Ex-Soviet Kyrgyzstan is scrapping a holiday marking the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in favour of two national holidays that risk controversy with close ally Russia. As the world prepares to mark the centenary of the revolution that brought Vladimir Lenin and his communist allies to power in Russia, the office of Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev on Thursday ordered that the country stop commemorating the event because "the date is losing its significance."

Kyrgyzstan should instead use November 7 to honour the victims of a bloody Tsarist crackdown in the region in 1916, the order said. November 8 is set aside to remember the Kyrgyz victims of Stalinist repression. The move leaves Belarus as the only country in the former Soviet Union still marking the October revolution after Russia abandoned the holiday in 2005.

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2017