Robert Coalson worked as a correspondent for RFE/RL from 2002 to 2024.
Over his decades in power, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said little about his children. In recent years, journalists have exposed the identities of his two grown daughters, and now a new probe sheds light on the lives of his small sons, whose mother is retired Olympic gymnast Alina Kabayeva.
State-run and pro-Kremlin media have largely followed the Kremlin line, downplaying Ukraine’s incursion into the Kursk region and describing it as a chaotic and costly misadventure that is uniting Russian society in support of Moscow’s invasion of its neighbor.
On August 9, 1999, President Boris Yeltsin picked the 47-year-old former KGB officer Vladimir Putin as prime minister. Twenty-five years on, Putin still rules Russia, now in his fifth presidential term. RFE/RL takes a look at some of the deadly turning points that shaped Russia’s path under Putin.
Modern autocracies “don’t have a common ideology,” said U.S. journalist and historian Anne Applebaum. But they have common interests and considerable resources and have developed corrupt networks that give them influence to undermine democratic states that dwarfs what the Soviet Union had.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s agreement to trade foreign citizens and Russian political dissidents for security operatives, including one convicted murderer, contains dark implications for security in the West and for the remnants of dissent inside Russia.
Faced with a deepening demographic crisis aggravated by mounting war casualties and mass emigration, the Russian government is moving to label the nonexistent “international child-free movement” an extremist organization, likely tarring those who choose not to have children as unpatriotic or worse.
Gunmen killed at least 20 police officers and civilians in attacks on two synagogues, two Russian Orthodox churches, and police targets in two cities in Russia’s Daghestan region on June 23. Here's what is known about the attacks, and what could be behind them.
Participants in the June 15-16 Ukraine peace summit hailed the establishment of a process for potentially ending the war. But they acknowledged future steps must involve the participation of Russia, although there may not be an obvious way to involve Moscow.
For decades, Russia's government has been promising people in the coldest regions of Siberia and the Far East access to natural gas for heating. But the Ukraine war, which has eviscerated Gazprom’s profits and diverted public money to defense production, has many doubting they will live to see it.
Although President Vladimir Putin has declared 2024 the Year of the Family, activists and victims of domestic violence say Russian police and prosecutors routinely ignore complaints and even pressure victims not to pursue charges.
At least a dozen older Russian scientists in the field of hypersonic aviation have been accused of treason since 2018. Lawyers involved in the cases say they are connected to President Vladimir Putin’s well-documented interest in the topic.
Longtime Chechen strongman leader Ramzan Kadyrov has been dogged by reports of failing health. And recent personnel changes in the North Caucasus region have fed suspicions a transition is in the offing. Is a rising star in Russia’s Defense Ministry the top pick to take over in the volatile region?
Following a disputed 2020 election, hundreds of thousands of Belarusians took to the streets with calls for democracy and the resignation of strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka. A podcast series by RFE/RL's Belarus Service documents how the state has locked the country in a prison of fear ever since.
A rare cabinet shake-up is driven by the need to fuel Russia’s war against Ukraine and the confrontation with the West, analysts say. Putin named the government’s economic overseer as defense minister in a bid to bring “the power of Russia’s military-industrial complex and the economy” to bear.
Following massive pro-democracy protests in Belarus in 2020, the government has cracked down – targeting independent media, among others. Some of the many journalists who have fled their profession, or the country entirely, recounted how their lives have been altered forever.
A 23-year-old blogger was given a 10-month labor sentence this month for a social-media video that Russian authorities say amounted to “rehabilitating Nazism.” Experts say the law is being used to impose public conformity with the government’s jingoistic version of World War II history.
Longtime dissident Aleksandr Skobov is being held in St. Petersburg on a charge of "justifying terrorism." The 66-year-old, who spent years in psychiatric hospitals in Soviet times, makes no apologies for his outspoken opposition to Vladimir Putin. And he has no intention of backing down now.
Central Asian migrants in Russia have been the main targets in a surge of xenophobic incidents following the terrorist attack on a concert hall outside Moscow. But the country's ethnic minorities – numbering some 30 million people – are also bracing for the worst.
Of the more than 90,000 polling stations across Russia, RFE/RL has identified only three that reported a winner other than President Vladimir Putin – and one of them later changed its results. In one of the cases, it appears state efforts to boost turnout may have backfired.
Thousands of Russians joined the "Noon Against Putin" protest, and there were isolated acts of defiance during the voting. But the opposition is still sidelined under Vladimir Putin, struggling to counter the Kremlin's narrative of a country united behind his policies of aggression and repression.
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