It may have seemed like the news in 2020 was all about the COVID-19 pandemic, but, in fact, there was plenty of variety. From protests and war to environmental challenges and social change, Current Time was there. How much do you know about this year’s major events?
A woman held hostage by Chechen separatists has spoken about it on camera for the first time, 25 years after a five-day siege that left some 150 people dead in the southern Russian city of Budyonnovsk.
In Karelia and Nizhny Novgorod, parents are complaining about food packages given to their children in lockdown to replace school lunches. They say they are getting expired food and rotten potatoes.
Language has long been a tripwire between Ukraine and Russia, but in Kharkiv, an eastern Ukrainian city of 1.5 million not far from the Russian border and Donbas conflict zone, it’s come down to a question about children’s future. A bill that will increase schools’ usage of Ukrainian, the state language, makes some Kharkiv parents question how easily their offspring can transition from lessons in Russian. As yet, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has not signed the bill into law.
Nazi occupation and Soviet repression decimated the Izhorian people, a tiny ethnic minority from northwest Russia. Now just hundreds remain, but efforts are being made to revive their language and culture.
There are calls for a probe into the management of St. Petersburg State University after a prominent professor and Napoleon expert reportedly confessed to killing a former student.
Albert Razin, a scholar and activist in the Russian region of Udmurtia, set himself on fire in front of the local parliament building in September and died shortly afterwards. His death was a final act of protest in defense of the Udmurt language, which he believed was threatened by recent legislation from Moscow.
A woman in Georgia has received threats of rape and murder after publishing online videos providing sex education to children.
A Russian government agency wants Russians studying abroad to come home.
Ukraine says it will ensure children in major regional hospitals receive an education from September 2019. Some 2,000 children are currently educated in hospitals, but one group, which runs a "School For Superheroes" in a Kyiv hospital, says 10,000 hospitalized children need schooling.
Ukrainian physics teacher Pavel Viktor became an unexpected celebrity after his online lectures went viral. Days after he was interviewed by Current Time, Viktor was assaulte on his way from work. Now hospitalized, he's already thinking of the work he has to do when he gets back to the classroom.
Pavel Viktor, a science teacher in Odesa, Ukraine, started posting his lectures on YouTube for absent students. He never expected the videos to gain millions of views beyond his classroom.
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