The social-networking site Facebook has been slow to take off in Russia, lagging far behind the more popular local sites like Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki. But in recent months, it has grown more than threefold and become the platform of choice for the country's reenergized opposition.

The leader of Russia's opposition Solidarnost movement, Ilya Yashin, has been sentenced to 10 days in jail after being found guilty of failure to obey a law-enforcement officer.

Special police from Russia's Interior Ministry have reportedly detained several people, including opposition leader Ilya Yashin.

Russia's National Antiterror Committee has announced that a suspected leader of the Islamist insurgency in the Russian North Caucasus republic of Daghestan has been killed in a special operation by security forces.

The head of Russia's Federal Service for Drugs Control says a joint antinarcotics operation in Afghanistan -- involving forces from Afghanistan, Russia, Tajikistan, and the United States -- had "a phenomenal result."

New Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has presented nominations for a new Russian cabinet to newly inaugurated President Vladimir Putin.

The head of Russia's federal drug service has said that up to 40 percent of the GDP in Central Asia comes from criminal activities, particularly the illegal narcotics business.

Russia has accused Al-Qaeda of staging the string of deadly bombings that have recently struck Syria's largest cities.

Russian President Vladimir Putin hosts two summits on May 15 as the CIS Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) marks an anniversary and CIS leaders gather for an informal meeting.

The sentencing of opposition Left Front leader Sergei Udaltsov and activist Aleksei Navalny came after several days of attempts by opposition activists to hold unauthorized protests against Vladimir Putin, who was inaugurated for a third term as Russian president on May 7.

A ruling United Russia party official said the office's windows and doors sustained heavy damage, apparently including from paint guns, on May 9.

A Russian gay-rights activist says he's been fined after being convicted of spreading "gay propaganda" among minors.

In March, a law banning homosexual "propaganda" was approved in Russia's second-largest city, St. Petersburg. While the coming months will tell how the ban will be applied, experts are already predicting that more gay and lesbian Russians will be pushed to seek asylum in the West.

An activist opposed to Vladimir Putin's continued rule says authorities have offered no official explanation for why he was detained after he attempted to pray for Russia's liberation from president-elect at Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow.

A Russian opposition politician who has been on a hunger strike for 39 days to protest alleged vote rigging in a mayoral election says he will end his protest fast on April 24.

A Russian opposition politician who has been on a hunger strike for 40 days to protest alleged vote rigging in a mayoral election ended his protest fast on April 24.

Sergei Udaltsov, leader of Russia's opposition Left Front movement, said a request has been filed with Moscow authorities to hold a "March of a Million" on May 6.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is in Tajikistan for talks with President Emomali Rahmon and other Tajik government officials.

Russia's environment minister has blamed Russian-British oil company TNK-BP for causing massive oil pollution in a Siberian region.

We tracked down hoodied Russian street artist Nikita Nomerz, whose "Living Wall" project imparts human features to rundown city walls and other large objects, to find out more about the art and aims of this budding young talent.

A Russian opposition figure and environmental activist is to be awarded the world's largest environmentalist award, the Goldman Environmental Prize, in San Francisco.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says he does not believe Syria's opposition will ever be able to defeat President Bashar al-Assad's forces.

A Russian official says U.S. funding of organizations that promote the spread of democracy in the country is turning into a problem in bilateral relations between Moscow and Washington.

The Day of the Russian and Belarusian Peoples' Unity is being celebrated to mark the day in April 1996 that Russia and Belarus officially formed a "union state."

Russian officials are calling on parents to show their children Soviet-era cartoons instead of Western television shows.

The leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa continue talks in New Delhi at the annual BRICS summit. RFE/RL Russian Service correspondent Svetlana Pavlova spoke with Fyodor Lukyanov, the editor of "Russia In Global Affairs" and a leading Russian foreign-policy expert, ...

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has appointed special representatives for Georgia's breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has appointed special representatives for Georgia's breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

The leader of Russia's Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, has denied reports of a massive redeployment of Russian Interior Ministry troops from Chechnya to the neighboring region of Daghestan.

A Russian military court has found an army private guilty of deserting his unit in 2000 and sentenced him to two years in a minimum-security labor camp.

A Russian couple convicted of killing journalist Stanislav Markelov and reporter Anastasia Baburova have filed cases with the European Court for Human Rights in Strasbourg.

Three opposition leaders are due to appear in court after being detained along with hundreds of other protesters who rallied to question the legitimacy of the election that returned Vladimir Putin to the Kremlin.

Russia has accused the United States of trying to influence its election process by funding opposition groups.

Russia's top investigative body says it has launched an investigation into several video clips allegedly containing fake evidence of vote-rigging ahead of the March 4 presidential election.

An activist of Russia's opposition Solidarity movement has been arrested sent to a psychiatric clinic for alleged antigovernment action.

Dutch military police say that a man they arrested for making a bomb threat at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport was a 40-year-old Russian citizen.

The Russian Federal Migration Service has announced that the head of the agency's department in Vladimir Oblast has been fired for improperly deporting a French journalist from Russia.

Authorities in the Siberian city of Barnaul have declared it is now illegal to organize antigovernment demonstrations using toy collections -- unless such protests have received permission from officials in advance.

Officials say 39 Russian soldiers in one unit have been hospitalized and one has died from pneumonia in the Krasnoyarsk Krai region in Siberia.

Organizers of a national protest in Russia scheduled for February 4 have drafted the movement's demands, including the annulment of the December 2011 parliamentary elections and the dismissal of the chief election official.

Two senior leaders of Russia's unofficial political opposition have made surprise appearances on separate political talk shows on the country's tightly managed state-controlled television.

Russia's Yabloko opposition party says the office of a Russian regional newspaper that it publishes has been destroyed in an attack with a Molotov cocktail.

The Russian English-language channel RT, which is funded by the Russian government, says it has the rights to air a new television chat show that will be hosted by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

A one-man protest against the "persecution of the Russian opposition" has been held in the northwestern city of Kirov.

A group dedicated to memorializing Russian victims of political repression has held its first session in Moscow.

The meeting of top Russian and U.S. diplomats in Moscow brought together Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Deputy U.S. Secretary of State William Burns, and Michael McFaul, the new U.S. ambassador to Russia.

The Russian opposition movement Solidarity has started a series of single-person protests in front of former voting stations in St. Petersburg.

Russia's ambassador to Tajikistan says Russian-Tajik relations are friendly and unaffected by a dispute over the prosecution of two pilots working for a Russian company

A Russian human rights council has recommended that prosecutors take action to get former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky's conviction overturned.

Russian authorities have allowed the opposition to hold a massive rally against alleged election fraud, following a police crackdown on a series of demonstrations this week.