Austin Malloy

Increasingly oppressive conditions inside Russian prisons are driving desperate inmates to enlist in the military to fight in Ukraine. Speaking to RFE/RL from behind bars in Russia, a Kyrgyz inmate said that many convicts enlist because they cannot endure such harsh prison conditions. Those who refuse to sign military contracts are kept in cold isolation cells and given little food or water, according to a lawyer who works for jailed migrants.

Georgia's Pro-Western opposition says it will not recognize the results of the country's parliamentary elections. The country's ruling Georgian Dream party won just under 53 percent of the vote, with around 70 percent of the precincts counted, according to the Central Election Commission.

Georgian journalists said they faced intimidation and violence while covering the country's crucial parliamentary elections on October 26. European election observers said on October 27 that the vote took place in a “divisive” environment with widespread intimidation and instances of violence.

Grappling with the most expensive electricity prices in South Asia, many Paksitanis are going off-grid and turning to low-cost solar panels from China. But the shift to solar risks creating a new fiscal crisis for the government.

A Ukrainian police officer from Mariupol has returned to service in the embattled Donetsk region after being captured during the siege of the Azovstal steel plant and spending months in a prison camp run by Russian forces.

As their country marks 1,000 days of war, Ukrainian soldiers on the front line spoke with Current Time correspondent Borys Sachalko about the ongoing conflict with Russia. Dmytro, a Ukrainian soldier who has been fighting since Moscow's 2022 invasion, said when the war started he had no fear, but now, after years of fighting, he feels like he has no more emotions.

A biotechnologist in Kazakhstan has raised an army of trash-eating flies to help clean up the country's waste problems. In Kazakhstan, around 40 percent of food waste, is sent to landfills. This fly farm processes 15-20 tons of organic waste per month and turns it into fertilizer.

The Russian Army is positioned only a few kilometers from Kupyansk, a city in Ukraine's Kharkiv region where some 4,000 people still live. Current Time correspondent Borys Sachalko spoke with locals about how they manage to live in the embattled city amid daily Russian attacks. One local woman said that her family had decided to evacuate as Russian forces inch closer to the city.

Maryna Shymanska, a 100-year-old Ukrainian woman, spoke about surviving the Holodomor, a Stalin-era famine that killed millions of Ukrainians. Each November, Ukraine remembers victims of the man-made famine that occurred when Soviet authorities seized food to force peasants to join collective farms.

RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service was given exclusive access to film one of Ukraine's long-range drone units as it prepared to strike a target in Russia. The soldiers say Ukraine's domestically built drones can strike up to 2,000 kilometers inside Russia.