Robert Coalson worked as a correspondent for RFE/RL from 2002 to 2024.
Teachers, psychologists, scientists, filmmakers, human rights activists, museum professionals, and others have signed open letters condemning the prison sentences imposed on seven men convicted in the so-called Network case, which many activists in Russia and abroad have denounced as fabricated.
A member of the Russian Orthodox Church's Commission on the Family has provoked animated ire by likening women who live with their partners outside of marriage to "unpaid prostitutes." Responding to the outcry, the church said the priest's remarks "were not aimed at women but at those who debase and use them."
Nearly 400 people in the picturesque northern Russian city of Veliky Ustyug have been bilked out of over $3 million by an unscrupulous pyramid scheme, prosecutors say. Widely seen as a relic of the so-called "lawless 1990s," such swindles seem to be making a comeback deep in the Putin era.
For years now, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been urging Russians to have more children and promising targeted state aid to support them. But families in the far northern city of Severodvinsk say many of those benefits have yet to reach them and when they complain, local officials say, "No one asked you to have so many children."
A television channel run by the de facto authorities in Moldova's breakaway Transdniester region has reported that a young man who "deserted" from the region's illegal paramilitary force in 2015 is back serving with his unit after being used as a "pawn" in a purported Moldovan disinformation campaign. Activists in Moldova suspect the man may have been tortured or intimidated during the month that he was held incommunicado after being abducted in December.
A 25-year-old Moldovan man who fled the breakaway Transdniester region in 2015 with horrific allegations of hazing and torture in the unrecognized republic's paramilitary organization was abducted in December and returned to his base after being held incommunicado for nearly a month. Relatives and rights advocates believe he may have been tortured.
Last year, about 35 venerable stone and brick buildings were destroyed in Russia's Baltic Sea exclave of Kaliningrad. In the decades since the former East Prussia was annexed by the Soviet Union, its centuries-old German heritage has been melting away -- and in the case of physical structures, disappearing brick by brick.
The announcement that Russia's population declined in 2019 for the second consecutive year came as no surprise to demographers. But the rate of decline -- the population loss in 2019 was three times the 2018 figure -- has many questioning whether the government has the vision and the political will to reverse the trend.
Friends and supporters of Omsk resident Dmitry Fyodorov are calling for an investigation after his decapitated body was found near a train track just days after he claimed police had planted narcotics on him.
A doddering Leonid Brezhnev slurred his way through a New Year's greeting to the Soviet people in 1979, while Mikhail Gorbachev touched on the festive topic of medium-range nuclear missiles in 1988. Grab some "shampanskoye" and "olivye" and join in as RFE/RL takes a look at a few of the more striking season's greetings from Russian and Soviet leaders.
Critics are outraged as the streets of the Russian city of Voronezh have been plastered with billboards for a celebration of Josef Stalin's birthday. They see it as the latest manifestation of a trend to rehabilitate the man responsible for the persecution and killing of millions of Soviet citizens.
An activist in the Far Eastern Russian city of Komsomolsk-on-Amur is facing up to six years in prison for purportedly distributing pornography. Supporters say a hate campaign unleashed against her has been driven by a self-appointed "traditional values" defender who has been irked by her efforts to promote tolerance toward sexual minorities and to address gender issues.
A powerful committee in the Russian State Duma has urged the legislature to adopt a bill that would allow prisoners to apply to be transferred to prisons closer to their relatives. Currently many convicts go years without visits because their families can't afford to travel thousands of kilometers to the remote prisons where they are held.
After failing dozens of times to pass a law criminalizing domestic violence because of resistance from socially conservative Orthodox Christian forces, Russian activists and their allies in the State Duma are mounting yet another try. And, once again, they are meeting intense opposition from those who say the law would be a Western cultural imposition that would undermine the traditional Russian family.
Every year, a Moscow NGO sends volunteers on expeditions to the Far North of Russia to perform triage on some of the country's most beautiful and endangered architectural monuments. At the same time, they bring books to dying villages where the library is the beating heart of the community.
Russian Libertarian Party leader Mikhail Svetov, a leading opposition figure, is being investigated on criminal charges of pedophilia that he denies and says are politically motivated. He is one of several "inconvenient" figures to face -- and reject -- similar accusations.
Russian investigators have opened a criminal case into suspected "violent sexual assault against minors under the age of 14" over a YouTube video series in which children asked questions of a gay man. The creators of the video could face 20 years in prison for their effort to promote tolerance.
Russia's "sovereign Internet" law has come into force -- the latest measure in Moscow's decade-long effort to bring the Runet under control.
Locals in Moscow’s Begovoi neighborhood generally agree that something needs to be done about the growing problem of homelessness. But when an NGO proposed opening a consultation center to help homeless people get back on their feet, many residents decided it would be best to do it somewhere else.
The case of a 20-year-old who grew up in a Samara orphanage and is now facing nearly 3 years in prison for shoplifting a box of chocolates has garnered national attention in Russia. Advocates say the state is as much to blame for his predicament as he is.
Load more
