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Neave Barker
Correspondent | Russia
Biography

Neave Barker is Al Jazeera's correspondent based in Moscow. He has reported extensively across Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and beyond. During the Russia-Georgia conflict of August 2008, Neave provided up-to-the minute analysis of diplomatic developments from the Russian capital.

He has interviewed a range of key figures on a number of defining issues, including Hans Blix, the former UN weapons inspector; Marti Ahtisaari, the UN special envoy to Kosovo; and the prime ministers of Hungary and Russia. He was short-listed for an International Broadcasters Association Award for his work on Moscow's homeless.

Latest posts by Neave Barker

By Neave Barker in Europe on March 5th, 2010
Photo from GALLO/GETTY

Lukoil, Russia’s biggest oil company faces mounting public outrage after one of its vice-presidents was involved in a car crash that led to the deaths of two women.

 

Police were quick to pin the accident on gynaecologist Vera Sidelnikova and her daughter-in-law Olga Alexandrina who authorities said pulled out into the path of Anatoly Barkov's Mercedes.

By Neave Barker in Europe on February 6th, 2010
Photo from AFP
The last official day of campaigning in Ukraine was marked by two simultaneous rallies on squares at opposite ends of the same street.
 
In front of the golden domed cupolas of Saint Michael’s Monastery, Victor Yanukovich’s campaign team hosted a star-studded pop concert. A short distance away Yulia Tymoshenko had gathered her supporters in front of Saint Sophia Cathedral. Hers was a much more contemplative affair, an open air prayer service in the company of the country’s top clergy.
 
Both rival camps had rallied hundreds of cheering, flag-waving supporters. Some had been bussed in from the regions, many making the most of the free-day trip to the capital.
 
By Neave Barker in Europe on February 4th, 2010
It’s a 4am start to catch a flight to Eastern Ukraine where we’re planning to meet Victor Yanukovich, the presidential election front runner on the campaign trail.
 
Ten hours later, after a series of snowy delays we pull into the town of Sverdlovka just as Yanukovich enters a windswept main square under a looming statue of Lenin.
 
Hundreds of elated supporters, mostly pensioners, have gathered to rapturously greet him. For many in this ethnic Russian speaking part of Ukraine, Yanukovich is nothing short of a superstar.
 
This is coal country, Ukraine’s industrial heartland. Here road signs, shop fronts and campaign posters are all written in Russian. This is where Yanukovich started his political career and where a number of his wealthy backers are based.
 
By Neave Barker in Europe on January 29th, 2010
Photo from Reuters
At 3 am on January 21, with temperatures plummeting below minus 25, bulldozers rolled into the picturesque Rechnik neighbourhood on the banks of the Moskva River close to the city centre.
 
Bailiffs and riot police had been ordered to evict scores of people and tear down their homes, all apparently unannounced.
 
Some householders barricaded themselves in. One man even threatened to commit suicide.
 
You can see footage from the Russian News agency RIA Novosti here.
 
According to Julia in London, whose family home is in danger of being demolished, Rechnik has been turned into a war zone.
 
"The Russian police are using gas and beating up women," she wrote in an email. 
 
By Neave Barker in Europe on January 26th, 2010

It has been a bitterly fought presidential election in Ukraine.

 

The two frontrunners Victor Yanukovich and Yulia Tymoshenko have repeatedly accused each other of trying to rig the election in their favour.

 

By Neave Barker in Europe on January 26th, 2010
Photo by AP

A 35-year-old migrant labourer from Dagestan was arrested trying to get into the Kremlin in an attempt, he later explained, to become President Dmitry Medvedev’s son-in-law.

The man was stopped after loitering near the Kremlin’s Spasskye gates on Red Square, a gate the president only uses on formal occasions.

According to the Moskovksy Komsomolets newspaper, he was hoping to meet the Russian president to ask for his daughter's hand in marriage. He hoped tying the knot would help him escape financial hardship.

Russia’s migrant worker population fluctuates between 4 and 9 million a year. Many of them travel from impoverished former Soviet Republics to Russia’s big cities in search of work. But since the economic crisis hit, thousands have found themselves in dire straights.