Here are some of the highlights produced by RFE/RL's team of correspondents, multimedia editors, and visual journalists over the past seven days.
A strike committee leader at a major Belarusian chemical factory says workers are wary of publicly voicing their support and joining the opposition's national strike demanding that Alyaksandr Lukashenka step down amid threats of firings and other harassment by the state.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has criticized French President Emmanuel Macron over his defense of the right to show cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. Khamenei's tweets have also been criticized for questioning the Holocaust.
Most Russian moviegoers will have to wait to see Outlaw, after the nationwide launch of the homegrown film was hit by last-minute disruptions that will limit its screening to just a handful of theaters.
Seventy-five years ago, the German city of Koenigsburg and much of the East Prussia region were absorbed into the Soviet Union at the end of World War II. RFE/RL spoke with some of the first Russian settlers who moved to the shattered city.
Following 11 weeks of street protests, workers, students, and others in Belarus have stepped up the pressure by answering Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya’s call for a national strike after Alyaksandr Lukashenka, in power since 1994, ignored the opposition leader’s deadline to step down. Will it work?
The covering up of images of women on gravestones in a cemetery in northern Iran resulted in outrage and led to the images being fixed and the cemetery apologizing for the “mistake.”
While EU leaders mull a controversial new system for migration, disturbing reports are emerging of migrants being beaten and abused by Croatian police as they seek to enter the European Union via Bosnia-Herzegovina.
U.S. President Donald Trump may seek to double down on his attempt to improve relations with Russia should he win a second term, analysts say, while Joe Biden has promised to take a tough stance. Despite the differing approaches, relations could remain badly strained or worse regardless of who wins.
An elementary-school art teacher in Odesa berated a pupil for speaking Ukrainian, not Russian, driving her to tears in front of her classmates. When the teacher was dismissed, it fit into what one analyst called a gradual role reversal between Ukraine's two most commonly spoken tongues.
The poisoning of President Vladimir Putin's biggest domestic critic sent shock waves through Russia's opposition. But in the city where he was poisoned, the politicians Aleksei Navalny helped elevate say it has motivated them to continue exposing corruption and waging their political battle.
More than 1,400 Ukrainian communities will vote in local elections that follow key reforms aimed a dramatic restructuring of relations between local communities and the central government in Kyiv. Communities "will have more resources and decision-making power," one analyst said.
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!["It will take two to three election cycles...for people to see that Kyiv doesn't solve all their problems [like before]," one analyst says, "and that they must take ownership of their own communities themselves."](https://gdb.rferl.org/57CFAB0C-23DD-427B-8FCD-FED1B2229C1F_w100_r1.jpg)
!["It will take two to three election cycles...for people to see that Kyiv doesn't solve all their problems [like before]," one analyst says, "and that they must take ownership of their own communities themselves."](https://gdb.rferl.org/57CFAB0C-23DD-427B-8FCD-FED1B2229C1F_w66_r1.jpg)
