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.
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.
Thirty-six-year-old mail carrier Madina's profession, departure from an abusive marriage, and even high heels and short skirts appear to go against the grain of what many consider “appropriate” for women in conservative Chechnya, but she shows no sign of backing down.
A Russian physics professor spends his free time as a volunteer high in the trees of Yekaterinburg, saving animals that have gone astray.
Aleksandr Kim, a Russian rights activist, intervened when he saw Moscow police stopping migrants for identity checks and refused to comply when officers demanded his documents based solely on his appearance. Kim hopes to to shed light on police officers' use of racial profiling.
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.
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.
In Georgia, members of a small Christian sect called the Dukhobors preserve the faith they brought with them from Russia in centuries past. Their forebears were persecuted and exiled for their unconventional beliefs and refusal to serve in the army.
For more than a millennium, the city of Bukhara, in what is now Uzbekistan, had been home to one of the biggest Jewish communities in Asia. But their numbers have dwindled after decades of Soviet rule.
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.
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