The leaders of Russia, Turkey, and China have cast off quasi democratic checks and balances, but the more autocratic their rule, the more they have to lose, writes Nina L Khrushcheva

The Soviet leader did not bang his shoe on the desk at the UN, says granddaughter  ,but few nations are immune to diplomatic blunders

JULIAN BARNES transports us back to the former Soviet Union’s days of “endless terror” for his first novel since winning the Man Booker Prize in 2011. 

THERE is an apocryphal tale of a verbal joust between Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and US president John F Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis of October, 1962.

A fire has broken out in the bell tower of Moscow’s Novodevichy Convent, one of the Russian capital’s most noted visitor attractions.

The Scots went to some trouble to make Richie McCaw feel at home at Murrayfield, unearthing evidence placing his ancestors from the same county as Robbie Burns, Bill Shankly and Robert the Bruce.

The situation in Ukraine and Crimea is now fraught with danger. If violent conflict occurs the people of Ukraine and Crimea could once again suffer catastrophically, having suffered more than any other European country under Stalin and Hitler.

The Kremlin says Russian president Vladimir Putin has asked parliament for permission to use the country’s military in Ukraine.

The discord between Russia and Ukraine sharpened today when the pro-Russian leader of Ukraine’s Crimea region claimed control of the military and police and appealed to Russia’s president for help in keeping peace there.

Russian forces have been accused of “an armed invasion” after units blocked a Ukrainian military airport in the Black Sea port of Sevastopol in Crimea.

Dozens of armed men in military uniforms have seized an airport in Ukraine’s strategic Crimea region, it is reported.

IN HIS 1979 novel The Island of Crimea, Vasily Aksyonov imagined the region’s flourishing independence from the Soviet Union.

Russia’s order for 150,000 troops to test their combat readiness near Ukraine’s border has prompted a blunt warning from the United States that any military intervention in the crisis-torn nation would be a “grave mistake”.

Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of JFK, began her role on November 18 as US Ambassador to Japan. Kennedy starts her high profile job just days before the 50th anniversary of the assassination of her father.

Escalating tensions with North Korea will backfire, not only for its neighbours but its citizens who should matter as much, writes Yoon Young-kwan

SHORTLY after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian President Boris Yeltsin allowed a small number of academics to poke around in the previously secret Communist Party and KGB archives.

Monday marks the 50th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis. Ryle Dwyer examines a tense fortnight when the world was on the brink of nuclear war

Molotov: Stalin’s Cold Warrior

NORMALLY anyone using the National Archives is looking for specific information, but when the State Papers are released to journalists each year, it is a different matter. Most do not know what they are looking for; they just plough through the files looking for anything of likely interest.

THE Stray Sod Country is a metaphor, a fable which the characters of Patrick McCabe’s new novel continually fall back on. It describes being lost in what were once reassuring surroundings, being intimidated or deceived by the very things that used to make you feel secure. It is a way of explaining things, “frightening emotions, things like depression or extreme loneliness”.

AS the U2 front man and the Taoiseach joined forces to rally the world on Africa an awesome geopolitical force was born — Boniffo.

Washington would back Ukraine in case of a territorial dispute, a senior US diplomat said today.

WHEN Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich appeared in the literary magazine Novy Mir back in November 1962, taboos were shattered. Secrets were unearthed. And the Soviet Union was shaken to its foundations.

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern will address a joint session of the House of Commons and the House of Lords at Westminster today.

Dignitaries from around the world will attend the funeral of former Russian President Boris Yeltsin in Moscow today.

IT’s all of half a century now since President John F Kennedy declared: “October 23, 1956, is a day that will live forever in the annals of free men and nations.

A FIRE ripped through a Moscow dormitory crowded with newly arrived foreign students early yesterday, killing at least 36 people and injuring 127 others many of them forced to jump from the five-storey building because the exits were blocked.

A fire ripped through a Moscow dormitory crowded with newly arrived foreign students early today, killing at least 32 people and injuring 127 others.

A fire tore through a Moscow university dormitory early today, killing at least 32 foreign students and injuring 78 others.

Cuba’s President Fidel Castro has said on the eve of the 40th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis that Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev helped create the conflict by misleading US president John F Kennedy – indicating that there were no nuclear weapons on the communist island.

Photographer Yousuf Karsh, who gained international prominence with his 1941 portrait of a defiant Winston Churchill and photos of public figures such as Albert Einstein and Ernest Hemingway, has died in the US at the age of 93.