Ukraine's prime minister said last week that Kyiv will sign a $10 billion shale-gas deal with oil major Royal Dutch Shell on January 24. That deal -- and a similar one that is in the works with Chevron -- is part of Kyiv's stepped-up strategy to reduce its dependence on Russian natural gas.

RFE/RL's Brussels correspondent, Rikard Jozwiak, looks at how a possible "Brexit" -- or even a looser relationship between Britain and the EU -- might affect the bloc's enlargement and foreign policy.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's premier foreign-policy initiative, the Eurasian Customs Union, is showing unprecedented vitality. But the European Union says membership in the ECU is incompatible with closer economic ties with the EU. This confronts many former Soviet states -- especially Ukraine and Moldova -- with a stark choice.

Anastasia Hagen may be the first porn actress to ask for asylum in the European Union. The Ukrainian mother of three fled to the Czech Republic last year after criminal charges were leveled against her under tough new laws on pornography. Hagen is now battling deportation from the Czech Republic, where her asylum request has been rejected.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned of efforts to roll back human rights in the former Soviet Union as she met with 11 activists from the region on December 7. RFE/RL correspondent Charles Recknagel spoke with one of the activists, Oleksandra Delemenchuk of the Kyiv-based Center for Civil Liberties, about her impressions of the meeting on the sidelines of the OSCE conference in Dublin, Ireland.

Ahead of World AIDS Day on December 1, the United Nations released a cautiously optimistic report suggesting the epidemic has begun to stabilize or even shrink in nearly every part of the world. But the countries of the former Soviet Union are an exception to the trend.

Four years and a new office in Paris later, the Ukrainian activist group Femen, which professes to use “sextremism” to fight against patriarchy as manifested by dictatorship, the church, and the sex industry, more closely resembles a girlie show. More flash than substance.