Russian medical workers in the city of Ufa say COVID-19 cases are being reported as a mysterious pneumonia.
An activist in Russia's Republic of Tatarstan claims he has been dismissed as head of a branch of the local government-funded World Tatar Congress in the republic's second-largest city, Naberezhnye Chelny, after publicly challenging the official municipal statistics on the coronavirus.
The Supreme Court of the Russian Republic of Bashkortostan has banned the Bashqort group, which for years has promoted the Bashkir language and culture as well as equal rights for ethnic Bashkirs.
Plans by Russia's government to merge the northwestern region of Arkhangelsk, the Nenets Autonomous District, and the Republic of Komi, has sparked protest among residents who fear of losing ethnic identity.
Gabdrakhman Naumov, a noted Islamic scholar in Russia's Republic of Tatarstan, has been arrested on suspicion of creating and running a branch of a banned Islamic group.
Lines of ambulances waiting outside hospitals and doctors working overtime to deal with an influx of patients with suspected or confirmed coronavirus infections. As the pandemic begins to hit Russia hard and the official count of COVID-19 cases rises fast, its health-care system is scrambling to keep up.
The global death toll from the coronavirus is more than 89,000 with more than 1.5 million infections confirmed, causing mass disruptions as governments continue to try to slow the spread of the new respiratory illness. Here's a roundup of COVID-19 developments in RFE/RL's broadcast regions.
A doctor among some 500 medical personnel and 600 patients placed under a strict coronavirus quarantine in the largest hospital in Ufa, the capital of Russia's Bashkortostan region, says that the medical facility was seeing a rise of cases attributed to "pneumonia" for two weeks.
The global death toll has surpassed 34,000 with over 725,000 infections confirmed, causing mass disruptions as governments continue to try to slow the spread of the new respiratory illness.
Crimean Tatar activist Mumine Saliyeva, whose husband faces up to 20 years in prison on terrorism charges he says are fabricated, speaks to RFE/RL about the repressions Crimean Tatars have faced in the six years since Russia occupied and seized control of the Ukrainian region of Crimea.
The coronavirus pandemic did not deter the faithful from attending a service at the Church of Our Lady of Tikhvin in Kazan, Russia. Many of the Orthodox Christian Kryashen-Tatars attending the mass on March 15 took communion from the same spoon. Medical experts have warned that sharing bodily fluids like saliva would most likely spread the coronavirus. Members of the congregation in Russia's Republic of Tatarstan were allowed to take communion from an individual cup if they wished.
Russia's Constitutional Court has approved constitutional amendments that could enable President Vladimir Putin to stay in power for another 16 years.
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