Juan Carlos Herrera Martinez is a multimedia producer for RFE/RL in Prague.
Increasingly oppressive conditions inside Russian prisons are driving desperate inmates to enlist in the military to fight in Ukraine. Speaking to RFE/RL from behind bars in Russia, a Kyrgyz inmate said that many convicts enlist because they cannot endure such harsh prison conditions.
The European Parliament will hold elections on June 6-9. Around 370 million people can vote in the 27 EU member states. EU citizens are electing 720 members of parliament for the next five years coming from all member states.
When the Taliban banned women from getting a secondary education in Afghanistan, tens of thousands of students lost access to university. RFE/RL spoke with three women who had their studies cut short. A former student said it was the worst day of her life when her dream of studying was lost.
Since seizing power in 2021, the Taliban has imposed restrictions on every aspect of Afghans’ lives. Those who violate the hard-line Islamists' morality laws can be subject to public floggings, jail, or even death.
Our reporter made contact with a Wagner mercenary via a dating app. She did not reveal that she was a journalist. The fighter spoke about the recent Wagner mutiny in Russia, being on "vacation" in Belarus, and "trophy cars" stolen in Ukraine.
Inside Georgia, there are two borders that are not even supposed to exist, appearing seemingly out of nowhere. Locals who live close to the breakaway South Ossetia or Abkhazia regions face arrest over crossing a sometimes invisible border, even though they are legally still in the same country.
There are still dozens of schools in Bosnia-Herzegovina where children are divided according to their ethnicity, a system referred to as “two schools under one roof.” Usually it is Croat and Bosniak students who are separated -- which includes fences on the playgrounds -- and attend different classes, all under "one roof." This video explainer by Balkan Service correspondent Ajla Obradovic takes a look at this issue and shows how an interethnic marriage created hope within the backward system.
It has been one year since the October 7, 2018 general elections in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the country is still without a national and many lesser governments as the country's 148 parties(!) -- many of them ethnically based -- fail to form coalitions. Many people also blame Bosnia's elaborate, overlapping, and many-layered governments for the ongoing dysfunction. Here's an attempt to explain Bosnia's labyrinthian governmental system.
