Hi there you've downloaded the BBC Radio program from our own correspondent.

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This though is the edition broadcast on BBC Radio 4. It's presented by Kate Aide.

Today millions of Russian lives lost in alcohol and despair a bleak valedictory from our

correspondent moving on from Moscow. Dreams of a new nation in Africa, but it'll

mean a messy divorce for Sudan. We find out what a Chinese gourmet makes of an eight-course banquet

in the heart of Italy's travel country and learn why

James Bond, a man dedicated to fighting the evils of Soviet communism, spent so much time in the fleshpots

of the West.

David Cameron's announced he's to visit Russia next year.

Diplomatic observers say it means that relations between the two countries which have been chilly in recent years have become a little

warmer.

Mr Cameron's itinerary has not yet been worked out of course, but a meeting with the man whose

currently his opposite number, Vladimir Putin, seems inevitable, and probably essential,

given that Mr Putin is widely expected to be elected president for a second time when his people

go to the polls in 2012. It's 20 years now since the

Soviet Union collapsed and Russia emerged as an independent country again. Rupert Wingfield Hayes, who's come to the end of his spell as

Moscow correspondent, has been looking at the sort of nation the new Russia has become.

More than half a century ago, Winston Churchill famously described Russia as a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an

enigma. It's an old cliche but not without truth. To this day outsiders still find Russia very confusing. I remember the day

the Soviet Union began to fall apart. By a strange twist of fate, I was sitting in Moscow's Sherrymetva airport waiting for a flight to

...