The ongoing crackdown in Russia has targeted opposition activists, independent journalists, prominent civil-society organizations, lawyers, artists, academics, and more. Is it the prelude to another Kremlin-managed election or a sign the country is being reshaped for the long term?
Beijing threatened to limit trade and withhold access to COVID-19 vaccines to Ukraine unless it removed its name from a statement about Uyghurs. Read the latest China In Eurasia briefing for expert comment and more about Chinese influence from Eastern Europe to Central Asia.
Iran's hard-line parliament has inched closer to adopting a highly controversial bill that could enable harsher online censorship and the criminalization of anti-filtering tools widely used by Iranians to access blocked sites.
As Russia prepares for parliamentary and regional elections on September 17-19, many opposition politicians have fled the country or been slapped with charges prohibiting them from running. But some who remain in the race are facing a familiar tactic: rival candidates with exactly the same names.
A new book reveals how legendary Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci was tracked, humiliated, and abused by the communist secret police and her trainers before her defection to the West in 1989.
In recent days, several Russian political activists from Murmansk to Khabarovsk have been sentenced to compulsory psychiatric or other medical treatment. Human rights groups have been warning for years about the increased use of such Soviet-style practices as a tool against dissent.
A group of surviving detainees -- including the Bosniak in an iconic image of Balkan wartime atrocity -- are challenging the Serbian broadcasting watchdog's failure to call out celebrity apologists.
We know rferl.org isn't the only website you read. So it's possible you may have missed some of our most compelling journalism. To make sure you're up-to-date, here are some highlights produced by RFE/RL's team of correspondents, multimedia editors, and visual journalists over the past seven days.
At the White House and on Capitol Hill, exiled Belarusian opposition leader Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya beseeched President Joe Biden and the United States for stronger support as a clampdown imposed by Alyaksandr Lukashenka persists. With four rounds of sanctions in place, what will Washington do now?
Moscow's decision to brand Bard College an "undesirable organization" has shut a student exchange program that built bridges between Russia and the United States. "For many Russian students, this was the first step to an international education," one professor said. "Now all this is gone."
Several U.S. lawmakers want to pass a bill that would allow the State Department to reveal the names of officials and tycoons barred from the United States for “serious adverse foreign policy” reasons including corruption and rights abuses.
It was an unusual matchup as two Iranian female taekwondo fighters were pitted against each other at the Tokyo Olympics: one who emigrated from Iran last year after criticizing the oppression of women and who represented the Refugee Team, the other fighting for Iran.
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