Ivan Gutterman is a data journalist for RFE/RL's Central Newsroom in Prague.
As Russians prepare to celebrate the New Year or the week of public holidays that follows, they might notice that the cost of this year’s festivities are significantly higher than last year – especially for fans of sandwiches with butter and red caviar, a traditional staple of New Year’s dinner.
Data analysts have identified suspicious voting patterns known as the "Russian tail" in Georgia's 2024 parliamentary elections. The anomalies mirror patterns seen in manipulated elections.
Russia and the U.S. may be getting closer to a renewed nuclear arms race. New START is the last remaining disarmament or strategic weapons limitation treaty between the two countries and is due to expire in 2026, with Russia already having suspended its participation.
The Middle Corridor -- a 6,500-kilometer trade route connecting China to Europe through Central Asia and the Caucasus -- has expanded since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But can countries work to overcome the problems that have long plagued trade between Europe and Asia?
As competition for resources in the Arctic Ocean intensifies, nations are staking claims to swaths of undersea territory where oil, gas, and other minerals could someday be found and mined. The United States has just staked its own claim -- and it did so in a way that’s raising lots of questions.
An interactive map of how territorial control has changed hands in Ukraine over the past year
Due to the invasion of Ukraine, Czech universities are banning students from Russia and Belarus from certain "critical" subjects. To continue their studies, some students write letters about their opposition to the war, while others switch to "noncritical" programs.
Thirty years ago, their city was surrounded by Bosnian Serb forces and kept under siege for nearly four years. Now, Bosnians tell RFE/RL's Balkan Service that they see the same evil repeating itself in Ukraine and want Europe and the world to do more to put a stop to it.
The most powerful nuclear bomb in history went off on October 30, 1961, over the Arctic island of Novaya Zemlya. Developed in part by Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov, it was more than 2,000 times as powerful as the bomb dropped on Nagasaki in the final weeks of World War II.
In August 1991, a group of Soviet hard-liners locked Mikhail Gorbachev up in his Crimean dacha and tried to keep the U.S.S.R. together by force. Facing massive protests, they gave up just three days after taking power, when the first civilian blood was spilled in Moscow.
The Open Russia pro-democracy organization dissolved last week due to pressure from Russia's authorities. Here are five things you should know about the group and the measures the government took against it and its members.
Up to 1.2 million Armenians were killed in World War I-era atrocities in the Ottoman Empire. What happened in Turkey starting in 1915 and why Joe Biden became the first U.S. president to recognize the mass killings as genocide?
Despite U.S. sanctions that halted construction for a year, Russian ships are now getting closer to completing the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. What is it and why do the United States and other countries want to stop it from being built?
Five things you should know about the nationwide protests sparked by the jailing of opposition leader Aleksei Navalny and the steps the government is taking to suppress them.
One hundred years ago, the Bolsheviks drove the last White Russian forces opposing them in Europe out of their final stronghold on the continent, Crimea. Soldiers, officers, and thousands of civilian emigres who feared for their lives or did not want to live under communist rule left by sea.
Aviation pioneer Igor Sikorsky was designing bombers for the Russian Empire when World War I broke out. Nowadays, the company he founded in the United States makes the "choppers" that transport U.S. presidents. This is the story of how the "father of the helicopter" crossed the Atlantic and made it
Russian President Vladimir Putin has introduced a package of constitutional reforms that would potentially allow him to remain in power until 2036, but that’s not all that’s changing. One official compared the package to a fixed-price meal. We took a look at what surprises Russians are being served along with their borsch and cutlets.
Russian and NATO spy planes regularly fly over each other’s territories, photographing military equipment and monitoring where forces are located. It’s all done with representatives from the observed country on board under the Treaty On Open Skies. Signed in 1992, the treaty has served as a confidence-building measure, allowing 34 countries to conduct observation flights and share the collected data with other members, if requested. But it may soon join the list of dead agreements born out of the end of the Cold War.
On October 23, 1956, Hungary rose up against communist rule. It was the first armed revolution against an Eastern Bloc regime. The uprising was crushed and the return to democracy that had been fought for was delayed until its anniversary 30 years ago, when the Hungarian Republic was declared in 1989.
Are we on the brink of a new nuclear arms race?
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