Robert Coalson worked as a correspondent for RFE/RL from 2002 to 2024.
As many as 1 million Armenian citizens living or traveling abroad will not be able to vote in the country's February 18 presidential election. Armenia and other countries with large diasporas face an unusual set of challenges when it comes to holding elections.
Since mass protests against President Vladimir Putin's rule broke out in late 2011, the white ribbon has been the symbol of the opposition's call for change. With the symbol under attack by some Moscow officials, the opposition has declared February 5 White Ribbon Day.
A pair of Russian sisters gained notoriety in late 2011 when they appeared on a television game show and were unable to answer the question, "What is the Holocaust?" Now documentary filmmaker Mumin Shakirov has taken the sisters to visit the Auschwitz death camp in Poland and is preparing a film about their experiences.
Ukraine's prime minister said last week that Kyiv will sign a $10 billion shale-gas deal with oil major Royal Dutch Shell on January 24. That deal -- and a similar one that is in the works with Chevron -- is part of Kyiv's stepped-up strategy to reduce its dependence on Russian natural gas.
A recent report by a Sarajevo-based investigative journalism NGO that criticized Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has generated thousands of e-mails purporting to come from outraged Azerbaijanis. There is evidence the campaign may be part of a larger effort by pro-government forces in Azerbaijan to control the way their country is portrayed on the Internet.
The economy and Iran's disputed nuclear program were the key issues on the agenda as Israeli voters went to the polls on January 22.
The broad-daylight assassination of mobster Aslan Usoyan in Moscow on January 16 has the potential to destabilize the post-Soviet underworld, at a time when internal conflicts and lucrative new business opportunities have already raised tensions among criminal gangs. From Aghan heroin to the 2014 Sochi Olympics, there are billions of dollars at stake.
A Russian think tank will release its final report on the November 6 U.S. presidential election on January 17. According to a sneak preview, the report will harshly criticize the vote as falling short of democratic standards in almost every way.
Russian President Vladimir Putin's premier foreign-policy initiative, the Eurasian Customs Union, is showing unprecedented vitality. But the European Union says membership in the ECU is incompatible with closer economic ties with the EU. This confronts many former Soviet states -- especially Ukraine and Moldova -- with a stark choice.
The Sarajevo-based Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) has named Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev its person of the year -- an ignominious distinction gained by figuring most prominently in crime and corruption stories in the OCCRP's coverage region.
With the first-ever peaceful transfer of power through competitive and universally accepted elections, 2012 was a momentous year for Georgia.
Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka's decree prohibiting workers in the wood-processing sector from quitting their jobs without their employer's permission provokes alarm in a country that still remembers centuries of serfdom.
A new nationalities policy sets guidelines for policies affecting Russia's nearly 200 ethnic groups. Its drafting has provoked intense concern among them that the status of non-Russian nationalities could be diminished.
The arrests this week of a dozen or so Georgian Interior Ministry officials on charges ranging from torture to abuse of office have severely strained the country's first-ever peaceful transition of political power through elections.
Prominent journalist and activist Isa Saharkhiz, 59, is one of dozens of Iranian writers currently being held in the country's notorious prisons. He has complained of brutal treatment and has often been denied access to medical care. In addition to jailing him, the authorities have banned him from writing or participating in politics for five years after he serves his sentence.
There are hundreds of writers and journalists in prison right now, most of them sentenced to long terms in brutal conditions merely for the ideas they express in their writing. PEN International, a nongovernmental organization based in London with centers around the world, has named November 15 the Day of the Imprisoned Writer in order to keep these unjustly imprisoned voices from falling silent.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is heading to Russia this week amid a controversy that highlights the evolving relations between the two countries. On November 9, the Bundestag endorsed a report by Merkel's commissioner on German-Russian relations, Andreas Schockenhoff, on democracy in Russia that Moscow has described as "defamatory."
By most accounts, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been one of the hardest-working and most successful members of President Barack Obama's cabinet. But she has said for years that one term at the demanding post is enough for her.
Now that U.S. President Barack Obama has been reelected, the United States and Russia face the difficult task of reestablishing constructive relations in the post-reset phase.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak told British media on October 30 that Iran had used about one-third of its enriched uranium for civilian purposes, pushing back a "moment of truth" on Tehran's nuclear program by some eight to 10 months. But another important "moment of truth" will likely be Israel's January elections.
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