Kira Tolstyakova is an editor for Schemes, the investigative unit of RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service.
An RFE/RL investigation reveals details about the role of Cuban mercenaries fighting in Russia's war against Ukraine, with some avidly embracing the Kremlin's narratives. Havana has said it’s cracking down on “human trafficking” to the war, but given its ties to Moscow, not everybody is convinced.
RFE/RL has discovered that senior current and former Ukrainian officials have luxury investments in the United Arab Emirates, after trawling through records revealed in the Dubai Unlocked property information leak. Most of them denied knowledge of Dubai real estate.
A minister enmeshed in corruption scandals, pro-Russian lawmakers, judges, and prosecutors: These are the former Ukrainian officials whose opaque ownership of U.A.E. property is revealed in the new #DubaiUnlocked investigation by RFE/RL's Schemes and dozens of media partners across the globe.
A new report by Schemes, the investigations unit of RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service, reveals the names and identities of Russian soldiers responsible for laying antipersonnel mines in Ukraine. The mines are banned under an international agreement, which Ukraine is party to but Russia is not.
Cooperation between Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces and Main Intelligence Directorate on a "humanitarian aid" mission led to the State Border Service authorizing an indicted Ukrainian politician to leave the country, Schemes, the investigative unit of RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service, has found.
Former Motor Sich aviation-engine plant head Vyacheslav Bohuslayev, whom the government suspects of encouraging Russia's invasion of Ukraine, has asked to be exchanged for Ukrainian prisoners in Russia, RFE/RL has found.
RFE/RL producer Vira Hyrych is among the numerous journalists killed in Ukraine since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022. A year later, her son says those responsible must be held accountable. Schemes, an RFE/RL investigative unit, confronted key figures in the Russian chain of command.
A company co-owned by a powerlifter who is linked to the governor of Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region and the business partner of an FBI fugitive received nearly $41 million in public funds for road repair, a journalistic investigation by Schemes found.
A Russian commander stabbed an elderly Ukrainian woman to death during the retreat from Izyum, according to a soldier in his unit. Evidence of the alleged war crime first emerged from a phone intercept by Ukrainian intelligence.
A Ukrainian man spent months digging through the wreckage of an apartment block to find the body of a close friend from his school days. Pavlo Holub lives in Izyum, and he carried out this work during the six-month Russian occupation of the town before it was liberated by Ukrainian forces.
Some residents of Shevchenkove tell Schemes, the investigative unit of RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service, how they withstood torture and threats to resist collaboration with the Russian forces occupying their village in Ukraine's Kharkiv region. Others describe what compelled them to cooperate.
“Right in front of me, they were simply shot and thrown into the cellar,” a survivor told Schemes. Russian soldiers summarily executed five civilians at a village post office in northern Ukraine days after the February 24 invasion, relatives and eyewitnesses say.
At least twice since it invaded Ukraine, Russia has clustered warplanes on territory it has seized in the south, creating platforms for further attacks but presenting prominent targets for counterstrikes by Kyiv’s forces, officials, analysts, and satellite imagery indicate.
