Robert Coalson worked as a correspondent for RFE/RL from 2002 to 2024.
Nearly 350 Belarusian sports figures have called for the nullification of the presidential election and the immediate release of "political prisoners." The protest seems to be picking up speed even though the athletes realize they could face consequences for defying President Alyaksandr Lukashenka.
The Internet has largely been shut down in Belarus ever since the country’s disputed presidential election on August 9. However, the social-media platform Telegram has largely continued operation and has become the go-to resource for protesters seeking information and coordination.
The opposition candidate heralded by backers as the real winner of a disputed presidential election has left Belarus amid a violent crackdown on protests and suspicions that incumbent President Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s government may have intimidated or threatened her.
Belarus has seen tumultuous presidential elections in the past, but this time things could be different. The opposition seems to have moved beyond the country's perennial Europe-Russia divide and found a formula that more Belarusians are ready to embrace.
Hospitals in the western Russian city of Kaliningrad have all but stopped testing for coronavirus infections as officials report a steady decline in new cases. Locals say the government is doing everything to create the impression that the pandemic is under control in order to reopen the economy.
Belarus's Lukashenka says a group of Russian mercenaries in Minsk was plotting to "destabilize the country." What's the real story?
Despite nearly two weeks of protests, observers say the unrest in Khabarovsk is being underpinned by specific circumstances that aren't in play elsewhere.
Protesters in Khabarovsk expected a local figure to be named to replace the governor who was arrested July 9. Putin ignored them.
Authorities have arrested Khabarovsk region Governor Sergei Furgal on suspicion of involvement in a spate of killings in 2004-05. Locals are wondering why the allegations against one of Russia's most popular governors are being dredged up now, 10 days after the region gave only tepid support to constitutional amendments that could enable Vladimir Putin to remain president until 2036.
Following the July 7 jailing of longtime journalist Ivan Safronov on suspicion of treason, many in Russia are warning that the country's vaguely written espionage laws could be used as a tool for a significant crackdown on independent journalists and civil-society activists.
Members of the Chechen diaspora in Europe say Kremlin-backed Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has developed an extensive network across the continent that he is using to target his perceived enemies, political and personal.
Russian journalist David Frenkel was trying to cover voting at a St. Petersburg polling station on June 30 when a police officer roughly attempted to remove him, breaking his collarbone in the process. The frightening incident was caught on video, and authorities say they are investigating. From the hospital where he is recovering after surgery, Frenkel described the incident in interviews with RFE/RL and Current Time.
Authorities in the large Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk may declare a state of emergency to combat an unprecedented plague of ticks and the illnesses they transmit to humans. Reported tick bites are up fourfold so far this year, a boom experts attribute to a mild winter, an early spring, and a government preoccupied with COVID-19. Even worse, locals are reporting shortages of the medicine used to reduce the risk of tick-borne infections, and scientists are tracking a hybrid tick that could be an even more daunting foe.
A 35-year-old loan officer at a Moscow bank said he couldn't just sit home during the lockdown imposed to curb the spread of the coronavirus. So for the last six weeks, he has worked every day as a cleaner at a Moscow COVID-19 hospital, assisting medical staff and doing what he could to "be of at least some use in this world."
In and out of prison since he was arrested after protecting an elderly woman being beaten by police in Moscow in 2009, Sergei Mokhnatkin, an "accidental dissident" whose unlikely career as an opposition activist is a revealing reflection of Russia in the past decade, has died at the age of 66.
In a Russian city near the Finnish frontier, officials hung a Victory Day picture showing a sturdy soldier and his trusty reindeer. Problem: The soldier was a Finn who fought against the Red Army after dictator Josef Stalin invaded his country in the Winter War of 1939-40. The incident was one of a string of similar cases in recent years, several of which involved images of German soldiers gracing Russian Victory Day posters.
More than 2,000 workers at the Kola Yard construction site north of Murmansk have tested positive for the coronavirus. But work on the huge project continues even as the number of cases mounts.
Ever since the Cold War, many Soviet and Russian politicians and academics have downplayed the role that U.S.-provided weapons and supplies played in the Red Army's ultimately victorious campaign against Hitler's Germany. But there is substantial evidence that the huge influx of materiel made an irreplaceable contribution, as many figures during the war acknowledged. Speaking at the Tehran conference in November 1943, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin said: "Without the machines provided by Lend-Lease, we would have lost the war."
For 17 years now, many Russians have been participating in mock May Day demonstrations, sporting absurd banners and slogans that ridicule the times and leave spectators scratching their heads. With the country locked down this year because of COVID-19, the event has migrated online, but to some the strange times make the unusual event seem more appropriate than ever.
Journalists at Russia's respected business daily Vedomosti have warned that the paper's new acting editor in chief aims to undermine its independence. Activists fear the paper -- which began two decades ago as a partnership of Dow Jones, the Financial Times, and The Moscow Times -- will go the way of other influential independent media voices in Vladimir Putin's Russia.
Load more
