"People in Novgorod are finally waking up, just like they are in Moscow, " Nadezhda said.

BBC: Rosenberg's Russia: On the election trail

His mother, Nadezhda, says her son has never been violent but is being kept in a high security prison in the eastern city of Mogilev.

BBC: Belarus's university in exile

There is hopeful talk in western capitals of making more of new friendships with a younger generation of politicians that were forged or consolidated in the heat of the Kosovo war: for instance, Pandeli Majko and Ljupcho Georgievski, respective prime ministers of Albania and Macedonia, and Nadezhda Mihailova, Bulgaria's foreign minister.

ECONOMIST: Ending conflict in Kosovo | The