Tom Balmforth covers Russia and other former Soviet republics from his base in Moscow.
In breakaway Abkhazia, officials and vacationers are outwardly unconcerned about what the World Health Organization warns is a high risk of local transmission of the Zika virus. At the same time, though, Russian and separatist authorities say they have renewed a Soviet-era mosquito fumigation program for the first time in more than 20 years.
There are plenty of things the Somaliland soccer team lacks: a training camp, a full-time coach, even an internationally recognized country to represent. And after two games in an obscure tournament in the breakaway Black Sea region of Abkhazia, the team did not have a single goal to its name.
Shunned by FIFA and dogged by infighting, would-be states and other groupings with uncertain status are holding a soccer "world cup" in breakaway Abkhazia. A colorful opening ceremony will kick off what may be the biggest international event in the isolated Black Sea region since a dominoes championship in 2011.
In the run-up to celebrations marking the defeat of Nazi Germany, a memorial in Moscow to Kyiv's heroism is conspicuously without flowers.
Russian tycoon Mikhail Prokhorov's RBC media holding has shot to prominence with investigations into Vladimir Putin's inner circle. Now it appears to be coming under official pressure.
Russia's Constitutional Court has ruled that Moscow may ignore part of a European court judgment in a dispute on prisoner voting rights, marking the first time Russia has used a controversial law asserting its right to reject international court rulings.
Butcher, baker, fine -- but if you're a woman in Russia, better not try to be a blacksmith, carpenter, coal miner, or drive a bus with more than 14 seats. A ban barring women from over 450 occupations is a hangover from the Soviet era, when state ideology claimed equal rights for men and women while the reality was very different.
Opposition activists say a state TV program claiming that Kremlin foe Aleksei Navalny is an agent of the West is riddled with errors that strongly suggest the charges it levels are fabricated.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has cast his new National Guard as a timely move to combat terrorism and organized crime, but critics see a tool to protect the president's hold on power.
Russian TV stations have shrugged off the so-called Panama Papers, which appear to implicate President Vladimir Putin's circle and other world leaders in offshore scams.
Crimean-born, Russian chess star Sergei Karjakinspeaks about his upcoming bid to become world chess champion, his decision in 2009 to play for Russia instead of his native Ukraine, and his staunch support for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
A prominent priest who abruptly lost his job as a key spokesman for the Russian Orthodox Church portrays Patriarch Kirill as too subservient to President Vladimir Putin's Kremlin. In interviews with RFE/RL, Vsevolod Chaplin also says Russia's ruling elite is in dangerous thrall to a blunt-spoken Putin lieutenant who brooks no dissent.
Vladimir Putin was quick to offer his condolences following the "barbaric" bombings in Brussels, but senior allies of the Russian president were just as quick to say that Europe only had itself to blame.
Russian President Vladimir Putin hailed the seizure of Crimea from Ukraine two years ago as a long-awaited moment of “historic justice.”
The longtime director of the Russian State Archive has been removed from his post less than a year after he exposed a popular Soviet World War II legend to be “fiction” and railed against Soviet “myths” in front of top officials.
Russian prankster Sergei Davydov says he has influenced numerous court decisions by phoning judges in the guise of an influential official and instructing them to rule in a certain way.
The Latvian scientist who developed the drug made famous this week by tennis megastar Maria Sharapova's admission that she used it, despite a new ban, says he doesn't think taking Mildronate, also known as meldonium, should be construed as "doping."
To mark the March 3 Kremlin announcement ending Vladimir Churov's controversial nine-year stint as head of Russia's Central Election Commission, here's a look at some of the more memorable moments of his tenure.
Viktor Krasnov could be sentenced to a year in prison if convicted under 2013 legislation that made it a crime to “insult the religious convictions or feelings of citizens.”
When a nanny allegedly decapitates a 4-year-old girl and waves the child's head in public while shouting that she is a terrorist, it might be expected to lead the evening news. Not in Russia, where the main TV channels ignored the gruesome story that unfolded outside a busy Moscow metro station in broad daylight.
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![Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov lashed out at "Putinophobia," claiming the ICIJ staff comprises "many former representatives of the [U.S.] State Department, and the CIA, and other special services."](https://gdb.rferl.org/f51ff42d-666f-4307-900a-05f41f1a01e9_w100_r1.jpg)
![Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov lashed out at "Putinophobia," claiming the ICIJ staff comprises "many former representatives of the [U.S.] State Department, and the CIA, and other special services."](https://gdb.rferl.org/f51ff42d-666f-4307-900a-05f41f1a01e9_w66_r1.jpg)
