Twenty-five freed political prisoners arrived in Vilnius, Lithuania, on September 16 after they were released by Belarusian authorities. The US special envoy to Belarus, John Coale, said their release was secured in exchange for Washington's agreement to lift sanctions on two Belarusian companies.

The US military says traffic in the Strait of Hormuz continues to gain momentum amid concerns that escalating fighting between Saudi Arabia and Iran-aligned Houthi rebels in Yemen threatens another vital artery for global oil supplies in the region.

A military training exercise in Serbia featured Chinese-designed quadruped robots firing weapons, as concerns mount over Beijing-linked technology facilities being set up in the Balkan country.

Russian drones hit a passenger train in southern Ukraine on September 16, setting a train ablaze. No causalities were reported. Another Russian drone strike killed five people on a bus near Nikopol, according to officials. The strikes follow an uptick in attacks on civilian transport in recent days.

In an interview with RFE/RL, Asrin Mohammadi recalls how her brother was killed during the brutal state crackdown on the Women, Life, Freedom protests that began four years ago.

US special envoy John Coale announced that 25 people were released from Belarusian prisons in exchange for the lifting of US sanctions on two Belarusian companies following his talks with the country’s longtime authoritarian leader, Aleksandr Lukashenko.

The US indictment targets five people, including two men linked to Russia's main intelligence agency, who plotted assassinations and sabotage in the United States and Europe.

sweeping Russia sanctions bill championed by the late Senator Lindsey Graham cleared a key procedural hurdle in the US House of Representatives on September 15, setting up a final vote on legislation that supporters say would increase pressure on Moscow and strengthen US support for Ukraine.

The hijab has long been a hot topic in Muslim-majority Central Asia, where many authoritarian governments have suppressed Islamic political and religious groups and any outward signs of religiosity. The debate has been rekindled as the new academic year started this month.

Four years after Mahsa Amini died following her detention over Iran’s mandatory hijab law, increasing numbers of Iranian women are not wearing head scarves. Amini's death sparked the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom movement. The defiance has grown amid mounting political and economic pressures.

By most accounts, the Ukrainian counteroffensive is shaping up to be one of the largest shifts on the battlefield in months, possibly in a year.

Ukrainian skeleton racer and Olympian Vladyslav Heraskevych is urging US lawmakers and the State Department to deny visas to Russian athletes who seek to compete under the Russian flag at the 2028 Olympic Games in LA, arguing that Moscow has turned sport into an instrument of war propaganda.

The US House Rules Committee has advanced legislation imposing tougher sanctions on Russia and Iran, clearing a key procedural hurdle for a possible House vote later this week but exposing deep Democratic concerns over the measure’s expansion of presidential tariff authority.

It’s the first time since the all-out invasion of Ukraine in 2022 that Russians will cast ballots to fill the 450-seat lower house of parliament. Here are five things to know about the tightly controlled vote for the State Duma.

An international tribunal is due to deliver a verdict in the war crimes trial of former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) commander and later Kosovo President Hashim Thaci in a case that could shape how the country’s 1990s war of independence from Serbia is remembered.

Ukraine’s navy says a Ukrainian Sargan-3000 sea drone destroyed a Russian unmanned surface vessel in the Black Sea in what it described as the first-ever battle between naval drones. The operation was carried out in conjunction with Ukraine’s military intelligence service, HUR.

Ukraine's parliament is expected to vote on the resignation of the prosecutor general on September 15 after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged his quick removal amid rising tensions over a series of high-profile anti-corruption investigations.

Kazakhstan is the only country to have joined both a US-led artificial intelligence initiative and a China-led rival. Now Washington is signaling that it may not be possible to sit on both sides of the emerging AI divide.

Two Russian drone strikes hit near the Polish border early on September 13, Ukrainian authorities have reported, attacks that Kyiv said was Moscow “knocking on the doors of the EU and NATO” and urged further sanctions.

Two Ukrainian soldiers were wounded near the front lines in the Kharkiv region -- then were left stranded when another strike took out the ground drone sent to evacuate them. Their company commander, Vladyslav Polskiy, rushed to the site in a pickup truck and brought the wounded men to safety.