Security

RFE/RL Balkan Service Kosovar police have searched homes and buildings in a northern, ethnic-Serb-dominated district where an attack on an Orthodox monastery left four people dead, including a police officer. Roads into the village of Banjska, where the monastery is located, remained blocked by police on September 26, and authorities …

ANALYSIS by John “Wolf” Wagner Mold, raw sewage, broken windows, and fire systems that don’t work. The Government Accountability Office recently highlighted these and other severe problems plaguing military barracks across the services. The problems also include non-existent maintenance and repairs, poor cleaning services, a lack of accountability, and more. …

by Rick Kiernan, The War Horse On Oct. 28, 1991, I settled into an hours-long commercial flight from Frankfurt, Germany, to Moscow. By year’s end, the iconic Soviet flag would fly over the Kremlin for the final time, silently signaling the collapse of the USSR after nearly seven decades. I …

by Michael Scollon and Fereshteh Ghazi Sharmin Habibi recalls the circumstances of her husband’s killing at the hands of Iran’s security forces. But she could be talking about any number of the protesters who died across the country during a brutal state crackdown on dissent over the past year. “I was …

by Amos Chapple A photo album sitting on the shelves of Ukraine’s KGB archives reveals how an amateur U.S. spy was captured more than 60 years ago.  In the summer of 1961, a quiet, serious American student named Marvin Makinen pulled up to the Soviet border in a Volkswagen car. The …

The United States pledged to monitor how Iran spends $6 billion in funds unfrozen as part of a prisoner swap deal, after Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said it was up to Tehran to decide how the money would be used. “If Iran tries to divert the funds, we’ll take action, …

by Susan Katz Keating Another member of the Air National Guard has been hit with criminal charges – this time, not for leaking classified documents. It has to do with murder-for-hire. A Tennessee man who serves in the Air National Guard agreed to kill someone for a client who actually …

by Mike Eckel The cloak-and-dagger uncertainty surrounding the funeral prompted a popular quip to circulate among Russian journalists: just as the Ukraine war has been euphemized by the Kremlin as a “special military operation,” Prigozhin’s funeral should be considered a “special burial operation.” For two months after launching the greatest challenge to …

by Mike Eckel Three days after an Embraer 600 passenger jet linked to Yevgeny Prigozhin broke up and slammed into the ground north of Moscow, there is still no final clarity on the fate of the Wagner Group founder. President Vladimir Putin suggested Prigozhin was dead in comments on August …

by Robert Coalson “Wagner is a cruel fellow,” a Wagner officer told RFE/RL in 2018, speaking of senior mercenary field commander Dmitry Utkin, whose call sign was Wagner. “He’s no fool.” When a private jet that Russian aviation authorities said was carrying Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin crashed on August 23 en route …