The Week’s Best: Stories You May Have Missed

On New Year’s Eve in 1994, just over two weeks after Moscow began its first war against separatists in Russia’s southern republic of Chechnya, Russian federal forces launched their first major assault on the capital, Grozny. Instead of ringing in the new year, Grozny residents cowered under shelling and bombing. By Vladimir Voronov

Putin will this week launch TurkStream, the first of two new natural-gas pipelines to Europe that will enable Russia to reroute energy exports around Ukraine, potentially giving the Kremlin more leverage over Kyiv. By Todd Prince

Some countries’ borders don’t seem to make any sense at all. In the first episode of a three-part series we’re calling Mad Maps, we take a look at crazy national boundaries in Central Asia, which have the power to spark violence. Why are they so complicated? By Kaisa Alliksaar and Carlos Coelho

The tension between Iran and the United States after Washington’s assassination of top Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani has put a focus on Tehran’s military capabilities. By Dragan Stavljanin and Pete Baumgartner

The Iranian supreme leader’s speedy replacement of a commander to head the Revolutionary Guards’ secretive unit for proxies and other operations abroad hints at continuity. What do we know about the Quds Force from its first three decades? By Morad Veisi

Temperatures of minus 40 degrees Celsius mean only the horse farmers and their families stay to endure the winter in the village of Tumul in the Far Eastern Russian region of Yakutia. But ancient traditions and crafts still survive there, despite a dwindling local population. By Current Time and Neil Bowdler

The lives destroyed by an optical illusion published during Stalin’s Great Terror. By Eduard Andryushchenko

Uzbekistan is engaged in a massive PR campaign to convince the West it is reforming. But despite not-so-subtle efforts by Shavkat Mirziyoev’s administration to create distance, Islam Karimov’s shadow still looms three years after his death. By Glenn Kates

A growing number of Russians are relying on loans to make ends meet each month. That means ballooning household debts and booming business for poorly regulated lenders and collection agencies that often use aggressive tactics. By AFP and Margot Buff

Surgeon Andrei Pavlenko treated cancer patients in St. Petersburg, but his work took on a new dimension when he became a patient himself. In a widely viewed video diary, Pavlenko shared his experiences of going through treatment and encouraged others not to lose hope. By Current Time