Yulia Paramonova is a correspondent for the North.Realities Desk of RFE/RL’s Russian Service.
Igor Baryshnikov has been sentenced to 7 1/2 years in prison for Facebook posts critical of the Kremlin's war in Ukraine. Now the 64-year-old's lawyers and family are scrambling to secure medical treatment for a suspected-cancer diagnosis and figure out how to care for his ailing 97-year-old mother.
Scores of Ukrainians hoping to visit their homes in Russian-occupied areas are being stranded in no-man's-land as they await clearance to enter.
Journalist Arseny Vesnin and his girlfriend, Ksenia, escaped repression in Russia and now live, work, and protest their country’s war from a small yacht in the Mediterranean Sea.
A 36-year-old Russian blogger lives in a Kyiv high-rise, enduring bombardment, blackouts, and freezing cold together with other residents of the Ukrainian capital. He fights back by helping the elderly, delivering groceries where they are needed, and gathering money to help people rebuild.
A Russian man who has broadcast news contradicting the official Kremlin narrative about Russia’s full invasion of Ukraine has been sentenced to three years in a penal colony for spreading “false news” about the Russian Army.
With European countries closing their airspace and ratcheting up other sanctions against Russia over its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, residents of the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad -- geographically encircled by EU members Lithuania and Poland -- are bracing for serious economic pain.
As Russia grapples with a fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, the exclave of Kaliningrad is facing a shortage of ambulance staff that has left people waiting days for emergency medical aid. Paramedics have been resigning in massive numbers because of unbearable workloads and declining pay.
The condition of a Russian woman who launched a dry hunger strike to protest against the "anti-sanitary conditions" of her prison cell is deteriorating rapidly.
Young people have grabbed most of the attention in Russia's pro-democracy protest movement. But a few resolute pensioners have joined their ranks. “I live by the principle: Do what you must and come what may,” one elderly activist said.
Hospitals in the western Russian city of Kaliningrad have all but stopped testing for coronavirus infections as officials report a steady decline in new cases. Locals say the government is doing everything to create the impression that the pandemic is under control in order to reopen the economy.
A criminal case has been opened against an undisclosed number of police officers in the Russian city of Kaliningrad for allegedly fabricating a drug-possession case to inflate their performance on the job. Rights advocates say the case reflects a widespread police practice of planting drugs and fabricating criminal claims for a variety of nefarious reasons.
Residents of the small Russian exclave of Kaliningrad will have to get used to a new level of isolation as neighboring Poland and Lithuania have ordered their borders closed to combat the new coronavirus pandemic in Europe. For people who travel to the European Union more often than to what they call "big Russia," the coming weeks -- or more -- present challenges.
Last year, about 35 venerable stone and brick buildings were destroyed in Russia's Baltic Sea exclave of Kaliningrad. In the decades since the former East Prussia was annexed by the Soviet Union, its centuries-old German heritage has been melting away -- and in the case of physical structures, disappearing brick by brick.
Russian President Vladimir Putin recently called for an expansion of the government's Rural Doctor program. But many doctors say the program isn't working and are opting out, while others have clashed with local officials who are trying to take back money allocated under the scheme.
Officials and state-friendly media in the western Russian exclave of Kaliningrad have been waging a campaign against historians and museums in what appears to be an effort to erase the region's long German history.
