The Week's Best: Stories You May Have Missed

We know that rferl.org isn’t the only website you read, and it’s possible that you may have missed some of our most interesting journalism from the past week. To make sure you’re up-to-date, here are some of the highlights produced by RFE/RL’s team of correspondents, multimedia editors, and visual journalists over the past seven days.

Afghan authorities have relocated 15-year-old Qamar Gul and her siblings to a safe house after she used an AK-47 to shoot dead two Taliban militants early on July 16. Gul killed the two Taliban members moments after they had executed both of her parents. By RFE/RL’s Radio Free Afghanistan

Almost four years after his arrest, gulag historian Yury Dmitriyev has been sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison. A longtime colleague says his conviction, and the excavations at the Soviet-era execution site he discovered, signal an escalation of the Russian state’s ongoing campaign to shape its historical narrative in a way that relativizes at best, and whitewashes at worst, the darkest episodes of its past. By Matthew Luxmoore

Lana Sator and Arseniy Kotov travel across Russia in search of abandoned places. Their blogs dedicated to industrial tourism and Soviet architecture have already attracted an impressive audience. The two recently traveled to the North Caucasus in search of hidden gems in the region. They shared their findings, which included hotels, a dam, and a whole village, with RFE/RL. By RFE/RL’s North Caucasus Service

When presidential hopeful Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya addressed a crowd of thousands at a campaign rally on July 19, she was flanked by two other women: the campaign chiefs for would-be candidates who sought to challenge authoritarian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka but were barred from the ballot. It captured what appears to be the leading role women have taken ahead of the crucial August 9 election. By Tony Wesolowsky

A man gives CPR in the back of an open minivan as it speeds through city streets. He’s one of some 200 volunteers who are running their own service to bring oxygen to the critically ill, as Kyrgyzstan’s ambulances and hospitals are overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients. “These young guys have taken over the functions of the government,” says a grateful man, after they brought oxygen for his gasping father. By RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz Service and Ray Furlong

After an RFE/RL investigation, names and faces can now be put to the Russia-backed militants — including one with ties to a longtime Putin aide in the Kremlin — who ordered the extrajudicial executions of Ukrainians by firing squad and set a dark tone for the war in the Donbas. By Christopher Miller, Sergei Dobrynin, and Mark Krutov

During its nine years of existence, Aleksei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) has been instrumental in exposing corruption in Russia, producing dozens of detailed investigative videos on oligarchs, government officials, executives at state-owned companies, and their friends and relatives. By Todd Prince

In the late 1970s, three photographers — Vladimir Vorobyov, Vladimir Sokolayev, and Aleksandr Trofimov — got a job at the Kuznetsk Metallurgical Plant in the Siberian city of Novokuznetsk. Their task was to photograph the enterprise in all its glory. But a year later, the photographers caught the attention of KGB officers and were later declared enemies of the state. By Alla Mozhdzhenskaya

How do Iranian Jews, living in Israel for decades, feel about their adopted homeland? For the documentary From Tehran To Jerusalem, RFE/RL’s Radio Farda spoke to members of the community about their split identities and their struggles to build a new life in the Jewish state. By RFE/RL’s Radio Farda, Hasan Sarbakhshian, and Neil Bowdler