A milestone event in the history of the Internet took place last week and Canada’s National Ballet was right there in the thick of it. Five major international troupes digitally opened their doors to the world in a first-of-its-kind webcast called World Ballet Day.

For about three hours Wednesday morning, the Ukrainian flag was flying high over Russia’s capital city. Protesters fastened a blue-and-yellow banner to the Soviet star atop the spire of one of Moscow’s Stalin-era “Seven Sisters” skyscrapers on the Kotelnicheskaya Embankment about a mile from the Kremlin.

Much current analysis of Russian influence in its neighbourhood focuses on its use of ‘hard power’ tools. However, analysing Russia’s soft power efforts is no less important for understanding the full nature of Moscow’s power strategy in its neighbourhood.

As Ukraine's political divisions play out on the geopolitical stage, the country also faces an unsettling schism among its main churchgoers.  Now Filaret says that Ukraine's growing political crisis is a signal from above that it's time to unite all of the Orthodox faithful into a single church.

Several thousand Russian opposition supporters have held a march in Moscow to call for the release of people they consider to be political prisoners. The demonstration on October 27 expressed support mainly for those arrested after the May 2012 clashes between protesters and police on the eve of President Vladimir Putin's inauguration for a third presidential term. Protesters also called for the release of former oil industry tycoon, Mikhail Khodorvkosky, and Pussy Riot music band member, Maria Alyokhina.

"Moscow is open for business," declares Andrei Sharonov, Moscow’s deputy mayor for economic policy, "but we still have challenges to overcome in increasing the city’s attraction to both domestic and international investors." This realistic assessment of Moscow’s current position is typical of the man who was appointed by the city’s mayor, Sergey Sobyanin, in late 2010 to make Moscow a global business–friendly center capable of attracting investment.

Diplomacy is usually a nuanced game that can turn on a word and a handshake preferably delivered in private. But no one, it seems, ever told this to Michael A. McFaul. Since his arrival in Moscow as the United States ambassador, he has engaged in frequent back-and-forth sniping with the Russian Foreign Ministry on matters of extraordinary international import like missile defense and the uprising in Syria all within the highly undiplomatic and public arena of the Internet, mostly on Twitter.

U.S. Embassy in Moscow has announced a unique year-long American arts and culture festival in Russia. It is both a fresh start in this sphere of relations between the two countries and homage to Sergei Diaghilev’s Russian Seasons in Paris.