Ray Furlong is a multimedia editor for RFE/RL.
Peaceful revolutions toppled communist regimes across Eastern Europe in 1989, but Romania's uprising was drenched in blood.
Millions of Russians were glued to a YouTube platform that was notorious for outrageous viral videos. Then hackers revealed that it was being secretly financed by the Kremlin. This story is part of a documentary series, InterNYET, by Current Time that explores the history of the Russian web.
Born in a former Soviet research institute, Rambler was Russia's most popular website in the 1990s and was sold for more than $230 million in 2004. But the site was eclipsed by a dynamic new search engine, and its creator counted his profits in the tens of thousands of dollars.
A Ukrainian court has released Volodymyr Tsemakh, a "person of interest" to investigators in the 2014 shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17. The release came as Russian President Vladimir Putin said a prisoner swap between Russia and Ukraine was nearing completion.
In the 1980s, a Soviet computer scientist headed for Moscow with U.S. software tapes hidden under his clothes. Three decades later, his colleagues gathered at a California dinner party to reminisce about how they built the first internet in the U.S.S.R. Their story is part of a new seven-part documentary series, InterNYET: A History Of The Russian Internet, by Current Time TV exploring the history of the Russian web.
Some of the teachers who survived the Beslan massacre are still working, and still haunted by the days in 2004 when 334 people were killed in their school.
Women’s soccer has enjoyed phenomenal growth in recent years and, now, women in the Kyrgyz village of Kok-Tash, just north of the Uzbek border, are getting the chance to go after some goals, too. Kyrgyzstan’s Women’s Football Federation encourages young girls to play soccer, but, in rural areas, where women’s roles often center around the home, adult female soccer players are far from the norm -- at least, for now.
As Moscow police respond to peaceful protests with increasing brutality, we filmed all sorts of people caught up in the violence -- protesters, passersby, and even a member of the pro-Kremlin United Russia party. (Note: Some people may find the violence in this video disturbing.)
Children in Kyrgyzstan rank as some of the most vulnerable in Central Asia. With their parents often working, kids in one slum in the capital, Bishkek, tend to just fend for themselves.
An Italian priest gave sanctuary in a Moscow church to protesters fleeing from riot police amid some of the worst police brutality the Russian capital has seen in years. Later, he allowed policemen to come in for water because, he says, the Orthodox Church must offer "love to everyone."
He wears a sailor's hat and the epaulettes of a general, but it's enough to pass himself off as a traffic cop in Kyrgyzstan's busy capital.
Francis Savinovskikh made headlines in Russia when the authorities took two foster children away, citing concerns that their upbringing was not "traditional." At the time, Savinovskikh had the name Yulia and didn't accept being a man.
A rare genetic disorder called CLN2 causes children to lose the ability to walk, see, and speak, with most not living beyond their teens. Five-year-old Nastya, from Kamenka in Russia, is one of an estimated 1,500 worldwide suffering from it.
A woman in Georgia has received threats of rape and murder after publishing online videos providing sex education to children.
Vadim Cheldiyev abandoned a career as an opera singer at the prestigious Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg to return to his home town in the Caucasus and help the poor.
Hundreds were detained as three raids in two days targeted migrant workers from Central Asia in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Yekaterinburg.
In a remote desert near the border between Kazakhstan and China, a massive dry port has been built to develop overland routes for Chinese exports to markets in Europe, Russia, and Central Asia.
