Robert Coalson worked as a correspondent for RFE/RL from 2002 to 2024.
Russian political-protest artist Pyotr Pavlensky is on trial in Moscow for setting alight the door to the headquarters of the Federal Security Service in November 2015. Prosecutors have found a bizarre pretext for charging him with "damaging a cultural monument."
The World Congress of Families, a conservative U.S. organization that has been denounced as an antigay "hate group," is holding its annual meeting in Tbilisi, Georgia. The group has close ties with Kremlin insiders, with whom it shares an aggressive antiliberal agenda.
The head of the pro-Putin Night Wolves motorcycle gang seemed surprised on May 1 to hear that Stalin's Soviet Union was a co-aggressor with Nazi Germany during the first months of World War II. Assertion of this fact, he said, was evidence of "the mess in some people's heads."
A European television channel will not air a controversial new documentary next week on Sergei Magnitsky, the lawyer who helped uncover a massive tax fraud case in Russia and later died in a Russian jail, as previously planned.
Earlier this month, the European Alliance of Tatars held a meeting in the Czech city of Brno. Although the alliance claims to represent Tatar communities in Europe, many Tatars worry it is really controlled by Moscow.
Russian President Vladimir Putin touched on issues from the global to the personal, but clustered around the economy and international relations, for more than 3 1/2 hours in a televised call-in event that has become an annual ritual since he took over the Kremlin in 2000.
After years of delay and enormous cost overruns, Russia's Vostochny Cosmodrome is expected to host its first test launch in the next few weeks. However, that doesn't mean smooth sailing for the troubled project.
Reuters this week published allegations that several women reportedly tied to Russian President Vladimir Putin may have been given luxurious residences by a businessman also connected with the president. But as similar reports in the past have shown, much of the Russian public has been conditioned to turn away.
Human rights activist Igor Kalyapin has campaigned for years against police torture and abuse throughout Russia. But although he has documented dozens of cases in the southern region of Chechnya, he has not been able to bring even one to court. He has, however, attracted the personal enmity of its strongman leader, Ramzan Kadyrov.
Russian President Vladimir Putin's abrupt decision to draw down his country's military presence in Syria has left analysts scratching their heads. Does it signal a strategic shift or is it merely an easily reversible public-relations gambit aimed at strengthening Moscow's hand as the Geneva peace talks get under way?
A series of methane explosions in a coal mine in Russia's Far North recently left 36 people dead and the hardscrabble city of Vorkuta in mourning.
Russian artist Lena Hades has drawn more than 400 portraits of murdered opposition politician Boris Nemtsov in the year since he has been killed. Soon her project -- which was always devoted to all victims of repressive violence -- will enter a new phase.
For the last decade, Russia has systematically bolstered its position in the Black Sea region, redrawing international borders and pouring billions of dollars into military equipment to give Moscow the ability to project power from the Caucasus to the Mediterranean.Now that policy has brought it to the brink of open conflict with NATO power Turkey.
At a press conference that was repeatedly interrupted by bomb threats, police with bullhorns, and hecklers, liberal opposition politician Ilya Yashin has presented a report condemning Chechen Republic leader Ramzan Kadyrov and calling on Russian President Vladimir Putin to dismiss him.
A yearlong investigation into a stolen luxury car could prove to be a textbook example of Russian police malfeasance after an investigator's lost telephone appears to expose a network of falsification and corruption.
The European Parliament has passed a resolution slamming the "unprecedented levels of human rights abuses" being perpetrated against Crimean Tatars by Russian authorities in the Moscow-annexed Ukrainian region. Since the beginning of the year, Crimean Tatars have endured a wave of searches, interrogations, confiscations, and other harassment.
Ahead of elections in September, Russia’s ruling party wants its candidates to toe the party line. United Russia has assembled a collection of videos to instruct party candidates on how to talk to voters about topics from President Vladimir Putin's long reign to the troubled economy and corruption.
Over the last year, a nationwide group led by Vladimir Putin has issued a series of cartoons showing the Russian president summarily executing allegedly corrupt officials in grisly ways -- such as with the help of a circular saw or hungry piranhas. Now an independent journalist has compiled the endings of the cartoons into a single gruesome clip.
After years of violent abuse from her husband, Marem Aliyeva disappeared. Now her sister is struggling against sexism, threats, and official indifference to find out what happened.
International watchdog Human Rights Watch has warned the world's governments not to sacrifice rights protection in the name of fighting terrorism or coping with refugee problems.
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![A meeting of the European Alliance of Tatars in Brno, Czech Republic, earlier this month. The group is "registered in Brussels but financed from [Russia]," says Lithuanian activist Adas Jakubauskas.](https://gdb.rferl.org/1d64327f-0f02-4175-9d09-4874836c7c41_w100_r1.jpg)
![A meeting of the European Alliance of Tatars in Brno, Czech Republic, earlier this month. The group is "registered in Brussels but financed from [Russia]," says Lithuanian activist Adas Jakubauskas.](https://gdb.rferl.org/1d64327f-0f02-4175-9d09-4874836c7c41_w66_r1.jpg)
