Robert Coalson worked as a correspondent for RFE/RL from 2002 to 2024.
Many regions across Russia are struggling to decide whether efforts to combat the spread of COVID-19 call for restrictions in alcohol sales and consumption. Many of those that have introduced restrictions are facing backlashes, from discontent to illegal sales and production.
With local authorities increasingly using a new law on "fake news" to pressure the media over coverage of the coronavirus crisis, regional journalists across Russia are fighting to report the full story of the government's response and how COVID-19 is affecting their audiences.
In 1970, the Soviet Union and its satellites pulled out all the stops to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of Vladimir Lenin, the founder of the country and self-styled savior of the working class worldwide. Just 50 years later, however, the Kremlin finds Lenin's legacy problematic and seems satisfied to let the April 22 anniversary pass unnoticed.
A criminal case has been opened against an undisclosed number of police officers in the Russian city of Kaliningrad for allegedly fabricating a drug-possession case to inflate their performance on the job. Rights advocates say the case reflects a widespread police practice of planting drugs and fabricating criminal claims for a variety of nefarious reasons.
With about 875,000 people confined in Russia's prisons and pretrial-detention facilities, activists and inmates are worried that conditions there are ideal for a major outbreak of COVID-19. Little has been done so far, prisoners relatives say, to head off a disastrous outcome.
About 37,000 people died in Russia of AIDS in 2019, the most ever in a single year. The 2020 figure could be worse, activists say, as the country and donors devote their resources to fighting COVID-19. And HIV-positive people run heightened risks of contracting the coronavirus as they crowd Russia's relatively few treatment centers with other immunocompromised patients.
Across Russia, cities are enforcing stay-home orders to contain the spread of the coronavirus -- and for some citizens, the situation has gone from dire to desperate. RFE/RL spoke with several vulnerable residents of the Siberian oil city of Krasnoyarsk about their lives and their worries as the lockdown persists.
Journalist Anastasia Petrova died in a hospital in the Russian city of Perm on March 31. The official cause of death was pneumonia, but officials later acknowledged that the 36-year-old had tested positive for the coronavirus. In social-media notes and texts to friends, Petrova left a moving diary of her illness and treatment.
Vladimir Putin has been the face of Russia for two decades. But many aspects of his early life remain closely held secrets, blogger Artyom Kruglov says -- and for good reason.
Activists in the Russian city of Pskov have applied for protected status for the site of a wartime Nazi POW camp in which tens of thousands of Soviet Red Army soldiers died. The land is controlled by the Defense Ministry, which wants to use it to build housing for officers.
With Russia increasingly going into lockdown amid the growing coronavirus pandemic, grocery clerks, delivery drivers, and others remain on the job -- sometimes without the supplies and instructions they need to keep themselves and others safe.
With many in Russia skeptical about the government's information on the COVID-19 crisis, grassroots organizations are organizing to try to help neighbors help each other.
On the edge of greater Moscow, construction of a new infectious-diseases hospital is proceeding 24 hours a day, with the 500-bed facility expected to open next month. Locals realize the nature of the emergency facing the country, but are anxious about their new neighbor.
Residents of the small Russian exclave of Kaliningrad will have to get used to a new level of isolation as neighboring Poland and Lithuania have ordered their borders closed to combat the new coronavirus pandemic in Europe. For people who travel to the European Union more often than to what they call "big Russia," the coming weeks -- or more -- present challenges.
Despite more than two decades of relentless pressure, independent journalism continues to exist in Vladimir Putin's Russia, emerging constantly in previously unknown niches. Amid the struggle to survive, a whole new generation of young journalists seems determined to make a difference.
For more than three years, Igor Suvorov has been struggling to have his status as a conscientious objector to military service reinstated after his local military district commissar unilaterally annulled it. After the Russian Supreme Court denied his appeal, he turned to the European Court of Human Rights.
For more than 30 years, St. Petersburg resident Anton Kolomitsyn has spent much of his spare time scouring the country for the remains of Soviet soldiers killed during World War II. But now he has fled the country and is seeking asylum in Europe after Russian security agents charged him with acquiring "state secrets" for purchasing 50-year-old military maps.
A Russian charity that works with disabled children in the Karelia region has received a government grant to build a mock-up of a World War II-era Finnish prisoner-of-war camp. The group plans to begin bringing children to the proposed "museum" in time for the 75th anniversary of Nazi Germany’s defeat in May.
Last year, a powerful ally of Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov declared a "blood feud" against self-exiled blogger Tumso Abdurakhamanov. Now the blogger says someone tried to kill him with a hammer while he slept in an undisclosed location in Poland.
When longtime Kremlin aide Vladislav Surkov's imminent departure was first announced by an acquaintance last month, the reason given was a supposed shift in Moscow's policies toward Ukraine. But does Surkov's dismissal really mean new prospects for an end to the war between Kyiv and Russia-backed separatists in the Donbas?
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