Riin Aljas is a digital forensics editor for RFE/RL who works on investigations using data and digital tools. She previously worked as a data journalist both in Estonia and in the United States.
Friends in high places come with lucrative benefits in Uzbekistan. For a phantom company with connections to the president’s son-in-law, these included tens of millions of dollars in opaque state contracts, a new RFE/RL investigation has found.
Three years ago, an unknown Uzbek company registered in an apartment emerged from nowhere to land more than $100 million in state contracts before vanishing again. A new RFE/RL investigation reveals the firm’s ties to the Uzbek president’s son-in-law.
During Russian President Vladimir Putin's 24-year reign, he has repeatedly waited days to make public statements during tragedies and terrorist acts like the March 22 concert hall attack in Moscow.
Two French nationals have told RFE/RL they're both very much alive and living in France, despite Russian state media claims they were in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv at the time of a Russian missile strike on January 16.
The wife of a Russian ministry official, an interpreter for Vladimir Putin, and a former diplomat whom Western intelligence suspects of spy links: These are the Russians whose employment by the OSCE has raised concerns amid what critics call Kremlin efforts to paralyze the European security body.
An RFE/RL investigation reveals how sanctioned Western electronics make their way to Russia via Central Asian firms -- some set up shortly after the Kremlin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine -- and end up in the hands of companies that have supplied the Russian defense industry.
While many European states have shown the door to hundreds of Russian diplomats, not only have they found a new home in Serbia, but the country has taken in alleged Russian spies, an RFE/RL investigation reveals.
