Current Time is the Russian-language TV and digital network run by RFE/RL.
Holding a sign that said: "Free All Political Prisoners," Nikolai Boyarshinov held a one-man picket outside a courthouse in St. Petersburg, Russia, to protest the high-profile "Network" terrorism case against his son that human rights groups have called "fabricated." The trial of activists Yuly Boyarshinov and Viktor Filinkov resumed on May 25. Both are members of a group known as Set (Network) that Russian investigators said planned to organize a series of bomb attacks in Russia during the presidential election and the World Cup soccer tournament in 2018.
Salamat Baktybek-Kyzy has been saving the profits from her florist business in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, in order to buy herself a prosthetic leg. But when orders collapsed amid the COVID-19 lockdown, she decided to start donating flowers for free.
Prosecutors in Moscow say they have started an investigation after Current Time reported alleged shortages of medicines and labor violations at a makeshift hospital for coronavirus patients set up by a well-known Azerbaijani-Russian businessman Araz Agalarov.
Detainees at Kyiv's notoriously overcrowded Lukyanivska prison, parts of which are 160 years old, have been offered a way out of overcrowded cells with up to a dozen inmates and poor sanitation. But there's a catch. More spacious, refurbished cells, with fewer prisoners and modern bathrooms, come at a price.
The Russian Army has set up field hospitals in a remote Siberian village, where more than 1,200 people have been infected with COVID-19 at the country's largest gold mine.
A third member of an RFE/RL film crew working on a documentary in Belarus has died following a car crash earlier this month.
COVID-19 is exposing acute funding shortages in Ukraine's health service. In Kharkiv, a public hospital is mostly relying on private donations and patients are paying for medicines that are supposed to be free.
Current Time has spoken to spouses and close colleagues of medical staff who have died from COVID-19 while caring for others infected by the coronavirus.
President Vladimir Putin has acknowledged a "complicated" situation in Russia's southern republic of Daghestan after a local mufti described the region's battle against COVID-19 as a "catastrophe."
Largely unseen footage of the funeral and official mourning following the death of Soviet leader Josef Stalin is featured in a new documentary, State Funeral, by Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa. It's being shown on Current Time, the Russian-language network led by RFE/RL in cooperation with VOA. The mourning events were held at factories, on collective farms, town squares, and in meeting halls across the Soviet Union.
Russia has suspended the use of a model of domestically-made ventilators after they were linked to hospital fires that killed COVID-19 patients in Moscow and St. Petersburg. The Aventa-M ventilators were also included in a high-profile delivery of Russian medical equipment sold to the United States last month but have not been used there.
The World Health Organization’s representative in Russia has downplayed doubts about the country’s coronavirus statistics even as new public data suggest authorities may be undercounting death toll from the pandemic.
Volunteer cyclists in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, have been delivering critical insulin to diabetes patients self-isolating in their homes during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In Russia, emergency crews rushed to a St. Petersburg hospital on May 12 where a fire reportedly killed five COVID-19 patients. The Interfax news agency reported that a faulty ventilator had caught fire "right before the doctor's eyes."
Central Asia's largest bazaar has been closed for a month now, causing hunger and poverty for some 50,000 people in Bishkek who worked there before COVID-19 struck. Some of these people live on-site in shipping containers, while others live at an informal shantytown on a garbage dump near the giant marketplace in the Kyrgyz capital.
Russian funeral homes and undertakers have been adapting to new regulations governing the burial or cremation of COVID-19 victims. Meanwhile, mourners are being offered the chance to attend funeral services online.
A 97-year-old Russian World War II veteran has been inspired by the fund-raising efforts of Captain Tom Moore. She says she can't walk around a garden to gather donations like the 100-year-old British veteran did, but she is posting war stories online every day to raise money for the families of Russian medics who have died fighting COVID-19.
The Ukrainian government promised that all medical personnel would be tested for COVID-19 once every five days, but doctors have told RFE/RL that has not happened. Medics also said that there were shortages of protective gear and that government promises of increased pay have not been met.
Russian students say they're being threatened with expulsion from medical school if they refuse to work in hospitals as the country's health system struggles to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic. The move to recruit students comes as questions are being asked about how many medical workers have died and amid allegations that there is a lack of personal protective equipment.
Many migrant workers in Moscow have lost their jobs and are not getting enough to eat amid the COVID-19 lockdown, according to volunteers who are distributing food parcels.
Load more
