Neil Bowdler is a multimedia editor at RFE/RL.
Ukraine is one of the few countries in the world that allows commercial surrogacy. But when something goes wrong, human lives hang in the balance, and critics say the business should be stopped or at least regulated.
Russian funeral homes and undertakers have been adapting to new regulations governing the burial or cremation of COVID-19 victims. Meanwhile, mourners are being offered the chance to attend funeral services online.
Residents of dilapidated, Soviet-era, communal apartments in the Russian city of St. Petersburg are stuck in lockdown without a room for bathing or showering. They usually use bathhouses to wash, but those have been closed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Thousands of people have marched in Moscow to mark the anniversary of the killing of Boris Nemtsov, a vocal Kremlin critic and former deputy prime minister who was gunned down five years ago near the Kremlin. Smaller events took place in St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, and other Russian cities.
In the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, about 200 people work in shifts to search through the ash dump of a heating plant. Desperately poor, they are looking for unburned pieces of coal to sell. It's hard work, but the only way to make a living for many of them during the winter.
Ukraine's troubled railway company Ukrzaliznytsia and Deutsche Bahn have signed a 10-year memorandum of cooperation under which the German operator will plan a way forward for the state operator. Ukrainian Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk says it could lead to Deutsche Bahn jointly managing Ukrainian railways. Current Time sent two reporters to compare and contrast regional rail services in both countries.
Temperatures of minus 40 degrees Celsius mean only the horse farmers and their families stay to endure the winter in the village of Tumul in the Far Eastern Russian region of Yakutia. But ancient traditions and crafts still survive there, despite a dwindling local population.
Current Time asked people across Russia, from St. Petersburg to Yekaterinburg to Vladivostok, about their hopes for 2020.
In September 1983, a Czechoslovak cycling champion made an audacious journey -- fleeing his country in a homemade balloon with his wife and two children across the Iron Curtain.
The sister of a convicted Belarusian murderer has told Current Time of her heartbreak after the country's Supreme Court upheld Viktar Paulau's death sentence for the killing of two elderly women. Paulau is one of three men sentenced to death this year in Belarus, which is the only European country still using capital punishment.
Kyrgyz President Sooronbai Jeenbekov has opened a new police command center in the capital, Bishkek, which is using Chinese CCTV cameras with facial-recognition technology. China reportedly provided the equipment for free.
Young Tajik men are being taken from the streets by people in plain clothes and reportedly sent to serve in the army for two years. Sometimes, the men are taken without any prior notice.
This March, 51-year-old Aleksandr Gabyshev left Yakutsk in Russia's Far East to walk 8,000 kilometers to the Russian capital and rally opposition to President Vladimir Putin, whom he calls a demon. So far, no media reports suggest that he has been hindered.
Graffiti artists have descended on the Russian city of Yekaterinburg for an illegal street-art festival. No one knows how many artists took part in the unofficial, guerrilla-style event and many participated anonymously.
A Ukrainian rock star is moving back into politics. Svyatoslav Vakarchuk, frontman of the band Okean Elzy, has launched a new anti-corruption party called Holos (Voice) ahead of July's parliamentary elections. Vakarchuk was previously elected to parliament in 2007, but resigned after a year.
After being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, Stas Borodin, 33, lost a good job in Moscow, his wife left him, and he was forced to return to his native Smolensk. He didn't give up, but instead started a new life and became a well-known DJ in the city.
The Moscow-based rights group, Memorial, is to publish a book naming more than 6,000 executed Polish prisoners buried in 1940 in the village of Mednoye, near the Russian city of Tver. The killings were part of a mass execution of nearly 22,000 Polish officers ordered by Soviet leader Josef Stalin.
Saratov in central Russia is considered the cradle of the Russian gas industry. But despite the city's wealth in resources, some locals still live in barracks built more than 70 years by German prisoners as temporary housing. Ceilings are supported by props, and sewage flows through the streets.
A resident of Kyrgyzstan's capital, Bishkek, has persuaded the city authorities to give him land for a rehabilitation center for rescued wild animals. With the help of volunteers, he saves porcupines, raccoons, foxes, and other animals, and then releases them back them into the wild.
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