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Sweden and Finland turn to NATO as Moscow strikes a shopping mall and Ukraine drives Russia’s forces off Snake Island in the Black Sea.

Petrykivka painters are continuing their craft as missiles hammer eastern Ukraine and the town's historic art collection is transported to safety.

Bulgaria recently announced it expelling 70 Russian diplomats for posing a "threat to national security." Russian Ambassador Eleonora Mitrofanova is not being expelled, despite such calls for months now by many Bulgarians for her less-than-diplomatic activities.

Late on June 28, the leaders of Finland, Sweden, and Turkey signed a trilateral memorandum on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Madrid, paving the way for the Nordic duo to join the military alliance. RFE/RL takes a closer look at the memorandum and explains what will happen next.

A major security shake-up in Iran, Tehran and Washington to hold indirect talks in Qatar, and Iran’s steel industry is hit by a cyberattack.

Iran has dramatically increased its execution of prisoners, reversing a five-year trend. But while the number of those being hanged is on the rise, there is no real correlation to more crime. Observers say it has more to do with the authorities sending a warning against dissent. 

A substantial number of the Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine receive their military pay and combat bonuses through Gazprombank, which has escaped the most severe Western sanctions that have hamstrung other large Russian lenders, an investigation by Schemes shows.

Despite local protests and lacking the necessary permits, a Chinese contractor is preparing for the construction of a hydroelectric power plant in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

In addition to thousands of deaths and the destruction of crucial infrastructure, another, more invisible, crisis tied to Russia’s invasion could haunt Ukraine for years: environmental damage.

For those seeking facts about the Srebrenica genocide, turning to Google can be a risky option. Most, if not all, of the top results generated by the search engine have included content denying that the 1995 killings of more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys ever happened.