Author: Mike Eckel/RFE/RL

In December 2017, just a few weeks before millions of Russians were to begin celebrating New Year’s – one of the country’s most beloved holidays – Russia’s main intelligence agency announced it had foiled an Islamic State plot to kill revelers as they visited prominent attractions in the country’s second-largest city, St. Petersburg. While it...

Six years ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin stood before a joint gathering of Russia’s two chambers of parliament, along with dozens of cabinet and other government officials, and boasted that the country was developing a slew of powerful new weapons, a pointed warning to the West. On February 29, he did the same thing again....

The grainy black-and-white video showed what appeared to be a fast-moving speedboat bobbing on the nighttime waves, swerving back and forth as it approached a much larger warship. The ship then explodes spectacularly, and the nearly 3-minute video ends with a vessel seen rolling onto its port side just before it sinks. The speedboat was...

In a wooded southeast corner of Avdiyivka, the industrial Donbas city where Ukrainian troops have been desperately holding out against Russian assaults, there’s a facility called Tsar’s Hunt. It is a spot once frequented by tourists relaxing in its restaurant, a low-slung hotel, gardens and outdoor pool. It has served as a heavily fortified base...

Russia’s war against Ukraine has eroded President Vladimir Putin’s grip on power, hollowed out the Russian military and stoked an “undercurrent of disaffection” within the country, according to the director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). In an essay published on January 30, William Burns, who also served as ambassador to Russia and in...

Four-plus hours filled with talk of eggs, natural gas, the European Union, abortions, Siberian railways, artificial intelligence, veterans’ benefits. And the war in Ukraine. “There will be peace when we achieve our goals,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said very early on in an end-of-the-year question-and-answer session on December 14. “Now let us return to these...

Ukraine is slowly losing ground, men, morale, support from the West – and possibly the war against Russia. Not since the opening weeks following Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, when its forces seemed poised to capture the Ukrainian capital and force the government to capitulate, has the outlook for Ukraine’s military commanders and its...

An exploding statue in a St. Petersburg café. A remotely detonated land mine that destroyed a car in a village in the Nizhny Novgorod region. A car bombing in a Moscow suburb. A fatal shooting in a bedroom community outside Moscow. Since not long after the launch of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ukraine...

A group of women wearing winter coats gathered outside a municipal building in the northwestern Russian city of Cherepo­vets last month. In a video published on the Russian social media platform VK, one woman reads aloud an appeal to President Vladi­mir Putin, complaining that their husbands had been issued “illegal orders.” Others stand holding signs...

The announcement published by Russian state news agencies raised eyebrows: A “regrouping” – a tactical withdrawal to more favorable positions – had been ordered by Russian commanders amid intense fighting on the eastern banks of the Dnipro River and reports of one or more growing Ukrainian bridgeheads. Minutes later, the news story, which had cited...

In the obliterated eastern industrial city of Avdiyivka, Ukrainian troops are trying to avoid being encircled by a multipronged Russian offensive – the largest single coordinated effort since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022. About 311 miles to the southwest, something else is happening: The Ukrainians are crossing the Dnipro River. For nearly...

The predawn skies over the outskirts of the Ukrainian port of Berdyansk lit up in oranges and reds from fires and explosions at an airfield where Russian Kh-52 and Mi-24 helicopters, used for targeting Ukrainian armor trying to breach Russian lines 75 miles to the north, were parked. Around 18 hours later, the attack, documented...