Russian literary giant Fyodor Dostoyevsky has been dead and buried for well over 100 years. But he may have shifted, if not rolled over, in his grave this week when Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka made the unfortunate choice of quoting out of context. Dostoyevsky experts are less than amused -- and if Lukashenka understood his error, they say, he would want to hide his head in the sand, too.

The crash of a Sukhoi plane during a promotional tour of Asia has cast a pall over Russia's ambitions to regain a foothold on the global civil aviation market. The jet crashed into an Indonesian mountain on May 9 with some 50 people on board, all of whom are believed dead. The Sukhoi Superjet-100 is the first new passenger plane produced by Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union

Authorities might have hoped that Moscow's tenacious protest movement would die down after hundreds of demonstrators were summarily arrested at a May 6 rally ahead of Vladimir Putin's presidential inauguration. But rather than giving up, protesters are adapting their tactics.

An estimated 600 activists have been detained in Moscow this week for openly or tacitly protesting Vladimir Putin's return to the presidential post. Vladimir Platonov, the speaker of the Moscow City Duma, spoke to Yelena Vlasenko of RFE/RL's Russian Service, Radio Liberty, about the treatment of the activists.

As Azerbaijan prepares to host the Eurovision Song Contest later this month, a shimmering glass-and-steel showcase is being built. The Azerbaijani government has spent $134 million to build the 23,000-seat Crystal Hall, but an investigation by RFE/RL and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project reveals the president's family is personally profiting from the massive construction project.

While most Muslims might jet to Mecca for the hajj pilgrimage, seven Tajiks are making their 4,600-kilometer trek by foot in honor of their sacred religious duty, and in search of good health and adventure.

Proponents of economic austerity policies to contain Europe's debt crisis suffered a major setback on May 6 when French and Greek voters cast their ballots for staunch antiausterity advocates.

The results of Serbia's parliamentary and presidential elections on May 6 show a country almost evenly divided between pro-Western and nationalist camps. With none of the front-runners winning a decisive victory, the new focus is on the parliamentary contest's third-place finisher -- the Socialist Party of late strongman leader Slobodan Milosevic.

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.