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.
Intimidation? Imminent invasion? Signals to the Biden Administration? What’s up with the Russian troop movements near eastern Ukraine and in Crimea? By Mike Eckel
Soon after Russia seized Crimea and began supporting separatists in eastern Ukraine, the European Court of Human Rights began being flooded with complaints about alleged rights violations by Ukraine in the Donbas. By Valeria Yehoshyna
A government crackdown in Kazakhstan has nearly silenced the guerrilla activism that turned the Central Asian country into an unlikely window on China’s human rights abuses. By Reid Standish and Aigerim Toleukhanova
Photographs from then and now at the scenes of April 1941 air strikes by Nazi Germany that forever changed the face of Serbia’s capital. By Amos Chapple
Igor Krainov was detained on drug-possession charges in the Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod in 2019. But CCTV footage helped him get the charges dropped and turn the tables on the police, who appeared to plant evidence in his pocket. Three officers lost their jobs and are facing a criminal investigation. By Current Time and Margot Buff
A Ukrainian couple with 13 children have both died of COVID-19 in quick succession. The funeral was held for Diana Rodikova on March 31, just days after her husband, Volodymyr, succumbed to the virus. Eleven of their children are under 18. The family moved to Kyiv in 2014 after Russia-backed separatists seized their home city of Makiyivka in eastern Ukraine. The family’s eldest daughter, Oleksandra Slyusarenko, 21, and her husband, are to become the remaining children’s legal guardians. By RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service and Neil Bowdler
“In every parliamentary election in Bulgaria there is a party that comes out with this [anti-establishment] message, because there is a chronic distrust of the entire political elite.” By Todd Prince
Demonstrations have broken out in Kyrgyzstan after the bodies of a young woman and her suspected abductor were discovered after a two-day search. The woman was abducted on a city street by several people in an apparent instance of “bride kidnapping,” a banned but still common practice in which victims can be forced into marriage. Authorities say they suspect a murder-suicide. By RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz Service and Margot Buff
Twenty-five-year old Pegah plays music on the street, gathers with friends in the park, and dresses as she pleases — all things that were difficult or impossible in her native Iran. She fled to Georgia following repeated arrests for violating Iran’s dress code, and after she appeared in a documentary that put her on the authorities’ radar. By RFE/RL’s Georgian Service and Margot Buff
Critics from the ruling United Russia party, the Communist Party, and the Orthodox Church have all attacked the controversial Gunther von Hagens exhibition in Moscow. By Ray Furlong and Current Time