Many Russians and Central Asians with Russian passports are desperate to escape Russia to avoid having to fight in the Ukraine war. They often go to an EU country and apply for a humanitarian visa, crossing the border illegally and asking for asylum. Their success varies.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s children and their spouses have long benefitted from access to state contracts and the wealth of his friends. Now the romantic partner of his elder daughter has been tapped for a key role in a Russian billionaire's liquified-natural-gas projects.
The Kremlin and Russia’s Defense Ministry have gone out of their way to avoid a new mobilization to bolster troop levels for the war in Ukraine amid heavy losses. The result is an inventive web of ways to quietly recruit soldiers to send to the front lines.
Russians who underwent LGBT conversion therapy in Russia have told RFE/RL about brutal treatment they experienced, amid an ongoing crackdown on sexual minorities in the country. The interviews were recorded before the Russian authorities designated RFE/RL an "undesirable organization."
A Russian ultranationalist’s digital campaign for “chaos” in Ukraine may explain the photos of mysterious crosses on roads, rooftops, and other locations -- described as missile markers -- that appeared on Ukrainian social media as Russian soldiers stormed toward Kyiv in February 2022.
Court documents examined by RFE/RL reveal that medical care was repeatedly denied to inmates at the prison where Aleksei Navalny was held. In one case, this resulted in the death of an inmate. The revelation comes amid questions over how Navalny died.
Systema, RFE/RL’s Russian investigative unit, has uncovered details of the Russian military’s use of recruited convicts as assault troops in the invasion of Ukraine. The Defense Ministry continues to recruit prisoners to fight in some of the most brutal engagements on the front lines.
Though not a huge amount, the value of aviation parts imported to Russia after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine highlights just how hard it has been for Western governments to police sanctions restrictions on Moscow -- and how spotty some Western companies have been in adhering to the restrictions.
Exploding pipes left hundreds of thousands of Russians freezing and angry. It’s an unwelcome headache for the reelection campaign of President Vladimir Putin, who is less worried about winning than he is about getting a credible mandate from an electorate already anxious about the Ukraine invasion.
Russian celebrities are scrambling to apologize for attending an “Almost Naked” party as the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine grinds on. A quarter-century ago, Vladimir Putin visited a St. Petersburg strip club as Russian forces fought a bloody campaign in Chechnya.
A South Korean man who was rumored in the past to have been engaged to one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s daughters has had a long career at Gazprombank, a large state-linked lender where two of Putin’s sons-in-law have also worked, a new RFE/RL investigation has found.
A new interactive investigation by RFE/RL reveals the inner workings of a secretive scheme by Russian military intelligence to recruit fighters for the Kremlin's war on Ukraine under the guise of a fictitious private military company.
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