— Yekaterinburg, Russia’s fourth-largest city has been rocked by protests, as thousands of residents continue to defend a riverside park from plans to build a church on its grounds. We speak with Matthew Luxmore, a Radio Free Europe reporter on the ground and with Yekaterina Schulmann, a political scientist about the larger forces at play.

— U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was in Russia this week for direct talks with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and President Putin. We speak to Fyodor Lukyanov, a Kremlin focused foreign policy analyst, about whether the visit represents the beginning of a new chapter.

— And finally, we have New Yorker correspondent Joshua Yaffa in the studio to discuss his recent profile of Maxim Osipov, a village doctor and writer whose work seems to capture the nuances and peculiarities of life in Russia.