Harutyun Mansuryan is a multimedia video producer for RFE/RL in Prague.
In the Siberian city of Kiselyovsk, locals live within a stone's throw of gaping open-pit coal mines. The operations within the city limits are technically forbidden, but residents say clever legal language has allowed the mining companies to keep digging close to their homes.
Magomed Magomedov and his two sons, both named Magomed, work in 10-day shifts to monitor the weather at a meteorological station high in the mountains of Russia's southern Daghestan Republic. The site is cold, poorly supplied, and prone to avalanches.
Far below the ice of Lake Baikal in Siberia lies a telescope used to search for neutrinos. These cosmic particles can pass through the Earth undetected, but in rare cases they emit radiation that can be measured in large bodies of water.
Sergei Sazanakov was hunting in Russia's Khakassia region when an accident left him trapped in the snow overnight. He lost his lower legs to frostbite, and later had to fight for his children in court after his wife left him. But Sazanakov has learned how to run his farm and care for his family.
Thousands of Moscow factory workers have been forced out of company housing over the years as plants closed their dormitories or shut down altogether. But some families have stayed on despite barely livable conditions, and are fighting in court for their right to decent housing.
Russia's remote Kurgan region, near Kazakhstan, is the location of about one-sixth of the country's uranium reserves. A subsidiary of the state nuclear agency is expanding its operations there. But for many local residents, the growth of the mines means not greater wealth, but greater dangers.
In an ethnic Tatar village in Russia's Omsk region, drinking water comes from the ice of a local lake, which is cut in winter, carried, and stored for year-round use. It's a good business for those who do the hard work of collecting the ice.
Russians living near one of the country's largest landfills say they can barely breathe due to gas from the site, which has been growing without restriction for years. Locals hold frequent protests against unchecked dumping, but they say their complaints fall on deaf ears.
The Tiny Russian Village That Lives In A Five-Story Building Almost the entire population of the tiny village of Karmadon has lived for decades in a five-story building. After the Georgian-Ossetian conflict in the early 1990s, many of the villagers lost their jobs in the nearby sanatorium.
Syava was once a thriving town of 10,000 people some 730 kilometers east of Moscow. But it's dying. After the main factory went bankrupt, rail service stopped, the main hospital closed, and the streets are lined with abandoned houses.
Sairagul Sauytbay, an ethnic Kazakh from China, was sent to work as a teacher in one of the country's so-called "reeducation camps." Human rights researchers say more than 1 million detainees, mostly Muslims, have been imprisoned in the camps.
The Circum-Baikal Railway was a feat of engineering when it was built during the reign of Russia's Tsar Nicholas II. Today, the route beside the world's deepest lake is used more for tourism than for transport, but it still inspires visitors with its stunning views.
Siberia's Evenk region is larger than any European country but it is home to only around 17,000 people. It's so vast and remote that scientists have spent decades searching and failing to find one of the largest meteorites ever to fall to Earth -- the Tunguska meteorite.
Russian peacekeepers have been deployed on the road connecting Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh. The deployment is among the terms of a Moscow-mediated truce signed by Armenia and Azerbaijan that put an end to 44 days of deadly fighting.
A dangerous mountain trail is the only direct route that connects the remote southern Kyrgyz village of Zardaly to the outside world. Every year, people and cattle plummet from the cliffs, but locals continue to use the perilous path because they have no other choice.
In the southern Russian Daghestani village of Kvankhidatl, people extract salt using a unique ancient method. They claim they produce the purest and most delicious salt in the world.
After weeks of protests, environmental activists in Russia's central Bashkortostan region have won a battle to protect Kushtau Hill from mining. The Bashkir Soda Company had planned to mine limestone from the site. But activists say the hill is a natural treasure and home to many endangered species.
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