Ray Furlong is a multimedia editor for RFE/RL.
The captain is 81 years old, while the team's youthful star is 52. Russia's only women's ice hockey team made up almost entirely of pensioners also has a trainer who is a veteran of the Vancouver Olympics.
Generations of children have grown up in Kyrgyzstan without parents who leave the country to work, mostly in Russia. Aigerim is 9 years old and lives with her grandmother. She dreams of joining her mom, who went to Moscow two years ago.
Recent weeks have seen a spate of police raids on independent media companies and the homes of journalists in Russia, as part of an intensifying crackdown. Kremlin-critical media face fines, arrests, and violence.
The man who found the body of Belarusian activist Vital Shyshou in a park near his home in Kyiv says that he was briefed by Ukrainian intelligence officials that hit squads had been sent to Ukraine to "liquidate" activists in exile.
The huge mercury mine at Aidarken in Kyrgyzstan once supplied the entire Soviet Union. It now produces a fraction of its former output, with many of its shafts still filled with floodwaters that took it out of service from 2009 to 2019.
An animated film has been made in Tajikistan reflecting on the controversial case of a 5-year-old girl who was raped and killed near Moscow. Filmmaker Lolisanam Ulugova says she was moved to create the movie after seeing the girl's father in tears.
Amid brutal repression in Belarus, increasing numbers of people are finding political asylum in neighboring Latvia. Many left in the blink of an eye, leaving everything behind, and are now struggling to adjust.
A father and son are holed up in the Swedish Embassy in Minsk, where they took refuge in September 2020 from Belarusian security forces after joining pro-democracy protests. The Swedish authorities say the two men cannot claim political asylum at the embassy.
In tsarist Russia, it was a women's prison, but now it's home for poor families with nowhere else to go. Although it's supposed to be temporary accommodation, residents spend years amid its crumbling, ill-lit corridors, waiting for permanent housing.
As Belarus faces international isolation for its brutal crackdown on opposition voices, it has been able to rely on Russia for support -- both political and economic. Despite a sometimes fraught relationship, Moscow has been pouring money into Belarus since the 1990s.
Russian authorities have detained another prominent opposition figure -- the latest step in an increasing crackdown on dissent. Andrei Pivovarov was taken off a plane as it was preparing to depart from St. Petersburg to Warsaw on May 31.
When the authoritarian leader of Belarus, Alyaksandr Lukashenka, made a speech defending the forced diversion to Minsk of a Ryanair passenger flight, he made several demonstrably false claims. These included a story about a threat to a Belarusian nuclear power station, which was more than 100km away
Who is Sofia Sapega, the woman detained along with Belarusian blogger and political activist Raman Pratasevich after their Ryanair passenger jet was forced to land in Minsk? A video has appeared showing a purported confession from her that is believed to have been coerced.
A Belarusian man faces two years of forced labor after being accused of insulting a policeman in an online chat room, while a 19-year-old arrested for putting an opposition flag in his student dorm window could now go to prison for seven years on extremism charges.
A snow leopard blinded by a shotgun, a fox that lost a paw in an attack by a jackal, a golden eagle hanging from a tree with its claws bound: These animals and others have all found sanctuary in the home of a golden-hearted veterinarian in Kyrgyzstan.
Due to COVID-19 restrictions a women's prison in the Latvian capital, Riga, and a farm were among the unlikely venues for a Russian documentary film festival. ArtDocFest is held in Moscow every year, but amid growing repression and intimidation began holding events in Riga in 2014.
Russia says its forces are conducting drills, but the large presence of troops and military equipment near its border with Ukraine has leaders in Kyiv and the West concerned that it could lead to a major outbreak of fighting. Experts told Current Time what they think Moscow is up to.
Raman Bandarenka died from his injuries after being beaten up by masked men in November 2020, but the authorities in Belarus claimed he was drunk before he was detained. It was the start of an alleged cover-up that has seen a doctor jailed for disclosing that there was no alcohol in his body.
They come from Ukraine, Moldova, and Kyrgyzstan -- and they have been deported from Russia for joining peaceful protests in support of jailed opposition leader Aleksei Navalny. They are now divided from their Russian wives and children.
As Russia pursues vigorous "vaccine diplomacy," offering its Sputnik V vaccine to other countries, its own citizens can't get the much-needed shot in the arm.
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