John Mastrini is a multimedia editor for RFE/RL in Prague.
A car mechanic in Siberia has found a new calling: giving cows pedicures. And it has helped reverse a fall in milk production at a local dairy.
People around the world have learned the virtues of recycling, but a craftsman in Kyiv goes much further. He upcycles discarded furniture into musical instruments.
The city of Prague has renamed a square in front of Russia's embassy in the Czech capital as Boris Nemtsov Square. The honor, on the fifth anniversary of the Russian opposition leader's assassination in Moscow, follows similar tributes in Washington and Vilnius.
The killing of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov on February 27, 2015, shocked pro-democracy advocates around the world. Despite the conviction of five men for carrying out a contract hit, the biggest question has yet to be answered: Who ordered his killing?
Azerbaijanis go to the polls this weekend to choose members of their parliament. After decades of elections plagued by media manipulation and dirty tricks, opposition activists hold out little hope of challenging the dominance of President Ilham Aliyev's party in the vote on February 9.
Uzbekistan's president has warned citizens not to go into debt to pay for traditional weddings. One Uzbek man has spent 19 years working in Russia and saving for the marriages of his three children.
Ten years ago, a little-known Russian lawyer working for a Western financial firm died in custody in Moscow. Sergei Magnitsky's name is now enshrined in human rights laws in the United States and around the world. Russian President Vladimir Putin is still fuming.
Police detained the head of one of Russia's doctors' unions as she came to help colleagues barricaded inside a rural tuberculosis clinic set for closure. The protest is part of a wider battle to save dwindling rural health care services in Russia.
Three children look happy and healthy now with their grandparents in Georgia, but that's after living for a year with their mother in an Iraqi jail. Their father, an Islamic State militant, was killed in Iraq, and the Georgian government is still trying to bring her home.
A Ukrainian-born Russian citizen has been shown on video apologizing for the ongoing war in eastern Ukraine. He says his acts of contrition have cost him jobs as a teacher in Russia.
Residents of Russian villages near the Gulf of Finland are fighting against the construction of a huge port for coal shipments, and the destruction of a nearby forest which has already begun.
Conservationists blamed poachers for destroying some of the remaining snow leopards in Russia's Siberian Altai Republic. Now, they are being paid to capture images of the rare species to help save them.
A British research firm used machine learning to compile what it says is visual evidence of Russian military involvement in eastern Ukraine in 2014. Moscow has denied involvement, but the researchers said they have identified Russian tanks deployed with separatists in defeating Ukraine's government
A Russian physics professor spends his free time as a volunteer high in the trees of Yekaterinburg, saving animals that have gone astray.
A murder case against three sisters who killed their abusive father in Moscow has sparked a nationwide debate over Russia's treatment of domestic violence.
A video of Kazakhs criticizing aspects of life in their country went viral and sparked a widespread debate ahead of June's presidential election.
A Russian boy who learned to love hotels during frequent visits to doctors far away, has become a hotelier in his remote hometown, thanks to his mother.
Dozens of people have been detained by police recently as protests have grown across Kazakhstan. One man tried a more novel approach, to no avail.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, numerous cities and streets have been renamed, and statues have been destroyed to forget the past. But many Russians still have nostalgia for some of the most ruthless leaders.
The Russian Orthodox Church has been building numerous places of worship in recent years, but some residents have objected to plans to place them in previously public spaces.
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