Neil Bowdler is a multimedia editor at RFE/RL.
By January 15, every Ukrainian city is supposed have a territorial defense unit as fears of a Russian invasion are mounting. The units are made up of volunteers who train on weekends and who mostly use wooden props instead of real guns.
Russia's parliament is considering the introduction of a federal QR code system to combat the coronavirus pandemic. The QR codes could only be used by those who have been vaccinated or who recently recovered from COVID-19 or by people who can't be vaccinated on medical grounds.
The son of a COVID-19 patient in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv claims he had to pay the equivalent of more than $1,000 for medicines and other services after his father was hospitalized with the virus for 13 days.
Russia has recorded a new high for daily deaths from COVID-19 as another wave sweeps across the country and vaccination rates stall. The latest daily death toll, published on September 28, showed 852 new fatalities -- the fourth record high in a month.
From June 28, Moscow restaurants, cafes, and bars have been ordered to only serve guests who have been vaccinated, had COVID-19 within the last six months, or have had a negative PCR test within the previous three days.
Some 100,000 doses of a locally produced COVID-19 vaccine called QazVac have already been distributed in Kazakhstan -- before the publication of late-stage clinical trial data. Independent health experts say more data should have been released.
The father of independent journalist and activist Raman Pratasevich told Current Time TV on May 25 said that he has no information about his son's whereabouts.
An independent TV channel in Siberia is one of the few Russian media outlets that has covered jailed opposition figure Aleksei Navalny. The Krasnoyarsk Independent Regional Channel (TVK) has reported on Navalny's anti-corruption investigations and on protests against President Vladimir Putin.
In Kyrgyzstan, five directors are making a series of short films about the COVID-19 pandemic hitting the country in the spring and summer of 2020. Ten different stories will tell about how ordinary people experienced quarantine and how the local health-care system was unready for the outbreak.
Current Time has visited the intensive-care unit of a COVID-19 hospital in Kyiv, where a recent surge in infections means every single bed is full. Many patients arrive in critical condition and require mechanical ventilation of their lungs.
Sadyr Japrov is considered the front-runner in Kyrgyzstan's presidential election on January 10. A little more than three months ago, he was in prison. He said charges that he took part in an attempted hostage-taking scheme were politically motivated.
A group of industrial workers in the central Russian region of Chelyabinsk have tried to survive on the national monthly minimum wage for one month. They found themselves starving, unable to afford medicine or treatment, and underperforming at work.
Russians have been telling Current Time about their experiences with the new Sputnik-V COVID-19 vaccine after the country began a mass vaccination program. President Vladimir Putin said on December 2 that 2 million doses of the Russian-made vaccine would be made available within days.
A woman who has become famous for wearing a white-and-red wedding dress during protests against longtime Belarusian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka has fled to Ukraine with her children, fearing persecution. Ina Zaitsava earlier spent three days in an isolation ward and was fined $250.
Viktor Kozlov used to drive a tractor on a Soviet-era state farm, but when times got tough, he moved to the coal-rich Siberian region of Krasnoyarsk and started selling coal to residents there to heat their homes.
Nina Bahinskaya, a septuagenarian great-grandmother, says she never misses a protest against the government following an August presidential election widely seen as rigged. She's been attending anti-government protests since the 1980s.
Valery Melnikov was known in Russia for the huge New Year's cards he created on the ice and snow of a frozen river in the country's Far East. After he died in October at the age of 72 after contracting COVID-19, residents of his home region of Amur decided to continue the tradition he started.
The situation in many Ukrainian hospitals is critical, doctors say, after a spike in the number of coronavirus cases in the country. There's a shortage of beds, intensive-care units are overcrowded, and many seriously ill patients have to wait for ventilators.
Russian student Aleksei Dudoladov has resorted to climbing up a tree to participate in online classes because there's no clear Internet signal in his Siberian village. He's asked the governor of the Omsk region for help, but is still waiting for a reply.
Dramatic video of a Minsk taxi driver saving a fleeing anti-government protester from the clutches of Belarusian police went viral on social media in September. Now, in an interview with Current Time, the driver says he was only doing what others would have done.
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