Carlos Coelho is a data and graphics editor for RFE/RL's Central Newsroom.
Russian and NATO spy planes regularly fly over each other’s territories, photographing military equipment and monitoring where forces are located. It’s all done with representatives from the observed country on board under the Treaty On Open Skies. Signed in 1992, the treaty has served as a confidence-building measure, allowing 34 countries to conduct observation flights and share the collected data with other members, if requested. But it may soon join the list of dead agreements born out of the end of the Cold War.
Let’s say you're working for an authoritarian government, and you want to cause chaos in an unfriendly democratic country. What could be a more delicious target than the voting process itself? One expert reveals just how easy it could be for hackers to influence the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
Considering all the media attention, you could be forgiven for thinking that Russia's alleged attempts to influence elections is limited to the United States. But what about Spain, Madagascar, Bolivia, Italy, and Libya, to name a few?
The antics of Turkmenistan’s authoritarian leader, President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, have recently been the butt of jokes by Western comedians. But the daily realities in the country are grim – and unlikely to change.
It has been one year since the October 7, 2018 general elections in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the country is still without a national and many lesser governments as the country's 148 parties(!) -- many of them ethnically based -- fail to form coalitions. Many people also blame Bosnia's elaborate, overlapping, and many-layered governments for the ongoing dysfunction. Here's an attempt to explain Bosnia's labyrinthian governmental system.
Klingon, Elvish, Dothraki, and Nadsat: there are plenty of invented languages used in movies. But one of them, Interslavic, has the potential to be useful to hundreds of millions of people. The language just made its movie debut in a wartime drama, The Painted Bird, and its creator says it could be used by Slavic speakers from Siberia to Slovenia.
The Russian capital has seen a lot of protests this summer. Ostensibly, they're about the City Duma election, where opposition candidates were kept off the ballot for various contrived reasons. But there's a bigger issue at stake here: the Russian political system. Unless you're paying close attention, it can be a bit confusing. Here's a guide to some key elements of the Summer of Protests to help you understand what's going on.
Paternosters -- continuously circulating elevators without doors which passengers hop on and off of -- were once common in Europe, but have now largely disappeared as a result of modernization or because of safety or accessibility concerns. The Czech capital, Prague, still has 28 working paternosters and an avid group of devotees.
It's 100 years since the end of Afghanistan's 1919 War of Independence, also known as the Third Anglo-Afghan War. Fought between Afghan and British-Indian forces, the conflict reestablished full Afghan independence after decades of British control over Afghan foreign policy.
The U.S.S.R. beat the U.S. to the punch in almost every category of space exploration. Except one. As the world marks the 50th anniversary of Neil Armstrong’s “giant leap for mankind,” we take a look back at the Soviet Union’s own efforts to land a man on the moon – and what went wrong.
Horrific crashes, road rage, village drunks. Legions of dashcams reveal life on the roads in Russia. And there’s a very good reason why so many people have them.
The world’s largest country by territory, Russia ranks third in the world in terms of arable land with 123 million hectares. Here’s a look at the tycoons, offshore firms, and family of a former agriculture minister who own most of it.
A new law passed by the Duma bans Russian soldiers from taking their smartphones into service, posting anything military related on social media, or talking to journalists. What’s behind the latest move?
The planet's magnetic north pole (the north that your compass points to) is shifting toward Russian Siberia.
There are dumplings … and then there are dumplings! Across Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, nothing inspires more passionate debate than which dumplings -- pelmeni, pierogi, varenyky, or khinkali, to name a few -- are better. And which ones are the real deal?
A Ukrainian Church -- that currently doesn’t even exist -- is about to change the Orthodox world. A higher authority in Constantinople is considering granting it independence. This move is angering the Russian Orthodox Church, which is threatening to break ties with the other churches.
Members of a Russian socio-military group who call themselves Cossacks have been using their nagaikas to whip up a storm of controversy lately. The origins -- and the intentions -- of these neo-Cossacks are being hotly debated.
Why have Greece and the Republic of Macedonia been locked in a name dispute for over two decades? We take a look at the issue that is preventing this young nation from joining the EU and NATO.
Cryonics is a long way from going mainstream, but Russia’s KrioRus, the first cryonics company set up outside the United States, says business is picking up.
Portuguese police have arrested a Russian businessman and two other colleagues, accusing them of being part of a conspiracy to use the club to launder money from Russian organized-crime groups.The arrests have opened another tiny window into the vast flows of money sloshing through world soccer, and European leagues in particular.
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