Neil Bowdler is a multimedia editor at RFE/RL.
Since the first day of the Russian invasion, Ukrainians have been uploading videos online about how they are experiencing war, devastation, and blackouts. Many use humor to help lighten spirits amid the tensions of war.
Volodymyr Yezhov was killed defending the city of Bakhmut in Ukraine's Donetsk region on December 22. He was one of the developers behind the successful video game S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky, which was released in 2008. One of the game's characters, Loki, was based on Yezhov's face.
Vyacheslav Kolokoltsev, an 81-year-old retired geologist, lives in the village of Gorneshno in Russia's Novgorod region. He hangs posters outside his house against the war in Ukraine and denouncing Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Umeda Ghanieva, 14, and her sister Amina, 16, from Kulob in southern Tajikistan, have already won several boxing competitions. Just a year ago, the sisters and their widowed mother were collecting scrap metal to survive, but can now pursue their passion.
A Ukrainian police evacuation group called White Angel is still working to get local residents out of the city of Bakhmut, which is under attack from Russian forces. Before evacuating some elderly residents, they brought a St. Nicholas Day present to Hanna, a young girl living in a basement.
Since the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan in 2021, an estimated 800 Afghan artists have emigrated to Pakistan. Faiz Muhammad Sakhi is one of them and currently teaches music in the Pakistani city of Peshawar. He says he and other musicians face many problems, including police harassment.
Officials at a hospital in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar say they're seeing a sharp rise in malnutrition among children, with 240 children hospitalized there in November. The United Nations estimates that 875,000 Afghan children are currently at risk of severe acute malnutrition.
Two Iranian women who fled to Armenia with their families have told RFE/RL they fear for their lives should they be forced to return home. The faces and voices of the two women have been disguised to protect them.
Women who served as soldiers or civilian employees with the Afghan National Security Forces say they no longer have the money to feed their families after losing their jobs when the Taliban retook power in August 2021.
Rashid, 13, lost both his legs in an accident involving an unexploded shell in the Khogyani district of Afghanistan's Nangarhar Province. His six siblings were also injured. The Taliban says more than 120 people a month are killed or maimed in accidents involving unexploded ordinance.
Lima, aged 14, is paralyzed and unable to speak after contracting polio as a younger child. Her family say she was never vaccinated. The Taliban, which banned inoculation campaigns in areas of Afghanistan under its control prior to retaking power in 2021, now says it supports vaccination efforts.
A group of women and girls have been holding secret taekwondo sessions in the Afghan capital, Kabul. The Taliban, who returned to power in August 2021, has banned women from participating in sports and from exercising in public.
RFE/RL spoke to shopkeeper Charin Singh, who is believed to be the only Sikh remaining in the Afghan city of Jalalabad and the wider Nangharhar Province. He says attacks by militants have driven his family and other members of the Sikh community abroad.
Over 2,000 people still live in the frontline city of Hulyaipole in Ukraine's Zaporizhzhya region despite constant Russian shelling and a lack of electricity, gas, and water. RFE/RL's Yevhenia Nazarova traveled with the Ukrainian Army's Mariupol Chaplain Battalion.
RFE/RL's Yehor Lohinov traveled with members of the Ukrainian Army's 58th Independent Motorized Infantry Brigade and watched as they remotely fired Ukrainian-built Stuhna missiles from a shelter. The brigade is defending the city of Bakhmut in Ukraine's Donetsk region.
There is a long history of keeping pigeons in the Afghan capital, Kabul. In the past, some pigeons were bought and sold for the equivalent of hundreds of dollars, but prices have plunged along with incomes since the Taliban retook power in August 2021.
Fatima Amiri lost an eye in a suicide attack on a private college in Kabul on September 30. Just two weeks later, she passed her university entrance exams and plans to study computer science. The Taliban has barred female students from choosing many other university courses.
Emanuel Zima was a Czech janitor who worked in the Czechoslovakian Embassy in Budapest prior to World War II. He hid 13 Jews in the coal cellar of the building after the Nazis occupied Hungary in 1944 and when the building was being used by the Nazi secret police, the Gestapo.
The director of a 1,000-bed rehabilitation center for drug addicts in Kabul says they don't have enough basic food, medicine, and clothes for patients. Many rehabilitation centers have closed since international charities cut or reduced funding after the Taliban returned to power in August 2021.
Two gay Afghan men have told RFE/RL they live in constant fear under Taliban rule and have to meet their partners in secret. In a January report, Human Rights Watch found LGBT people in Afghanistan faced a"desperate situation and grave threats to their safety."
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