.

Russia's secret war in Ingushetia has backfired. Instead of security, it brought chaos.

Reporter's Notebook: The execution of a Chechen human-rights investigator has left her community bereft. 

Vox Pop: What Russians want Obama to know.

In the largest opposition demonstration in Georgia since November 2007— WHEN President Mikheil Saakashvili tested his democratic credentials by sending in riot police to quash the protests—tens of thousands of people filled Tbilisi's leafy Rustaveli Avenue last Thursday to demand Saakashvili's resignation.

In establishing the Kremlin's control, we lost our freedom of the press. Now the challenge is to expand democracy.

Although Russia recently ended its shutdown of the natural-gas pipeline that runs through Ukraine to Europe, the seeds for a new dispute are already being sown.

A crisis-stricken Kremlin is courting Western investors, and activists hope this may lead to the release of high-profile political prisoners, like the Yukos Oil executives. (Last month, a terminally-ill Yukos man was allowed the option of dying at home.) Anna Nemtsova spoke to lawyer Yuri Schmidt about the likelihood of a pardon for Yukos oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky: Would the release of Khodorkovsky be a positive sign for Western investors that Russia is becoming a rule-of-law...

How naiveté and an erratic streak may have doomed Saakashvili.