Articles by Matthew Clayfield

Reuven Shalev asks the big question: what is a Jewish state? The resident of Kfar Haruv at the southern end of the Golan Heights reflects on the dim prospect of peace in his homeland.

A generation of Druze are facing a curious challenge of identity and loyalty. Crikey goes between the Purple Lines in an uneasy Middle East.

Athens wears its economic crisis on its sleeves, on its walls, its shuttered shop fronts. Madrid’s is not so readily apparent: it is there, but you have to go looking for it, taking notice of the details.

The best, saddest little taverna in Athens is on Astiggos Street, on the far side of the Monastiraki Flea Market.

Anti-immigrant sentiment is alive and rampant in Greece.

As the conservative pro-bailout New Democracy party forms a coalition following its pyrrhic victory in Greece, the feeling on the street seemed to be that the country probably won’t explode either. Yet.

The relative success of Sunday’s “Writer’s March” through the streets of Moscow — not in terms of overall numbers, perhaps, but as a sterling example of non-violent protest — was cheering.

In Russia the latest round of civil disobedience verged on violence. Some 400 protesters — including Alexey Navalny, Sergei Udaltsov and Boris Nemtsov — were arrested.

In fact, Astrakhan does have its fair share of such tragic, near-death figures, and Oleg Shein is first among them.

Every couple of years, when a few more Communists and Soviet nostalgics have gone to their graves, Russia toys with the idea of finally sending Vladimir Lenin to his.

That the so-called Russian Spring should have come to an end on the most pleasant day of the season thus far, when the weather could not be blamed for poor turnout, was sadly ironic, writes Matthew Clayfield, a freelance correspondent in Moscow.

The soldier couldn’t do anything but roll his eyes when Vladimir Putin, who is widely expected to win this weekend’s presidential election, was mentioned.

When the Soviet Union fell, not all of the statues fell with it. Every city out here has a Lenin or two. Overcompensating somewhat, Omsk has at least five.

The protests are small enough, isolated enough, and moderate enough in their aims to fizzle out of their own accord.

Headed by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, United Russia has come to be known throughout the country as the party of crooks and thieves.

Vladimir Putin has been the subject of everything from pop songs to Chippendale-like wall calendars. Now his mock-heroics have become comic books, in the dangerous