The news that Lyudmila Alekseyeva, head of the Russian Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) the Moscow-Helsinki Group, will be returning to the Presidential Council for Human Rights, has been heralded by many in the liberal establishment in Russia as a victory for their cause.

Egypt needs reforms to reassure Russian investors, success of Cairo-Moscow negotiations requires seriousness to establish new era of relations, experts say. Egyptian economic experts and investors expect the pace of Russian investments in Egypt to increase in the next period, coinciding with deepening communications and trade relations between the two parties.

"[Eurovision] is truly an event that builds bridges between nations and encapsulates the values of Public Service Media. In this [60th] anniversary year, it is with pride that we look back at how the contest has influenced the public sphere in Europe."-- Ingrid Deltenre, European Broadcast Union Director General. 

More than $20 billion worth of Russian money gathered under the high ceilings of New York’s Neue Galerie on Monday evening to open a new exhibit featuring the private collection of one of the country’s top bankers — and to promote the new oil company he has just taken part in founding.

In recent years an important direction of state policy is support for Russian culture and language in the Russian world abroad. The Public Chamber and the Russian Peace Foundation are implementing ‘The Russian Corner’ project.

When the British Museum lent one of the sculptures known as the Elgin marbles to the State Hermitage Museum here last year, the move angered Greece, which wants the sculptures back, and set off a spirited debate about restitution. But it was also a diplomatic coup by one man: Mikhail Piotrovsky, director of the Hermitage and a skilled cultural ambassador.

The Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament adopted a resolution Monday to allocate funds to counter what it described as “aggressive Russian propaganda.” The resolution, passed by 53 votes to 10, with 3 abstentions, called on EU member-states to “refrain from doing bilateral deals with Russia and step up their own collective efforts to withstand it, whilst retaining a return to cooperation with Russia as a long-term goal.”