Ron Synovitz is a senior correspondent for RFE/RL.
A court in Irkutsk ruled that he's a child pornographer, but the former director of a French cultural organization in Siberia says he fled Russia because he was targeted in a "discredit tactic" conspiracy.
A Christian minister in Kazakhstan has a criminal record and faces restrictions on his freedom for refusing to pay a fine imposed against him because he "illegally" distributed text from the Bible's New Testament.
RFE/RL spoke with two independent nuclear experts who said evidence suggested no health threat from the incident, but suspect it was similar to an accident that occurred in 1993 at a nuclear facility in Tomsk involving reprocessed fuel that was being stored.
Videos of brutal attacks in Uzbekistan against suspected thieves, prostitutes, and homosexuals have gone viral recently, prompting one criminal investigation but also leading to a government campaign urging Uzbeks “not to take the garbage out of the house for the outside world to see.”
The arrest in Ukraine of a self-exiled Azerbaijani opposition journalist renews accusations that Interpol’s global alert system is being abused by authoritarian regimes to intimidate their critics abroad.
Rights activists are criticizing a registry of suspected gays and lesbians that has been compiled by Tajik authorities. At least one gay man in Dushanbe says the list is flawed.
Critics say Kyrgyzstan's outgoing president picked a weak candidate as his preferred successor and is now scrambling with his allies to avoid losing an indirect grip on power after this weekend's elections.
Bones discovered within the courtyard of 1,000-year-old Christian cathedral in southern Georgia have ignited tempers in the predominantly ethnic-Armenian village of Kumurdo.
In a new strategy employed by Taliban fighters in southern Afghanistan, medical clinics and hospitals are being held hostage across an entire province for use as bargaining chips to put pressure on government authorities.
American actor Morgan Freeman has come under vitriolic attack on social media over a video in which he accuses Russian President Vladimir Putin of going to "war" against Western democracies with public-opinion manipulation campaigns. A NATO adviser tells RFE/RL that Freeman may now be the target of troll armies in a "coordinated pro-Kremlin social media" campaign.
Descriptions given by a top Facebook officer about a suspected Russian information operation on the social-media website during the run-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election match stories told to RFE/RL about a Russian "troll factory" by its former employees.
Tajikistan's president has ordered local officials to find a wife and arrange a marriage for a schoolteacher who praised the autocratic ruler during a recent village gathering.
RFE/RL speaks with Ukrainian daredevil Mustang Wanted, three years after the death-defying urban climber defiantly hoisted a Ukrainian flag atop a skyscraper in Russia's capital in "a fit of sincere patriotic sentiment."
Tajik authorities approached more than 8,000 hijab-wearing women in Dushanbe in early August in a campaign to discourage "foreign" Islamic clothing. The state isnt telling women to take off their head scarves -- but authorities are telling women how to tie them.
Serb nationalists are trying to rehabilitate the reputation of the late President Slobodan Milosevic. Their initiatives reveal ongoing divisions within Serbia about Milosevic's legacy.
The Georgian government’s plan to change the constitution includes defining marriage as “between a woman and a man,” even though same-sex marriage is already banned. But their stated rationale is even more puzzling.
The bodies of at least five suspects in an Azerbaijani spy scandal have been returned to their home villages for burial within days of their arrests on treason charges -- fueling allegations that they were tortured to death.
Having one of the world's best-preserved medieval Islamic cities apparently isn't enough for Uzbekistan, which is floating plans to attract visitors with a new tourist zone equipped with new hotels, health spas, and other modern facilities.
Voters in Britain are going to the polls on June 8 in a general election that will determine who guides the country through its Brexit negotiations on leaving the European Union -- and how strong their mandate will be in the talks.
A Russian-U.S. company that produces hand-built microphones is employing former state weapons-factory specialists -- a rare example of East-West cooperation in the diversification of Russian industry.
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