The multinational musical glitzfest known as Eurovision holds its final this weekend in Sweden. But the main sponsor of this year's contest is raising eyebrows for its ties to human rights abuses in the former Soviet Union.

A former prisoner, newly freed because of bribes, is gunned down in the street. The message: "In prison, he'd still be alive." It's all in the name of fighting corruption in Russia's republic of Daghestan.

Gay and transgender activists in St. Petersburg are planning a small rally on May 17 despite the city's notorious law banning so-called "homosexual propaganda." It comes with authorities in the Russian capital, Moscow, holding out against a similar event there.

A trio of political scandals has the White House doing damage control on three fronts as Republicans, the media, and members of President Barack Obama's own Democratic Party question his leadership and legacy, just six months after he was reelected.

The first of some 2,000 fighters from the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in Turkey have crossed the border into Iraq's northern Kurdistan region under a peace plan agreed with Ankara. But what will they do there?

Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) announced on May 14 that it had detained a U.S. diplomat in Moscow for allegedly trying to recruit a Russian counterterrorism officer. The incident is one of the strangest spy scandals involving Russia in recent memory. But Boris Volodarsky, a veteran of Russia's GRU military intelligence service now based in London, believes the case was entirely fabricated. He spoke to RFE/RL’s Claire Bigg.

Moldova’s LGBT community is launching a weeklong festival celebrating sexual minorities in the conservative country. Organizers are optimistic the country has come a long way since a gay march in 2008 was scuttled by rock-throwing counterdemonstrators.

An attack on environmental activists in the Voronezh region this week was the latest skirmish in a struggle to stop a nickel mine near a nature reserve in Russia’s fertile south. RFE/RL reports on the grassroots anti-Kremlin movement that has been growing for two years.

Russia’s announcement that it had caught an alleged American spy came as the U.S. ambassador, Michael McFaul, was launching a Twitter Q&A session open to the Russian public. McFaul continued the event, but any hopes of engaging on a wide variety of topics were quickly derailed by a wave of questions about the spy case.