Ramazan Alpaut is a correspondent for RFE/RL's Tatar-Bashkir Service.
A man who illegally crossed the Rio Grande River into the United States reportedly admitted to having worked with the notorious Russian mercenary group Wagner. His arrest came just weeks after he appears to have been honored in Russia for his combat service.
Before Moldova held a dual presidential vote and EU referendum, Kremlin-linked actors were busy sowing disinformation, explains Felix Kartte, a disinformation expert. Authoritarian regimes are also using new tactics to "confuse" and "deflect blame."
Sometimes river waters lap high along the banks by the Kremlin in Kazan, Russia, but other times they're just a dull, muddy trickle. It's not just the weather that's causing this, and activists are crying foul.
In Russia's Komi region, a man arrested for a protest over Aleksei Navalny's jailing got into a yelling match with a judge over his right to speak his native language in court.
A bill snaking its way through the Duma on the teaching of native languages has representatives of Russia's so-called ethnic republics up in arms, arguing that Moscow's intention is to "make everyone Russian."