Neil Bowdler is a multimedia editor at RFE/RL.
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.
Over 250 owners have shown off their vehicles in a parade of classic Soviet-era cars produced by the GAZ car company in the Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod. The cars were all produced there between 1932 and 1988 and have been painstakingly restored.
An artist from Gjakova in Kosovo is aiming to set a new world record with a 560-square-meter mosaic made of grain of United States President Donald Trump.
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.
Flaka Muriqi was born during the 1998-99 Kosovo war. She was separated from her parents and could have been lost. But a distant relative tattooed her foot so she could later find her and return her to her parents. Twenty years later, Muriqi has now been reunited with the relative who helped her.
Hundreds of people in a Pakistani village have allegedly been infected with HIV by a doctor using contaminated syringes. Officials say over 400 people, many of them children, have tested positive. Experts are blaming unsanitary equipment and malpractice for a surge in infection rates in the country.
A former Georgian president has swapped politics for a quieter life as an Airbnb landlord and a politics teacher. Giorgi Margvelashvili is renting out a cottage in his hometown of Dusheti, and says his new life is evidence there's life after politics.
Automated drones have been deployed to map in 3D radiation distribution in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone in Ukraine, site of the 1986 nuclear disaster. The U.K. researchers behind the project say the drones could be deployed in nuclear emergencies to quickly identify danger areas.
The Hazara minority in Pakistan's southwestern city of Quetta live in two enclaves surrounded by army checkpoints to protect them from attacks by sectarian militants. A local security source estimates 500 Hazara have been killed in Quetta in the last five years.
Each spring, volunteers head to a hilly area named Sinyavino near St. Petersburg to unearth the remains of Soviet soldiers killed during fighting on the World War II front line. The volunteers have excavated thousands of bodies in recent years, amid renewed interested in Russia's wartime campaign.
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.
Five-year-old Sayeed Abdul Rahman was just 8 months old when he was shot during fighting between Afghan forces and Taliban militants. His leg was subsequently amputated. Now, thanks to support from a Red Cross hospital in Kabul, he can walk and dance on a prosthetic limb.
Plans have emerged to transform a 1980s pyramid built in the middle of the Albanian capital, Tirana, into an IT hub. It was built as a museum to dictator Enver Hoxha and has since served as a NATO base, TV studio, and nightclub. But it now stands abandoned and crumbling.
A robot that allows people with disabilities to stand up and move about has been developed by a Bulgarian inventor. Lubomir Vassilev came up with the device for his wife, who lost the ability to use her legs in an accident.
Twelve years' education is mandatory in Armenia, but for young Yazidi girls, it continues to be a dream. Many of them are forced to get married at the age of 15 or 16, once they're considered "tall enough."
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.
Afghan Jan Agha has hunted cranes since his childhood. He uses a tethered crane as a lure to trap other birds, with the cranes sold at market, mostly for meat. He's one of many Afghans who live from bird hunting, with few restrictions in place in the country to limit the number of birds killed.
Iskak Askarov worked in Russia as a builder before returning home to use the money he earned there to set up a sheep farm in his native Kyrgyzstan. He employs a shepherd and gets extra help from family during the busy lambing season.
A new bus service has been launched in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province with the aim of encouraging more women to attend local colleges. The pink, women-only buses each have a conductor and police guard. The Japanese government and UN Women are supporting the project, which will provide low-co
Belarus is the last country in Europe to have the death penalty. Since 1991, about 300 death sentences have been carried out in the country. The condemned prisoners are shot in the head. The body is not given to the family and the place of burial remains a state secret.
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