Political Humor Across The Region

Mikhail Zlatkovsky's cartoon for RFE/RL's Russian Service is titled, "A thaw is coming to the country," but depicts that change as cosmetic at best. On RFE/RL's Russian website, a caption reads: "The president says freedom is better than lack of freedom."

A still image from an animation satirizing the winter energy crisis in which Russia's gas monopoly Gazprom shut off supplies to its neighbors, threatening the gas-inflated authority of Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka. See the full animation by Aleh Minich and Pavel Marozau here.

Ukrainian satirical website eggs.com.ua offers another take on the gas crisis, depicting Vladimir Putin as movie villain Dr. Evil with a gas pump. "You didn't want to do it the nice way," it reads; "Now you'll do it my way!"

Iranian cartoonist Nikahang Kowsar shows government spokesman Gholamhossein Elham assuring President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, "The opinion polls show us far above everyone else!"

The Azerbaijani cartoonist known simply as Sherif illustrates the dangers faced by those who dare to write freely...

...while another of Sherif's works from the 1990s shows the rising -- but distant -- hope of freedom.

An animation from Turkmenistan marking World Press Freedom Day shows President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov demanding to be the only smiling face on television. See the animation here.

In this cartoon by late Iraqi artist Moyad Neama, a sycophantic Ba'ath Party member cozies up to a terrorist.

Neama takes on corruption in this illustration, in which a wealthy wife asks her husband, "Got any good news? Did you steal something from the government?"