Corey Flintoff

On Sunday, Russian voters will choose members of the lower house of parliament. Tens of thousands of people demonstrated against the last such elections. They say they are too afraid to protest now.

Russia is racing to build a bridge to Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula it annexed in 2014. The strategically vital project is beset by charges of near-slave labor for workers and engineering concerns.

Russia says two of its servicemen were killed by Ukrainian forces firing into Crimea. Ukraine's president said the Russian claims are "fantasy."

Russia recently introduced a new warship in the Black Sea, an area of heightened tension since Russia's seizure of Crimea two years ago. NPR's Corey Flintoff was invited on board.

The IAAF upheld the ban on Russia's track and field team ahead of the Summer Olympics in Rio. Russian athletes were barred from competition in the wake of a wide-ranging doping scandal.

The woman, Nadezhda Savchenko, was a military pilot captured during the war in Eastern Ukraine, and her case has become a symbol of the conflict between the two countries.

Tens of thousands of Ukrainians fled to Russia when fighting began in 2014. The welcome they received has cooled as Russia's economy sags, and very few have been granted formal refugee status.

In Russia, relatively few people seem to be following the U.S. presidential election campaigns closely, but most people know the names of the front-runners.

"It is not borders and state territories that matter," Putin told the German tabloid Bild, "but people's fortunes."

Russian tourists love the beaches of Egypt and Turkey. But the recent losses of a Russian civilian plane in Egypt and a military plane along the Turkish border have changed their plans.