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Despite winking hints and heavy trolling from Ukraine, it’s unclear exactly who and what caused destructive explosions at a key Russian air base in Crimea. What is clear: Russian positions on the Black Sea peninsula are now vulnerable, and that’s “bad news” for Moscow.

Former Pentagon official Dara Massicot, now a fellow at RAND, explains the stakes ahead as Moscow and Kyiv mass their forces in southern Ukraine.

With evidence mounting that Russia has suffered far more casualties in Ukraine than Moscow admits, the military has used numerous tactics to bolster its depleted ranks. Among them, sending reservist volunteers the military insists are not “real soldiers” to the combat zone with minimal training.

Here are some of the highlights produced by RFE/RL's team of correspondents, multimedia editors, and visual journalists over the past seven days.

With a long list of crimes punishable by death, Iran put at least 314 prisoners to death last year, second only to China, which recorded more than 1,000 executions. The Iran Human Rights organization actually puts the figure at 333. That’s up from 267 executions in Iran in 2020.

Former U.S. official Daniel Speckhard warns about the lasting impact around the world from Russia's invasion of Ukraine and how its harmful fallout is only starting to be felt.

While fighting has recently intensified in two southern Ukrainian regions, a low-level guerrilla war of sabotage, assassinations, and propaganda and disinformation campaigns has been going on for weeks, apparently aimed at undermining Russian control.

Russia launches an Iranian-owned satellite into space; efforts to revive the nuclear deal face one last obstacle; and activists deplore Tehran’s treatment of minority Baha’is.

An RFE/RL investigation looks at the high casualty rate in one Russian Army unit -- one that has been implicated in the Bucha massacres north of Kyiv — and what it says about the way Russia is conducting its war on Ukraine.

Russia is gathering data on Ukrainian society in occupied southern regions through “filtration centers” in apparent preparation to hold threatened “referendums” on annexing the territories.