Margot Buff is a multimedia editor for RFE/RL.
Disappearing seals, plummeting fish stocks, and a falling water level all point to the deteriorating health of the Caspian Sea. Ahead of Earth Day, observed on April 22, environmentalists in Azerbaijan have warned that it will take rapid action to save the Caspian from the fate of the Aral Sea.
When former Kremlin media adviser Mikhail Lesin was found dead in his Washington hotel room in 2015, an official investigation stated that he died after falling while heavily intoxicated. Now a previously unreleased autopsy report obtained by RFE/RL has uncovered new details of the case.
Nasrin Sotoudeh, an Iranian lawyer known for defending women's rights, has been sentenced to a long prison term and 148 lashes, according to her husband. The charges include "colluding against the system" and "insulting" Iran's supreme leader. Amnesty International called the sentence "appalling."
In Russia's remote Sakha-Yakutia region, the frozen ground is studded with the remains of prehistoric mammoths. Their tusks are worth a fortune to traders in China, where the sale of elephant ivory was banned in late 2017.
In 2013, a bombing at a market in Peshawar struck a passing wedding party, killing 18 members of one family. One survivor who was seriously injured is now helping to raise 12 children who lost one or both parents in the attack.
In spring and autumn, parts of northern Russia are too muddy to access -- unless you're equipped with a six-wheeled swamp vehicle like Vitaly Alyoshin's Trekol.
The extraordinary photographs of Soviet-era Uzbekistan shot by Russian-born Max Penson were forgotten for decades, but his grandson has worked to bring them back to light.
In a dusty town in the Uzbek desert, a collection of once-banned Soviet-era art worth hundreds of millions of dollars is finally attracting the world’s attention.
When Soviet tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia 50 years ago, crushing the period of liberalization known as the Prague Spring, a young photographer named Libor Hajsky captured scenes of violence and fear -- as well as moments of empathy and dark humor.
Forty years ago this week, the first civic opposition movement in the Eastern Bloc was born, and a rock band was at its heart. Czechoslovak dissidents drew up the human rights petition known as Charter 77 after the Communist authorities jailed members of an underground musical group.
