Daisy Sindelar is the vice president and editor in chief of RFE/RL.
A former university rector in Azerbaijan has set off the scandal of the season with a series of videos that appear to implicate Ilham Aliyev's right-hand man in everything from kidnapping to selling off parliament seats for $1 million apiece.
Officials in Kazakhstan held a memorial service on January 3 for Turganbek Stambekov, acting head of the country's border service, who was killed together with 20 border personnel in a plane crash last month. The crash is the latest catastrophe to strike the country's border service, which has been plagued by a year of violent events.
Gulnara Karimova can tweet, sing, stretch, style, and oversee her family's massive fortune. But can she rule Uzbekistan? At a press conference on December 20, the 40-year-old Karimova suggested she was contemplating a bid for the presidency if her father, Islam Karimov, steps down in 2015. RFE/RL explores the political prospects of Tashkent's first daughter.
Russia's State Duma has passed in a final reading new legislation that bans Americans from adopting Russian children. Child-welfare advocates say the move will deprive thousands of needy children from ever finding a family.
An estimated 1 million Tajiks live and work outside of their own country. In the past, the majority of these migrants were men. But now, increasing numbers of women are pulling up stakes and traveling abroad to make money. That shift has placed a growing burden on family members back home -- siblings and grandparents who are forced to step in as caregivers for thousands of children left behind as their parents leave to seek work.
On December 16, 2011, deadly clashes in the western Kazakh city of Zhanaozen left at least 16 people dead and 100 more injured. The riots between police and angry residents were the bloody culmination of a prolonged strike by local oil workers, and raised international concerns about the state of labor rights in Kazakshtan's remote energy-rich regions. As the anniversary approaches, the city is hauntingly quiet. But many residents say they remain distressed by the brutal clashes and the arrests and trials that followed.
An investigative program airing in Sweden offers evidence of how executives in Uzbekistan negotiated millions of dollars in suspected bribes on behalf of the presidential daughter, Gulnara Karimova.
Ahead of World AIDS Day on December 1, the United Nations released a cautiously optimistic report suggesting the epidemic has begun to stabilize or even shrink in nearly every part of the world. But the countries of the former Soviet Union are an exception to the trend.
Vladimir Putin's meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel appeared to mark the Russian leader's return to active political life after more than a month of canceled trips and appearances. But will it silence speculation about what was keeping the publicity-savvy president out for so long?
Iran's parliament is set to consider a draft law that would require single women up to the age of 40 to receive permission from their father or male guardian in order to obtain a passport and travel abroad. The proposal comes at a time when the Islamic regime is seeking to roll back women's rights on a number of fronts.
Last month, Tajik national Abdulvosi Latipov disappeared without a trace, just days after being released from a jail in Russia. His family believes he was abducted by Tajik security forces and transferred home to face possible torture as a suspected terrorist. Rights-watchers say the case is part of a growing trend in which Tajiks, Uzbeks, and other Central Asians facing politically motivated charges at home are being kidnapped in Russia and transferred to jails back home -- despite legal safeguards meant to protect them from extradition.
Kyrgyzstan's Ar-Namys political party has debuted new posters and banners ahead of local elections later this month. But the new design, which bears a striking resemblance to the white-blue-and-red pattern of the Russian flag, is drawing fire in Bishkek.
The ruling Party of Regions of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych has emerged as the clear winner of the October 28 parliamentary vote. But the party is still dozens of mandates short of a simple majority, let alone the 100 extra seats it would need to claim a powerful two-thirds constitutional majority. Yanukovych is looking to the Communist Party and unattached single-mandate candidates to build his ideal parliament.
When Ukraine's new legislature gathers, it may have the feel of a family reunion, as an increasing number of sons, daughters, and brothers of established politicians prepare to enter the Verkhovna Rada. RFE/RL takes a look at the growing political tradition of "kumivstvo," or nepotism.
In the coming days, Pussy Riot members Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova are expected to find out where they will be sent to serve out their two-year sentences for their February protest in a Moscow church. The transfer has raised questions about the safety and living conditions in Russia's penal colonies for women, where dozens of women can share a single cell and violence and abuse are rife.
Uzbek diplomatic officials have broken their silence on a Swiss money-laundering case involving four Uzbek nationals with ties to Gulnara Karimova, the daughter of the Uzbek president.
New documents uncovered by Swedish journalists in France link Gulnara Karimova, the millionaire daughter of autocratic Uzbek President Islam Karimov, with an Uzbek citizen under investigation for money laundering and other financial crimes in Switzerland and Sweden.
From the moment protesters began climbing the gates outside the Kyrgyz parliament building on October 3, doubts began to surface about what they were really there for.
On October 4, Sarajevo's National Museum -- whose treasures include the famed Sarajevo Haggadah -- is set to close its doors due to lack of government funding. Critics say the museum is yet another victim of the Dayton accords, which ended the Bosnian War but left the country with a bureaucracy hobbled by deep ethnic divisions.
In accepting defeat in the parliamentary elections, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili leaves his party facing life in the opposition for the first time since 2003. But with the country laying claim to its first-ever electorally determined political transition, the dynamic 44-year-old leader has also taken a major step toward securing his legacy as the man who brought democracy to Georgia.
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