At the top of the world, in the bitter reaches of the Arctic, no man can survive without his chumwife. So why is the state cutting off their salaries?

We have a trio of uplifting stories this week: a Russian rapper freed, a Russian beauty turned royalty, and a literal (and strange) military lift.

A dog is a basic necessity in the village, and the bigger the dog, the better. Chado is decidedly not big.

You can be sure that someone born in 1917 in Russia will have stories to tell. Galina Grebneva has more than her fair share.

When you have so much material, so many great stories, how do you pick just one?

The packet of 11 letters and 12 postcards reached me from Kharkov, through a combination of fate, serendipity and sheer luck. They were written by my father, Alexander Suchovy, from the front during World War II, and were addressed to his first wife, Varvara, and their son Vasily.