General Pervez Musharraf, who rode a 1999 military coup to power but spent the last years of his life defending his actions as Pakistan's president from self-imposed exile, has died at the age of 79.
Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, who presided over the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, has died at the age of 91. RFE/RL looks back at the life and career of a leader who made world history.
Leonid Kravchuk, a key figure in ushering in the largely peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union three decades ago and the first president of independent Ukraine, has died. He was 88.
Stanislau Shushkevich, the first leader of independent Belarus, a signatory of the agreement that effectively dissolved the Soviet Union, and a staunch foe of the autocratic leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka, has died at 87.
Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the rabid Russian nationalist lawmaker whose political rise in the early 1990s frightened the West and underscored the fragility of democracy in the immediate post-Soviet period, has died. He was 75.
Sergei Kovalyov, who died in Moscow on August 9 at the age of 91, was one of the last surviving members of the generation of Soviet human-rights pioneers whose selfless activism permanently placed human rights on the global political agenda.
Mohammad Ilyas Dayee, an Afghan journalist working for RFE/RL, was killed in a targeted bomb attack in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Afghanistan’s southern Helmand Province, on November 12.
In and out of prison since he was arrested after protecting an elderly woman being beaten by police in Moscow in 2009, Sergei Mokhnatkin, an "accidental dissident" whose unlikely career as an opposition activist is a revealing reflection of Russia in the past decade, has died at the age of 66.
Former Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, who led the capital for almost two decades and oversaw its post-Soviet transformation, has died at the age of 83.
Controversial Kosovar Serb politician faced a retrial on war crimes charges before being gunned down.
Uzbek President Islam Karimov has died at age 78 after dominating public life in the country he ruled for 25 years. RFE/RL’s Central Newsroom looks back at the life and legacy of one of the most feared men in Central Asia.
Vera Caslavska, the Czech gymnast who won seven Olympic gold medals in the 1960s but was punished by the communist authorities for voicing opposition to the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, has died at the age of 74 after a battle with cancer. RFE/RL takes a look back at her life.
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