Robert Coalson worked as a correspondent for RFE/RL from 2002 to 2024.
In his last scheduled televised question-and-answer session with the public before Russia's next presidential election in March 2018, President Vladimir Putin sought to convey confidence and competence.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has bestowed the Family Glory award on a family of Jehovah's Witnesses -- just one month after the Russian Supreme Court declared the group an illegal "extremist" organization.
A senior disarmament official with the Russian Foreign Ministry earlier this month killed two people before shooting himself. His social-media footprint and other communications had already raised concerns in some quarters.
Macedonia's president has refused to give the opposition Social Democrats a mandate to form a new government, claiming it has made a deal with ethnic Albanians that threatens the country's security. But many observers think the former ruling party fears handing over power could unleash a wave of prosecutions for alleged abuse of office during its decade in charge.
In a contribution for RFE/RL's Russian Service, liberal Russian politician Grigory Yavlinsky argues that Vladimir Putin's government doesn't want the public to understand the significance of Russia's 1917 revolution.
Leading Kremlin allies have been virtually unanimous in attributing the resignation of U.S. national security adviser Michael Flynn as part of an effort by "Russophobic" elements in the United States to prevent any improvement in U.S.-Russia relations.
St. Petersburg's decision to turn over control of St. Isaac's Cathedral to the Russian Orthodox Church has spurred locals to protest what they see as the church's growing influence over cultural matters.
A century ago, Faberge produced its last legendary Easter egg. The following year, in 1918, in the early days of Russia's Bolshevik Revolution, the legendary Russian jewelry firm was nationalized and destroyed. The Faberge family and many of the firm's masterpieces found refuge in the West, where the firm's legacy is being preserved today.
The head of the Russian region of Tatarstan has compared a new Moscow policy to Stalin's brutal dispossession of the Soviet peasantry in the 1930s.
Here are four reasons why the legacy of Andrei Sakharov remains important for Russia (and the world) today, more than a quarter-century after his death.
Soviet dissident and human rights advocate Andrei Sakharov died in December 1989, two years before the final collapse of the Soviet Union. How that course of events might have been different if Sakharov had lived is one of the intriguing mysteries of that period.
Turkey and Russia are both portraying the assassination in Ankara of Russia's ambassador to Turkey as a "provocation" aimed at derailing bilateral relations.
The leader of a shadowy Russian private mercenary corps has been spotted at a lavish Kremlin reception for holders of military honors, in the strongest indication yet of the key role such groups have played in Russia’s interventions in Ukraine and Syria.
The breakaway Moldovan region of Transdniester is holding a presidential election on December 11 -- and the incumbent leader has found himself in a tough struggle to secure a second term.
A woman from Sochi has been sentenced to seven years in prison for sending two text messages that Russian security officials say contained military secrets. Her defense lawyers say they have learned of 10 similar cases emerging from the same local Federal Security Service branch since 2013.
Russia's new information-security doctrine calls for the government to develop "a national system of managing the Russian segment of the Internet."
For a year and a half, 17 people have been facing trial in the Russian town of Kopeisk over what the authorities say was a prison uprising and defendants say was a desperate protest against torture and abuse.
In his annual state-of-the-nation address, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that the country is unified like never before and is fully capable of achieving its strategic economic and geopolitical goals.
One man’s four-year search to learn the names of the Stalinist agents who executed his great-grandfather in 1938 has been surprisingly successful -- and has led to his reconciliation with the granddaughter of one of the gunmen.
The arrest of Russia's economic development minister could signal a significant victory for former KGB operative Igor Sechin -- and a costly defeat for investor confidence in the country's battered economy.
Load more
