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.
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.
A new interactive investigation by RFE/RL reveals the inner workings of a secretive scheme by Russian military intelligence to recruit fighters for the Kremlin's war on Ukraine under the guise of a fictitious private military company.
Russia maintains manpower and avoids a politically risky call-up by offering contract soldiers what the Kremlin calls “very, very attractive” terms for signing up to fight in Ukraine. But RFE/RL’s Russian investigative unit, Systema, found numerous cases in which the promised benefits never came.
After the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin, a purportedly private military group called Redut has widely been tipped as Wagner’s potential successor as Russia’s key mercenary force. A new RFE/RL investigation reveals that Redut is, in reality, a secretive network operated by Russian military intelligence.
Moscow is making it easier to send children taken from Ukraine to orphanages and families in Russia -- and harder for their real families to bring them home. An RFE/RL investigation reveals details about the process that has earned President Vladimir Putin an arrest warrant for war crimes.
A window into the level of cooperation between China and Russia in censoring their respective Internets and monitoring dissent was unveiled in files from closed-door meetings in 2017 and 2019 between officials from the Cyberspace Administration of China and Roskomnadzor that were obtained by RFE/RL.
A massive leak of internal correspondence and documents shows how a little-known Russian government agency keeps a watchful eye on the Internet -- for opposition protests, for investigations on official corruption, for discussion of the Ukraine war -- and how it works to censor it for Russians.
