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.

Russians will go to the polls on Sunday to elect their lower house of parliament, the Duma. Accusations of blatant vote-rigging and fraud during the last vote in 2011 brought tens of thousands of protestors into the streets. The voting process on Sunday is expected to be cleaner, but analysts say President Vladimir Putin's ruling party has already made sure there won't be any real opposition.

Like other European Union countries, Lithuania has agreed to take in its quota from refugees from war torn countries. Many residents say they consider it a duty to accept refugees. But some potential migrants have balked at moving to Lithuania. They fear being isolated in a country they've never even heard of.

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.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg, Russia, Tuesday. It's their first meeting since Turkey shot down a Russian warplane near the Syrian border last November, and both men said they were anxious to reset their country's relations.

Russia denies that it was behind a hacking attack on the Democratic Party that led to embarrassing revelations ahead of this week's convention. "Total stupidity," says a Kremlin spokesman.

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 possibility of the entire Russian team being banned from next month's Rio Olympics increased Thursday. A court of arbitration upheld a specific ban on Russian track and field athletes attending the games, after allegations of the widespread use of performance enhancing drugs.

The International Olympic Committee will hold an emergency conference call for members of its Executive Board on Tuesday to discuss the latest revelations about Russian doping in international sport.

Some 100,000 Lithuanians live in the U.K. — a huge percentage of the tiny EU nation. We hear from one young Lithuanian, back in Vilnius for the summer, whose future is now in question after Brexit.