Tom Balmforth covers Russia and other former Soviet republics from his base in Moscow.
Russia’s Muslim community is divided over the Kremlin’s bombing campaign in Syria. Though disapproval finds little public expression, the air strikes are widening fissures in Russia’s fragile Islamic community.
As Moscow launches air strikes in Syria, a Russian volunteer says he and a band of like-minded men are setting off to fight alongside Kurdish forces against Islamic State (IS) militants. Disillusioned with the rebels in eastern Ukraine, Bondo Dorovskikh says he is driven by an addiction to battle and the desire to combat the "evil" of IS.
After a dramatic day that saw Russia unexpectedly launch a campaign of air strikes in Syria, RFE/RL takes a look at how the country’s state-dominated media justified and explained the military action to its own people.
An opinion poll says 69 percent of Russians oppose deploying combat troops in Syria -- something Russian President Vladimir Putin says he has ruled out.
Minsk residents are petitioning for the dismissal or prosecution of police officers who were filmed dragging a blind man down stairs at a city subway station.
Thousands of Russian opposition activists and their supporters have rallied in Moscow, in the wake of regional elections that saw the ruling party trouncing opposition candidates in voting criticized as rigged.
Several Russian soldiers are seeking help from human rights advocates to oppose what they say are secret orders to send them to Syria, according to media reports that add to evidence of a Russian military buildup in the war-torn Middle East country.
Several prominent Russian cultural figures are boycotting a literature festival backed by Pskov Oblast Governor Andrei Turchak, part of an outcry over allegations that the regional leader was behind a near-fatal attack on journalist Oleg Kashin in 2010.
A big trade fair in Moscow this week is showing off Russian-made goods that the government hopes will help wean the country off imports – amid signs that the Kremlin campaign for "import substitution" has had little effect so far.
Russian officials were quick to offer their blessing as the ballots were still being counted in thousands of elections across the country, but Kremlin opponents accused the authorities of an array of dirty tricks -- and used social media to publicize the evidence.
Russia's Parnas party faces numerous challenges and political dirty tricks as it vies for seats in Kostroma Oblast's Duma on September 13, a modest but much-needed prize for a beleaguered opposition that has all been closed out of the political process nationwide.
The investigation into the killing of Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov has become a skirmish in a broader battle for power and influence between federal law-enforcement authorities and Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has clamped down hard on civil society since 2012, will reportedly soon establish a special prize for human rights activists. Rights defenders in Russia are suspicious about the purpose of the prize and say winners would face a "moral dilemma" over whether to accept it.
Public anger over the botched operation to rescue the crew of the sunken submarine Kursk was a nasty wake-up call for Vladimir Putin in 2000, the first year of his presidency. But 15 years later, Russians are far less critical of the government's response -- a change a leading pollster says reflects the power of state TV.
Amid speculation that a former Russian defense official jailed for embezzlement may have used a "double" to serve her sentence, lawmakers are scrambling to slam the door on the reputed practice.
Russian tourists are being enticed to vacation in Crimea by ads that portray the annexed peninsula as the ultimate holiday destination. The truth is a little more unsettling.
A Russian lawmaker's proposal to limit the amount of foreign cuisine sold in Russian restaurants is the latest in a volley of bizarre measures that aim to purge the country of foreign foods.
One of most polarizing figures of the Bolshevik era seemed closer than ever to returning to his pedestal. But then the Communist Party effort to bring the notorious statue of Feliks Dzerzhinsky back to Lubyanka came crashing down.
Thirty years after MI6 double agent Oleg Gordiyevsky, a colonel in the KGB, escaped from the Soviet Union, the man regarded as the West's most valuable Cold War intelligence asset tells RFE/RL the tale of his escape.
A "social experiment" elicits some shocking reactions from Muscovites confronted with two men holding hands and strolling through the capital.
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