Tom Balmforth covers Russia and other former Soviet republics from his base in Moscow.
Russia's new culture minister has been called a plagiarist, a propagandist, and a falsifier of history. Just who is Vladimir Medinsky?
Not long ago, Igor Kholmanskikh was a foreman at the UralVagonZavod tank factory in Niznhy Tagil in Russia's Sverdlovsk Oblast. Today, he is President Vladimir Putin's envoy to the economically vital Urals region.
The social-networking site Facebook has been slow to take off in Russia, lagging far behind the more popular local sites like Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki. But in recent months, it has grown more than threefold and become the platform of choice for the country's reenergized opposition.
Opposition figure and anticorruption blogger Aleksei Navalny says he has teamed up with an unidentified Russian bank to issue a new debit card that will raise funds to fight graft.
A 19th-century Kazakh poet who was previously all but unknown in Russia has become an unlikely figurehead of opposition protests already marring Vladimir Putin's return to the Kremlin.
May 7 marks the return of Vladimir Putin to the presidency, when Russia's outgoing prime minister will be inaugurated for a third term in a ceremony at the Kremlin. RFE/RL takes a look at how the inauguration and its fledgling traditions add up.
On the eve of Vladimir Putin’s inauguration to the Kremlin on May 7, several opposition groups plan to stage anti-Kremlin protests in the capital. The wide range of groups planning to show up suggest that Putin’s third term as the country’s president could be his trickiest yet, but divisions are surfacing within the protest movement.
It turns out that you can fight City Hall -- even in Moscow. A former English teacher who won a seat in one of Moscow's district councils appears to be winning her fight against plans for a construction project that would destroy a historic local park. Her quest illustrates the changing nature of Russian politics as newly elected opposition politicians flex their muscles at the local level.
Before he became the darling of Moscow's liberal intelligentsia for his hunger strike protesting the alleged falsification in Astrakhan's mayoral election, Oleg Shein was a leftist firebrand, a union leader, and an obedient pro-Kremlin State Duma deputy. His status illustrates the ideological diversity of the anti-Kremlin protest movement.
In a dramatic appearance before the Astrakhan regional legislature, opposition mayoral candidate Oleg Shein vowed to continue his 28-day hunger strike until new elections are called.
A new hotline for cases of police abuse, run by the human rights organization Agora, is attracting calls from across Russia. The initiative has brought scores of alleged torture cases, some of them decades old, into the spotlight.
A hunger strike over alleged vote fraud in mayoral elections in the southern city of Astrakhan has galvanized Russia's opposition.
Was opposition candidate Yevgeny Urlashov's impressive win in Yaroslavl's mayoral election an exception? Or was it the latest indication that there is a groundswell of anti-Kremlin sentiment in the regions?
The struggle between the Kremlin and the opposition has gone local. The next front: The picturesque city of Yaroslavl, where maverick city council deputy Yevgeny Urlashov is favored to win the mayor's office in elections on April 1 with the support of a broad coalition of opposition groups. But as election day approaches, United Russia and the local elite is cranking up the administrative resources to maintain control.
A crusading cop who crushed the mob? Or the man who made torture standard police practice?
The top law-enforcement official in the Russian republic of Tatarstan is facing a fresh wave of public anger after published memoirs came to light in which he denounces the abolition of the death penalty and appears to make a case for the use of torture.
Moscow's reluctance to back outside efforts in Syria reflects a deep-seated fear of relinquishing Soviet-era groundwork on an emerging regional landscape.
Albert Zagitov was selling fruit at a Kazan market when police detained him, threatened him with rape, and beat him until he agreed to pay a small fine.
Police in Russia have arrested dozens of protesters, including three opposition leaders, after forcibly breaking up a rally in central Moscow protesting Vladimir Putin's election to a third term as the country's president.
Russian officials are claiming that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin won a clean and fair election. But election observers say the presidential election was marred by widespread fraud.
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