Author: Mike Eckel/RFE/RL

In Voronezh, south of Moscow, military recruiting offices are sending out orders to draft-age men telling them to update their contact information. Likewise in the Penza region, further east, “the clarification of personal data is being conducted,” an unnamed military official told state news agency RIA-Novosti. Same in Udmurtia, in the Volga River region, a...

A kettle. A cauldron. A pincer. A meat grinder. A carpet of corpses. A death trap. A decisive battle? Since at least August, a motley crew of Russian regular forces and soldiers from the notorious Wagner private mercenary company have been throwing World-War-I-style waves of infantry at Bakhmut, trying to dislodge Ukraine’s entrenched defense from...

For weeks if not months, Ukrainian military and political leaders, along with some Western intelligence officials, have warned that Russia is preparing for a major new offensive. Cold temperatures had dialed down the tempo of fighting while both sides replenished their manpower and materiel, positioning equipment, digging trenches, rebuilding units – preparing for the war’s...

On November 21, 2021, FBI agents acting on a court-ordered search warrant seized the personal electronic devices – cell phones, computers, tablets and similar items – of a former Russian diplomat and a retired FBI agent. The seizure went unnoticed publicly. No details were announced, either by the U.S. Justice Department or by the two...

Before the snows come the rains, which fill the trenches snaking through the shattered landscape with water: cold water that in some places laps the tops of boots and leaves soldiers’ feet wet, freezing – and without care, potentially gangrenous. And then the ground freezes, which means it’s harder to dig the trenches in the...

The press statement, put out by a St. Petersburg company called Concord Catering and Management, pulled no punches: The elected head of Russia’s second-largest city is a crook, it suggested. Prosecutors should investigate the “possible fact of the creation by Governor [Aleksandr] Beglov of an organized criminal community on the territory of St. Petersburg in...

In late June 2019, a Russian man named Yury Orekhov met in a European hotel with a businessman representing a California-based company involved in consulting and logistics. Mr. Orekhov, the co-owner of a German industrial equipment and commodities trading company, told the businessman that he wanted to buy U.S. components to be used in a...

Posters have been going up on lampposts, bus stops and apartment building entrances around the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, seized and occupied by Russian forces in the early days after Moscow’s February 24 invasion. “Russians! We Will Turn You Into …” one poster that appeared in June said, over a picture of ground hamburger...

A Russian-American businessman known for his political fundraising and lobbying has lost a lawsuit brought by a Ukrainian developer who sued him over promised-but-never-delivered tickets to former U.S. President Donald Trump’s 2017 inauguration. The U.S. District Court ruling against Yuri Vanetik concludes a subplot that emerged early in the Trump presidency amid scrutiny over his...

The newest car model unveiled by Russia’s biggest auto manufacturer earlier this month is generating buzz, but not necessarily for the right reasons. The buzz about AvtoVAZ’s Lada Granta Classic – priced to sell at 678,300 rubles ($12,500) – is about what it doesn’t have: no airbags, no antilock brakes, no electronic stability system, no...

The last bridges over the Siverskiy Donets River have been blown at Severo-donetsk, cutting off the Donbas city from the right bank and trapping hundreds of Ukrainian civilians and troops. Russia is on the verge of taking the city, and between 100-200 Ukrainian soldiers are dying every day. In the southern Kherson region, Ukraine has...