Merhat Sharipzhan is a senior correspondent for RFE/RL who focuses on developments in the former Soviet Union.
The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) has accused the Taliban of deceit and collusion, and demanded that the Afghan militant movement tell the truth about the circumstances of its late leader's death.
Russian troops regularly enter separatist-controlled territory in eastern Ukraine and serve there on a rotational basis, according to a volunteer who has been fighting with the insurgents since October. Rustam, a Russian citizen from Tatarstan's Saba district who gave only his first name, made the claims in a telephone interview with RFE/RL's Tatar-Bashkir Service on July 20.
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, a former member of the punk protest band Pussy Riot, was detained in central Moscow on June 12 along with another activist after a performance in which they wore gulag-style prison uniforms and sewed a Russian flag.
Two compelling videos posted online appear to show instances of bride-snatching in Kazakhstan, where legislation does not prohibit the practice.
Russia will establish a Crimean Tatar broadcasting company to replace TV and radio stations shut down by the Moscow-controlled government this spring, but a senior leader of the annexed peninsula's Muslim ethnic minority dismissed the initiative as a bid to create a "propaganda tool."
The father of a Russian opposition activist who mysteriously fell ill in Moscow last week says he believes his son was poisoned.
A Russian nongovernmental organization says masked men have stormed its office in Chechnya's capital.
The assassination of Aleksei Mozgovoi, a separatist commander in eastern Ukraine and proponent of the idea of an independent Novorossia, has led to a lot of finger pointing.
Herds of one of Central Asia's most iconic animals, Kazakhstan's saiga antelope, are dwindling rapidly and no one seems to know why.
Just days after a crowd in Kharkiv pulled down a massive statue of Lenin, body parts from the statue are for sale in Ukraine. Who is selling them, and why?
Ukraine's pro-Russia separatists say they won't give up Donetsk, their largest stronghold, without a fight. Now they are digging in for battle.
For years the Ukrainian army has been underfunded and neglected. So much so, that volunteers are now raising money to get soldiers the most basic supplies.
Fighting is ramping up fast in eastern Ukraine and so far the Ukrainian Army has shown combat capabilities that vary from very bad to very good. Why the mixed performance?
Kazakh authorities want to brand two opposition groups and several media outlets as extremist and ban them.
This week, police in Kazakhstan's idyllic Ile-Alatau national park made a grisly discovery: the bodies of 11 people, including several forest rangers, all bearing multiple stab wounds and some burned beyond recognition. Officials have made no arrests and offered no motive for the bizarre killings, which have sparked comparisons to another unresolved crime -- the mass shooting in May of 14 border guards and another ranger on the remote Kazakh-Chinese border.
The mystery over why the brother of a prominent Uzbek opposition figure was not released from prison as scheduled has been solved -- he is serving an additional five-year term.
I was 41 in 2004, when I was first shown this black-and-white picture: four men posing on horseback, one with a baby boy in his arms. It was the first time I'd ever seen my grandfather, Parkizat Sharipzhan. He's the man in his early 30s on the far right, with a briefcase in his hands.
The recent shooting death of Kazakh boxer Yermek Serikov is the latest in an ugly series of sports-related crimes. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, more than 20 prominent sportsmen in former Soviet republics have died under suspicious circumstances.
Tengiz Gudava, a former RFE/RL correspondent and a highly respected Central Asia and Caucasus analyst, died this week in Prague at the age of 55.
On March 30, 2007, Oralghaisha Omarshanova, a journalist with the Astana-based weekly newspaper "Zakon i pravosudie," disappeared shortly after publishing an article focusing on a violent clash two weeks earlier between Chechens and Kazakhs in two villages in southern Kazakhstan. Most media coverage of the incident focused primarily on the ethnic nature of the violence. Omarshanova was the first journalist to ask a different set of questions.
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