Ron Synovitz is a senior correspondent for RFE/RL.
Uzbekistan’s agriculture "cluster" reforms have proven to be a new form of “hidden” or “secret privatization” -- a scheme used during the 1990s by corrupt officials and their private-sector cronies in former communist countries of Eastern Europe to plunder state firms.
Bitcoin mining has allowed Tehran to circumvent some U.S. sanctions. But the country is now being hit by regular power outages and smog linked to the energy-sucking cryptocurrency operations.
Harsh COVID-19 restrictions have allowed governments in some countries -- including Azerbaijan, Belarus, Russia, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan -- to expand their powers. Rights activists say misused measures need to be drastically rolled back in the post-pandemic world.
A drug-money laundering case allegedly involving Credit Suisse and a former Bulgarian wrestler could cost the bank millions of dollars.
Azerbaijan’s ruler has turned “from hegemonical totalitarianism -- with its apathy and passive acceptance by the people, to authoritarian populism, where he actually enjoys mass support.”
Some Armenians criticized Russia during the war over Nagorno-Karabakh for failing to provide enough support in the battle against Azerbaijani forces. But Russia's role as a truce broker and peacekeeper is now winning praise in Yerevan.
Azerbaijan took lessons from NATO-member Turkey’s experiences in Afghanistan, Syria, and Libya to achieve a swift battlefield victory in the war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Russia has brokered a truce deal aimed at ending the war over Azerbaijan’s breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh. But details about a future peacekeeping force remain unclear.
Azerbaijan’s military is closing in on Nagorno-Karabakh’s strategic mountain fortress city of Shushi/Susa and the breakaway region’s vital southern supply route from Armenia.
A Nagorno-Karabakh war refugee from Hadrut tells the story of two ethnic Armenian men whose execution in the town was filmed and distributed on social media.
U.S. researchers say websites in North Macedonia are gathering ad money by pretending to be conservative Americans and spreading disinformation ahead of next month's U.S. presidential election.
Reports of Syrian mercenaries in Azerbaijan have fueled a bitter debate as Baku's battle against Armenian forces for control of Nagorno-Karabakh continues.
Fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh has complicated Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s relations with the Kremlin, as it has created new geopolitical opportunities and challenges for Russia in the South Caucasus.
Azerbaijan has retaken some territory up to the base of the foothills because that’s the easiest to capture. But it’s also the hardest for them to hold.
No matter who is responsible for fighting around Nagorno-Karabakh and along the Armenia-Azerbaijan border, civilians are suffering.
Members of two Bulgarian writers’ organizations are accused of pro-Kremlin biases for attacking an author who wrote about Russia’s occupation of Crimea. Now the book has been published in Ukrainian.
Uzbekistan's government says they are "volunteers" but those harvesting the country's 2020 cotton crop say they're being forced to do the work.
Bulgarian arms dealer Emilian Gebrev fell into a coma in Sofia in April 2015 after someone smeared the door handles of his car with a substance similar to Novichok -- the nerve agent that hospitalized former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny.
Russia was responsible for the killing of Aleksander Litvinenko, a former security officer who was assassinated with radioactive polonium-210 in London in 2006, the ECHR said. Here's a closer look at poisons believed to have been used in prominent cases of toxic attacks involving Russians.
Turkish police are investigating the killing of a powerful crime boss from the "thieves-in-law," an international criminal syndicate that emerged from the Soviet Union.
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