Since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, several packages of sanctions targeting Russia’s lucrative energy industry (mostly oil, gas, and coal) have been introduced by the United States, the European Union, and other Western nations. | Continue reading
Harald Weilnboeck has worked for years in Germany as a first-line practitioner trying to discourage young people from joining violent right-wing extremist groups or help them distance themselves from neo-Nazi organizations they'd previously joined. Now, with more young Europeans … | Continue reading
Lithuania has begun a ban on the rail transit of goods subject to European Union sanctions to the Russian far-western exclave of Kaliningrad, transport authorities in the Baltic nation said on June 18. | Continue reading
Jailed Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny used a court appearance this week for a defiant and angry anti-war speech. The court rejected his appeal against a 9-year prison sentence for a previous conviction he and his supporters say is politically motivated. | Continue reading
Zoran Laketa knows what it's like to fire a gun and wonder if the soldier on the other side of the front line just might be his brother. Or his father. | Continue reading
Start-up founder Sergei Krupnik, who left Russia shortly after it invaded Ukraine, is one of tens of thousands of IT workers who have fled the country. The exodus will have economic and cybersecurity ramifications for years. | Continue reading
Serious, and seemingly predictable, obstacles to secure communications and data sharing among branches of the Russian military appear to have hampered its invasion plans from the first days of the war in Ukraine. | Continue reading
The United Nations refugee chief says the number of people fleeing Russia's advance into Ukraine has reached 2 million. | Continue reading
A governor in Siberia faced tough questions about why young men were sent to invade Ukraine, a testy exchange that comes as the Kremlin moves aggressively to stamp out any opposition to the war with its neighbor. | Continue reading
The incident is the latest in a series -- including the backlash over a lesbian speaker at a literary festival and a health-food chain's progressive ad campaign -- that LGBT activists say points to rising homophobia in Russia, and official indifference. | Continue reading
Russia's media watchdog, Roskomnadzor, has blocked a popular news website in Siberia's largest city, Novosibirsk, for using the word "war" in reports covering Russia's invasion of Ukraine. | Continue reading
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s favorite pro-Kremlin bikers, the Night Wolves, have used public funds to stage frightening New Year’s shows for children, according to Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. | Continue reading
In 1922, Russia was marking the fifth anniversary of the 1917 coup that brought the Bolsheviks to power, but the country's future seemed very much up in the air. It was the crucial events of that year that marked a tumultuous break with the past and set the mold for decades of di … | Continue reading
A photo album sitting on the shelves of Ukraine's KGB archives reveals how an amateur U.S. spy was captured, then imprisoned, 60 years ago. | Continue reading
Newly released images of an unsettling collection of carpets depict the conflicts that have ravaged Afghanistan for the past 40 years. | Continue reading
Saudi Arabia and Russia have signed a military cooperation agreement at an arms expo outside Moscow. | Continue reading
As Russia seeks to get natural gas flowing through a highly controversial Baltic Sea pipeline that bypasses Ukraine, it has halted steam coal shipments and is holding off on selling electricity to its neighbor amid severely strained ties, deepening the country's energy woes as wi … | Continue reading
A Moscow trade show pitching glitzy funeral options takes on grim significance as hundreds of Russians die each day from COVID-19. | Continue reading
After years of planning and two weeks on display, the epic installation titled L'Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped, by the late artist couple Christo and Jeanne-Claude, ends on October 3. Photographers captured the spectacular temporary artwork from start to finish. | Continue reading
Popular messaging app Telegram is suspending all chat bots used in the Russian elections campaign, in another blow to jailed opposition politician Aleksei Navalny’s Smart Voting initiative after Apple and Google removed the election-guide app from their stores. | Continue reading
Russia's media watchdog has blocked six providers of virtual proxy networks (VPNs), which people can use to circumvent government restrictions on the Internet. | Continue reading
Photojournalist Anatoliy Stepanov talks about his experience covering the conflict in eastern Ukraine. | Continue reading
Internet users in the tightly controlled Central Asian nation of Turkmenistan say they are being forced to swear on the Koran that they will not use virtual private networks (VPNs). | Continue reading
Russia’s media regulator has blocked two online news outlets critical of the Kremlin in the latest move against independent media ahead of parliamentary elections in September. | Continue reading
A Belarusian journalist has been sentenced to 18 months in prison after being found guilty of insulting the country's authoritarian leader, Alyaksandr Lukashenka, and slandering two police officers. | Continue reading
Russia's media regulator Roskomnadzor has requested YouTube block the Navalny Live channel of jailed opposition politician Aleksei Navalny. | Continue reading
The United Kingdom has denied reports that a Russian vessel fired warning shots at a British Navy ship in the Black Sea, attributing the incident to a preannounced military exercise. | Continue reading
A group of NGOs has launched a website providing the public with information on a controversial mass-surveillance system that is currently being installed in Belgrade. The system will include 1,000 cameras and is being supplied by the Chinese company Huawei. | Continue reading
In Russia's Arctic north, a new kind of gold rush is under way. | Continue reading
French social media influencers were offered money to post content criticizing Western COVID vaccines such as Pfizer's. The Russian company behind the efforts has links to a network of murky entities -- and a Moscow-based businesswoman active in pro-Kremlin political circles. | Continue reading
Born a century ago, atomic bomb designer and dissident Andrei Sakharov died two years before the Soviet Union’s collapse, cutting short his struggle for “pluralism, freedom, and respect for the individual.” What would he think of Russia today? | Continue reading
A trio of 14-year-old boys in Russia face up to 10 years in prison after being charged with "training for terrorist activities" in a case that began with accusations they were trying to blow up a virtual Federal Security Service headquarters they built in the computer game Minecr … | Continue reading
Amnesty International has withdrawn its recent designation of Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny's as a "prisoner of conscience" over his alleged advocacy of violence and discrimination and comments that included hate speech. | Continue reading
The people and spectacular cityscapes of tsarist Georgia captured in vivid color by a world famous photographer. | Continue reading
Bulgaria, Kosovo, and North Macedonia have signed declarations with the United States on the security of 5G wireless communications networks under which they committed to protect their networks from "untrusted" Chinese tech companies such as Huawei. | Continue reading
Photoshop 1.0 was first released as the Soviet Union was collapsing, but long before the software made photo manipulation easy, Kremlin censors went to extraordinary lengths to touch up history. | Continue reading
An archived booklet reveals how communist spooks were instructed to blend in with Finnish locals, giving careful advice on the behavior, clothing, and table manners of Finns. | Continue reading
Men locking lips in public might be a rare event in today's Russia, but comrades kissing behind the Iron Curtain was once the height of fraternal protocol. | Continue reading
Belarusian border officials say they detained a leading opposition organizer at the border with Ukraine as international calls mount for answers from Minsk on her suspected abduction and other disappearances of critics of President Alyaksandr Lukashenka. | Continue reading
Maryya Kalesnikava, a leading member of the Coordination Council of the Belarusian Opposition, has disappeared and was reportedly taken away by unknown individuals. | Continue reading
Russian doctors say Russian opposition figure Aleksei Navalny is not well enough to be moved from the Siberian hospital where he is being treated for suspected poisoning. | Continue reading
Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka has instructed the Ministry of Internal Affairs to prevent unrest in the country and tighten border controls in the face of an 11th day of street protests and strikes over a controversial presidential election. | Continue reading
Some Belarusian police and security officers have walked off the job, amid mounting outrage over violence against peaceful protesters. A growing number of state media reporters and TV anchors are doing the same. | Continue reading
A Russian photographer snuck into the world’s only nuclear-capable, ground-effect vehicle and captured rare images of its interior. | Continue reading
Protesters and security forces clashed violently across Belarus following the country's presidential election on August 9. The victory by authoritarian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka is widely seen as rigged. People protested in Minsk, Homel, and Vitsebsk on August 10-11. | Continue reading
Seventy-five years after the end of World War II in Europe, photographs capture the devastation wrought on the Hungarian capital city during one of Europe’s most overlooked battles. | Continue reading
Russia operates the world’s largest fleet of major icebreaking ships and, in December, the country began sea tests for the most powerful icebreaker ever built. The trials cap a long history of cracking ice for both economic and military advantage in arctic waters. | Continue reading
The collapse of the Russia-backed cryptocurrency exchange BTC-e, and the arrest of one of its principal founders, has long intrigued observers looking for clues of how Russian spy agencies used bitcoin to fund operations globally. A recent BBC report provides some more glimpses. | Continue reading