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Protests are continuing across Iran as discontent grows over the government's failure to address deteriorating economic conditions one year after President Ebrahim Raisi's election victory.

Last week, the European Commission recommended that Ukraine and Moldova be granted EU candidate status, while Georgia must fulfill a number of conditions before candidate status can even be considered. At a summit in Brussels on June 23-24, EU leaders will consider all three membership applications.

As it turns out, the cultural and historical complexities at the heart of Sofia's demands on Skopje might be less of an obstacle than internal feuding and brinksmanship.

The Tajik government's deadly response to protests in the country's restive Gorno-Badakhshan region has shocked activists and angered citizens.

Before February 24, Ihor Husev found considerable success with his dreamlike, apolitical paintings. But that’s “all irrelevant now,” says the Odesa artist, who’s mixing black humor and biting commentary in a series of drawings that take aim at the Russian invasion.

Workers at Armenia's largest textile producer are facing massive layoffs or deep wage cuts largely linked to the country's national currency, the dram, which has risen dramatically since Ukraine was invaded by Russia, Armenia's largest trading partner. 

RFE/RL's Georgian Service spoke to French intellectual Bernard Henri-Levy, a renowned author, philosopher, and war correspondent who says Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is "one of the founding fathers of Europe," whereas Vladimir Putin is merely a "bad chess player."

The Kazakh president’s surprising comments next to Vladimir Putin at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum in which he declined to support Moscow’s war shows that it's not business as usual for Central Asia after the Ukraine conflict.

Iran's state broadcaster has caused a stir after it aired false claims of Portuguese soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo's alleged anti-Israeli views. The fabricated report was aired as tensions rise between Iran and its regional foe.

Forty kilometers from the Russian border, traders are slowly setting up shop again at a sprawling, rubble-strewn market that was a hive of activity before the invasion. “I’m not going to let that moron in the Kremlin bring me to my knees,” said one of them, menswear retailer Oleksiy Chelyshev.