Russia’s New Year war footing

Pascale Harter introduces dispatches from BBC correspondents and journalists in Russia, the US-Mexico border, Brazil and South Korea.

The holiday season has had a distinctly militarised flavour in Russia this year. As the Russian Orthodox calendar marks Christmas, Steve Rosenberg describes how things look from the streets of Moscow – and how many of the people he meets appear convinced by the Kremlin’s line on Ukraine.

The harsh, baking-hot landscape of the Sonoran desert, which sprawls across the USA-Mexico border, is tough country. But it’s not empty territory: people-smugglers often move convoys of would-be migrants through the area. They’re risking their lives – and one group of volunteers based in Tucson, Arizona, is on a mission to find those who fall along the way.

Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva has been sworn in as President of Brazil – for the third time in his life. Katy Watson was at the inauguration ceremony in Brasilia, and considers the social and political divides he must try to bridge as he returns to govern this vast nation.

And amid the tiny flats, high-rise buildings and dizzying rents of Seoul, John Murphy explores some of the obstacles to setting up home in South Korea. While the “K-wave” or hallyu has swept the world and made the country a global cultural superpower, Koreans have developed their own set of buzzwords for tactics to survive its hectic housing market.