The Week's Best: 10 RFE/RL Stories You Need To Read (Or Watch)

Hey, you’re busy! We know rferl.org isn’t the only website you read. And that it’s just possible you may have missed some of our most compelling journalism this week. To make sure you’re up-to-date, here are some of the highlights produced by RFE/RL’s team of correspondents, multimedia editors, and visual journalists over the past seven days.

The trophy hunting of brown bears, a protected animal in Europe, was banned in Romania in 2016. Nevertheless, hundreds are hunted every year as part of what the government says are efforts to control the population. Environmentalists, however, say there are better ways to manage the population and lower the risk of attacks on people. By Marian Pavalasc

For Beijing, Serbia’s success with Chinese vaccines is a path to greater influence in the region and part of a wider geopolitical game. By Reid Standish

A man in the Siberian city of Tomsk says he was severely beaten by plainclothes National Guard officers. Authorities initially acknowledged that the man was mistaken for a theft suspect and offered to pay for damage to his car. But after his family went public with the story, they changed their minds and charged him with resisting police officers. Now he has a limp, a fractured jaw, and a 500 ruble ($7) fine to pay. By Maria Chernova and Robert Coalson

Azerbaijani IDPs, eager to see what’s left of the homes they left around Nagorno-Karabakh more than a quarter century ago, are being killed or maimed by land mines in territory that remains closed off to civilians. By Ron Synovitz and RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani Service

Iranian-British academic Kameel Ahmady, who recently fled Iran to escape a eight-year prison sentence on alleged espionage charges, has been accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women in Iran. By Golnaz Esfandiari

They could be enjoying a peaceful retirement, but instead they’re taking to the streets and braving police violence. One Belarusian pensioner says that last year’s presidential election was a “slap in the face” for voters because the result was falsified. Another says it was his generation’s fault for first bringing Alyaksandr Lukashenka to power in 1994. By Ray Furlong and Current Time

The halted construction of a museum and memorial complex intended to honor fallen Maidan protesters highlights the legal and political obstacles preventing Ukrainians from getting closure on a bloody and divisive chapter in their recent history. By Dan Peleschuk

Almost the entire population of the tiny village of Karmadon has lived for decades in a five-story building. After the Georgian-Ossetian conflict in the early 1990s, many of the villagers lost their jobs in the nearby sanatorium. In 2002, a huge glacier collapsed, killing 125 people and destroying the local infrastructure. But despite all the hardships, the villagers have stayed. By Harutyun Mansuryan and Current Time’s Unknown Russia

Several public artworks by Romanian sculptor Ioan Bolborea are under scrutiny after a widely mocked Bucharest statue is alleged to have been cast with “inferior-quality materials.” The artist says the case is revenge for a legal dispute. By Amos Chapple

The small village of Shabdan in Kyrgyzstan’s Chuy Valley used to be inhabited predominantly by ethnic Russians. But with many having moved to Russia and others marrying Kyrgyz partners, ethnic divisions here have become less distinct. Now, young residents of mixed heritage speak perfect Kyrgyz and play the Kyrgyz national sport of kok-boru, where skilled horsemen drag a goat’s carcass toward their opponent’s goal. By RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz Service and Neil Bowdler