The dictator has just left the building

A visit to the house of Ukraine’s former president Yanukovych With the success of the Maidan square protests in Feb 2014, President Yanukovych beat a hasty retreat to friendlier pastures with the aid of a Russian helicopter from his property on the outskirts of Kiev (or Kyiv as the Ukrainians would prefer to the russianised version we are familiar with). The citizens of Kyiv immediately jumped at the opportunity to find out for themselves if the rumours of the opulence…

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Soul of the city: Astana, Kazakhstan

Anyone who employs an internationally acclaimed architect to design an iconic building for a brand new capital city, with a brief to combine state of the art design, whilst paying reference to the country’s cultural heritage and then goes and sticks a shopping centre in it, is clearly someone who does not know the meaning of the word soul and will never know the meaning of the word soul. Whether or not it was Kazakhstan’s strong man of politics (regional…

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