Current Time is the Russian-language TV and digital network run by RFE/RL.
A court in Russia's Rostov region sentenced a former fighter of the Wagner mercenary group, Pavel Nikolin, to six years and 11 months in prison on December 18 for opening fire with an automatic weapon on a group of police officers in December of last year, wounding one of them.
The 1992-1993 Georgian-Abkhaz war is estimated to have displaced some 250,000 Georgian civilians. After 30 years, many still dream of returning. Current Time located and filmed the abandoned residences of several displaced families. The images offer some a rare glance at the homes they left behind.
Georgia-born film director and screenwriter Otar Iosseliani has died in France, close friend Yury Rost reported on December 17.
More than 70 regional lawmakers across Russia have urged President Vladimir Putin and the presidential Council on Human Rights to secure medical assistance for Moscow municipal lawmaker Aleksei Gorinov, who was handed a seven-year prison term in July.
Ukraine's State Bureau of Investigations (DBR) said on December 14 that its officers searched a villa and office in Spain belonging to Evhen Borisov, the former chief of the Odesa regional military recruitment center, who was arrested in July on corruption charges.
A military court in Moscow on December 14 sentenced five Tajiks and a Russian citizen from Daghestan to prison terms between 16 years and 22 years on charges of organizing a terrorist group and plotting a terrorist attack against the Federal Security Service headquarters in the Russian capital.
As the EU prepares to consider beginning membership talks with Ukraine, a group of Ukrainian students visit the European Parliament in Brussels. In an interactive game, they play at being their country's first MEPs.
A Moscow court on December 13 refused to imprison activist Lev Skoryakin, who in October went missing in Kyrgyzstan after applying for asylum there and was later located in a Moscow detention center.
Supporters of Russian history teacher Nikita Tushkanov, who was imprisoned for criticizing Moscow's war in Ukraine online, said on December 12 that the activist was sent to solitary confinement for seven days for lying on a bed before it was officially sleeping time.
Russian riot police raided an LGBT club in Yekaterinburg less than two weeks after Russia's Supreme Court banned the activities of the "international LGBT movement" --which legally does not exist -- in the country. Dozens of visitors were detained while police recorded their personal information.
The Finnish government on December 12 said it plans to reopen two border crossings with Russia by January 14. Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said the large Vaalimaa crossing in southeast Finland and one near Niirala further north will be reopened to traffic.
Bukhara, a historic city in Uzbekistan located in the heart of Central Asia, is home around 200 Jews -- the remnants of a once-thriving community. As their population declines, Bukharan Jews are finding it increasingly difficult to find marriage partners.
As Russian forces battle for the industrial city of Avdiyivka in Ukraine's Donetsk region, members of a Ukrainian unit to the north say they've slowly gained territory. The fighting has taken a heavy toll as soldiers hold their positions from flooded trenches.
Volodymyr Sahaydak, the director of a center for children’s social and psychological rehabilitation in the Ukrainian city of Kherson, recounts how he and staff came up with a daring plan to get the center's children to safety after Russian forces occupied the city.
A court in the Russian city of Bryansk, some 885 kilometers southwest of Moscow, ordered the arrest of Dmitry Afanaskin on December 10 on a charge of negligently keeping a firearm after his 14-year-old daughter shot a classmate and herself dead at school last week with his shotgun.
A defrocked Russian Orthodox priest in Kazakhstan says he'll build an autocephalous church that's not subordinate to the Moscow Patriarchate and Russian propaganda. Iakov Vorontsov, forced out after joining hundreds of other clergy to condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine, says he just wants peace.
As Kherson residents brace for winter, emergency services are scrambling to repair artillery damage to roofs and windows. Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine has hit this region hard, but home dwellers are determined to rebuild and carry on. Some 33,000 windows were replaced in the last year.
Russia's Interior Ministry has added U.S. journalist, writer, and outspoken Kremlin critic Masha Gessen to its wanted list. Gessen's name appeared on the ministry's list on December 8 without specifying what the journalist is wanted for.
Russian opposition politician Ilya Yashin, who is serving an 8 1/2-year prison term for his criticism of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, has been placed in a stricter regime unit in his penal colony after serving five days in solitary confinement, his Telegram channel said on December 8.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said he will run again for office in Russia's March presidential election in which he is expected to easily win a new six-year term and extend the longest rule of a Kremlin leader since Josef Stalin.
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