Ron Synovitz is a senior correspondent for RFE/RL.
With no officially sanctioned women's league to play in, a 16-year-old in Kabul has set up her own cricket team to get on the pitch.
Polling-station cameras set up by Azerbaijan's Central Election Commission for the presidential election appear to have captured commission members switching a ballot box.
Moldova has become the source of a war between Russia and NATO -- a cyberwar in which Russia quickly gains the upper hand and storms into Chisinau. In truth, the story line is a fictitious one made up for a project by the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, but it is part of a very real effort to prepare for the threat of potential "digital adversaries."
A British toxicologist specializing in chemical warfare agents tells RFE/RL that environmental samples are the best indicator of who produced the nerve agent used against a Russian former spy in England.
The banning of a Turkish TV series that angered Muslim leaders in Uzbekistan is seen as part of a wider effort by President Shavkat Mirziyoev to take a new approach on Islam -- at least toward moderate Muslims.
A Serbian-born war veteran who attacked the U.S. Embassy in Montenegro on February 22 opposed Montenegro's pro-Western government and appeared to be angry about the U.S. role in Kosovo's independence from Serbia.
A state commission in Serbia is trying to reverse a decades-long population decline with a slogan campaign. But critics, including the country’s female prime minister, say the campaign wrongly blames women for the problem.
Emomali Rahmon furthers his cult of personality by creating a gold "democracy" medal emblazoned with his own image.
Boxing may be dropped from the next Olympics due to concerns about corruption, financial mismanagement, doping, and possible match-fixing. Meanwhile, the United States says the man tasked with cleaning up the sport's world governing body is a crime boss from Uzbekistan with links to international heroin trafficking.
A shocking honor beating video of a woman in northern Afghanistan reveals that the government's reliance on anti-Taliban militias for security in "secure" regions has unintended consequences.
A bottle of vodka stolen in Denmark – said to be worth $1.3 million -- has highlighted the outlandish spending habits of the nouveau riche in former Soviet republics.
2017 saw increased targeting of gay communities in former Soviet republics by official crackdowns and homophobic thugs. Horrific tales have emerged from Chechnya, Azerbaijan, and Central Asia -- even leading activists to create a secret “underground railroad” to bring victims to safety in the West.
The removal of a powerful Afghan governor raises security concerns among residents and lays bare party politics that could doom the current government.
State workers in Uzbekistan say they are being forced by their managers to buy state-run newspapers that they don't want. Even retirees on fixed incomes complain of being obliged to take part in "circulation drives."
Polio has almost been eradicated from Pakistan, but not quite. That's due in part to stories like Hamid Aziz's.
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.
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