Twenty years after the end of communism -- and four decades after the Red Army crushed the Prague Spring in 1968 -- a few lonely voices are warning that the Czech Republic and its neighbors are in danger of falling under Moscow's influence once again. This time, they say, the threat isn't from Russia's tanks but the one business in which Russia leads the world: energy.
Renowned Russian conductor Vladimir Spivakov has arrived in Yerevan with a group of musicians on an unprecedented direct flight from Baku after giving a concert to mark the anniversary of a prominent Azerbaijani composer.
Pakistan's civilian government is apparently unwilling to follow a directive by the Supreme Court to reopen corruption cases against President Asif Ali Zardari in Switzerland. The case is just the latest challenge to the civilian administration, setting up a collision course that observers say could end in a judicial coup that could mean the end of the coalition government and return to military rule.
Security is a rare commodity in Afghanistan. But in the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif, Charles Recknagel says in this reporter's notebook, there is enough of it that business is booming.
"Washington Post" journalist Bob Woodward's latest book, called "Obama's Wars," is not due to be released until September 27. But excerpts published in two U.S. newspapers already are fueling public debate in the United States with revelations about President Barack Obama's war effort in Afghanistan.
Akhmed Zakayev, head of the Chechen government in exile, returned to London on September 22 following his brief detention in Poland on an international arrest warrant requested by Russia. He says he will return to Poland when necessary to participate in an extradition hearing. Zakayev spoke with RFE/RL's Russian Service about his experience in Poland and about the status of the Chechen independence movement.
Iran's President Mahmud Ahmadinejad has adopted the old Cold War approach in charging the West with hypocrisy for expressing outrage over the fate of an Iranian woman sentenced to death by stoning while staying silent about an American woman on death row in Virginia.
The Afghan government is pushing forward with plans to arm and pay militia fighters as local police in their home districts. But experts warn that the so-called Local Police Initiative could strengthen the power of warlords or plant the seeds of future conflict between rival Afghan tribes.
Five years ago, the prison sentence against former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his business partner, Platon Lebedev, came into force. Now serving eight-year sentences for fraud and tax evasion, they're currently facing a second trial on additional charges of embezzlement. RFE/RL spoke to Khodorkovsky's mother, Marina Khodorkovskaya.
A journalist in Donetsk is recovering from a severe beating he says came from local police, as the European Union and the United States press Kyiv over the disappearance of another Ukrainian journalist, Vasyl Klymentyev.
The Vlashki language is even rarer than the bloodlines of its speakers, and is being pushed toward extinction by Croatian. But one linguist is determined to preserve it.
They have long been Europe's forgotten people, pushed to the margins by poverty and discrimination. But now the Roma have been propelled into the spotlight as never before -- as a consequence of the expulsion policies of French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Why have they become fair game and what does their treatment say about contemporary politics in the European Union?
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