Robert Coalson worked as a correspondent for RFE/RL from 2002 to 2024.
The head of Russia's Constitutional Court has penned an article calling serfdom "the staple" that held the Russian nation together, and that its abolition unleashed revolutionary forces that rocked the country in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Leading Azerbaijani investigative journalist Khadija Ismayilova has been told she faces arrest when she returns to her country. Ismayilova has spoken out about the months-long crackdown on independent journalists and human rights activists in the oil-rich country.
Last month, Moldova inaugurated a new natural-gas pipeline from Romania. But it isn't transporting any gas, and no one knows when the flow of the country's first-ever non-Russian gas might start.
Recent disagreements between Georgia's president and its government have locals and analysts worried about the fragile state of the country's democratic institutions -- and the possible behind-the-scenes role of former Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishivili.
Just days after reporting about Azerbaijan's efforts to influence Western think tanks to advance Baku's interests in the United States, "The New York Times" itself published an opinion piece by an Israeli professor who did not disclose her affiliation with Azerbaijan's state oil company.
After a Chisinau newspaper published beach vacation photos of the head of the country's Orthodox Church, it received a threatening phone call from a man claiming to be the husband of a bikini-clad woman who posted the images on social media.
The government of Azerbaijan is carrying out an intense crackdown of civil-society organizations and nonstate media in what Baku says is a bid to stop "foreign forces" from undermining the South Caucasus country. "Apparently it is in Azerbaijan's national interest not to have critical media," says one worried journalist.
The so-called Visegrad Four alliance -- the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia -- are each taking their own line on how to respond to Russia's aggression in Ukraine. And their divisions are crippling Europe's ability to act decisively.
The head of the Russian-installed government in Crimea has said his region "does not need" gays and other sexual minorities.
In recent remarks, Russian President Vladimir Putin seemed to call into question Kazakhstan's legitimacy as a country, comments that echoed statements he made before the current crisis in Ukraine. His geopolitical vision for a "greater Russia" reminds some of a 1990 essay by Nobel laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
Authorities in Baku have charged prominent human rights activist Leyla Yunus with treason and other charges stemming from her work to ease tensions over Nagorno-Karabakh. International advocates are concerned about the health of the 58-year-old diabetic as she awaits trial in a Baku jail.
Getting the story straight on Ukraine is already hard. But the task is made even more difficult by information posted on the Internet that is subsequently "disappeared."
The Russian government has listed 11 nongovernmental organizations as "foreign agents." The organizations say the 2013 law establishing that designation is designed to end the work of rights activists who are not controlled by the Kremlin.
The vast majority of Russians continue to get their news about the world from Russian state television. What did they see about the July 17 incident involving a Malaysia Airlines passenger jet that went down in eastern Ukraine?
Ukraine's Security Service has released more audio of purported conversations among militants in eastern Ukraine that Kyiv believes proves they received powerful Buk-M antiaircraft weapons and the crews to man them from Russia on July 14.
In 2008, Moscow failed to implement key aspects of an agreement brokered by then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy in the conflict between Russia and Georgia. Will the EU be able to manage better six years later as it becomes increasingly involved in the crisis in Ukraine?
On July 12, longtime Soviet and Russian political oppositionist Valeria Novodvorskaya died in Moscow at the age of 64. The passionate controversies she stirred up during her lifetime raged again with the news of her passing.
A Ukrainian pilot is facing charges in a Russian court. Moscow has issued warrants for Ukraine's interior minister and a regional governor. Such cases have become the latest complication in the deteriorating relations between the two countries.
As traditional Russian ally Serbia pushes ahead with its bid to join the European Union, Moscow's reaction has been muted. Does the Kremlin see strategic advantages in having such a reliable friend inside the Western bloc?
In one of his first moves, new Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has named media mogul Boris Lozhkin as his chief of staff. Is he the "anticrisis manager" that can get the government to focus on the tasks at hand without unnecessary power struggles?
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![The offices of Russia's Memorial rights group in Moscow was vandalized with graffiti reading "foreign agent [heart] USA" in March 2013.](https://gdb.rferl.org/6d4d1074-a2bb-44a3-9037-784f2647a2b6_cx33_cy0_cw67_w100_r1.jpg)
![The offices of Russia's Memorial rights group in Moscow was vandalized with graffiti reading "foreign agent [heart] USA" in March 2013.](https://gdb.rferl.org/6d4d1074-a2bb-44a3-9037-784f2647a2b6_cx33_cy0_cw67_w66_r1.jpg)
