The Week's Best: 10 RFE/RL Stories You Need To Read (Or Watch)

Hey, you’re busy! We know rferl.org isn’t the only website you read. And that it’s just possible you may have missed some of our most compelling journalism this 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.

After the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, hundreds of thousands of children from hard-hit areas of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia spent summer vacations in the West to get away, even for a short time, from the irradiated region. Among them: Today’s Belarusian opposition leader, Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya, part of a generation of “children of Chernobyl.” By Alena Shalayeva

With dozens of new detentions and arrests of people who participated in or covered the April 21 demonstrations in support of imprisoned opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, the Russian authorities seem determined to quash the most effective opposition movement since Putin took power two decades ago. By Mark Krutov, Maria Chernova, and Robert Coalson

Hoteliers on Georgia’s Black Sea Coast hope huge discounts can revive Batumi’s decimated tourism industry. By Amos Chapple

An independent TV channel in Siberia is one of the few Russian media outlets that has covered Aleksei Navalny. The Krasnoyarsk Independent Regional Channel (TVK) has reported on Navalny’s anti-corruption investigations and on protests against President Putin and his government. But the channel has paid a price for its independence: It’s facing pressure from the authorities and has been removed from cable TV services. By Current Time and Neil Bowdler

A leaked audio recording in which Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif complains of Revolutionary Guards interference and having to “sacrifice diplomacy for the [military] field” has prompted hard-line calls for action against Tehran’s top diplomat. By Golnaz Esfandiari

On the night of April 28, in Pushkarsky park in the center of St. Petersburg, a mural depicting Aleksei Navalny appeared on the side of a building, with the inscription “Hero of a New Time.” The artist is unknown. By Current Time

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, but the family takes pride in the unique information they’re able to collect. By Harutyun Mansuryan and RFE/RL’s Russian Service