Systema is RFE/RL's Russian-language investigative unit, launched in 2023. The team conducts in-depth investigative journalism, producing high-profile reports and videos in Russian.
RFE/RL’s Russian investigative unit, Systema, has obtained a draft treaty that Moscow proposed early in talks that began days after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. It would have left a truncated Ukraine deeply vulnerable, with a minuscule military and no hope of protection from the West.
An obscure Uzbek logistics company has turned into a major middleman for Russian art collectors seeking to burnish their luxury collections with Western art – while evading Western sanctions.
A new national-priority project announced by President Vladimir Putin in January aims to develop new medical technologies to counter aging. Sources tell Systema and Meduza the project is the brainchild of Mikhail Kovalchuk, a Putin insider known for his outlandish scientific theories.
Systema traced Instagram posts by Olga Savelyeva, wife of Russian legislator Dmitry Savelyev, recently detained on suspicion of ordering a contract killing, to a multimillion-dollar mansion in the U.K.’s Wentworth Estate, a former home to Elton John and Augusto Pinochet.
Known as “Putin’s Architect” for designing a lavish, estate linked to the Russian president, Italian businessman Lanfranco Cirillo was also involved in the renovation of a second leisure property for Putin that triggered a tax raid over millions of dollars, an RFE/RL investigation has found.
Dmitry Patrushev, the 46-year-old son of one of Vladimir Putin’s closest confidants, is seen as a possible successor to the Russian president. RFE/RL’s Russian investigative unit examines some of his dealings, including an investment in a country known as a hub for drug shipments heading to Europe.
How and when will Russian President Vladimir Putin’s 25-year rule come to an end? And who might take his place? These are the questions RFE/RL's Russian investigative unit posed to dozens of international Russia experts, who in all mentioned 34 possible successors by name.
In late June, drone footage appeared showing a soldier in Ukraine shooting a wounded comrade in the head. Russian state television and other pro-Kremlin media claimed the shooter was a Ukrainian “fascist.” But RFE/RL’s investigation concluded the soldiers in the video were Russians.
Many Russians and Central Asians with Russian passports are desperate to escape Russia to avoid having to fight in the Ukraine war. They often go to an EU country and apply for a humanitarian visa, crossing the border illegally and asking for asylum. Their success varies.
Systema, RFE/RL's Russian investigative unit, said on June 4 that it had discovered the name and details of a person who it believes is Yelizaveta Peskova, the daughter of Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, in the national taxpayer registry of Kazakhstan.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s children and their spouses have long benefitted from access to state contracts and the wealth of his friends. Now the romantic partner of his elder daughter has been tapped for a key role in a Russian billionaire's liquified-natural-gas projects.
The Kremlin and Russia’s Defense Ministry have gone out of their way to avoid a new mobilization to bolster troop levels for the war in Ukraine amid heavy losses. The result is an inventive web of ways to quietly recruit soldiers to send to the front lines.
RFE/RL has reached out to relatives in Tajikistan and trawled the social media accounts of some of the eight men who have now been charged over the Moscow shootings, in which at least 139 people were killed at the Crocus City Hall concert venue.
Russians who underwent LGBT conversion therapy in Russia have told RFE/RL about brutal treatment they experienced, amid an ongoing crackdown on sexual minorities in the country. The interviews were recorded before the Russian authorities designated RFE/RL an "undesirable organization."
A Russian ultranationalist’s digital campaign for “chaos” in Ukraine may explain the photos of mysterious crosses on roads, rooftops, and other locations -- described as missile markers -- that appeared on Ukrainian social media as Russian soldiers stormed toward Kyiv in February 2022.
Court documents examined by RFE/RL reveal that medical care was repeatedly denied to inmates at the prison where Aleksei Navalny was held. In one case, this resulted in the death of an inmate. The revelation comes amid questions over how Navalny died.
Systema, RFE/RL’s Russian investigative unit, has uncovered details of the Russian military’s use of recruited convicts as assault troops in the invasion of Ukraine. The Defense Ministry continues to recruit prisoners to fight in some of the most brutal engagements on the front lines.
Though not a huge amount, the value of aviation parts imported to Russia after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine highlights just how hard it has been for Western governments to police sanctions restrictions on Moscow -- and how spotty some Western companies have been in adhering to the restrictions.
Russian celebrities are scrambling to apologize for attending an “Almost Naked” party as the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine grinds on. A quarter-century ago, Vladimir Putin visited a St. Petersburg strip club as Russian forces fought a bloody campaign in Chechnya.
A South Korean man who was rumored in the past to have been engaged to one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s daughters has had a long career at Gazprombank, a large state-linked lender where two of Putin’s sons-in-law have also worked, a new RFE/RL investigation has found.
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