Yekaterina Vasyukova is a correspondent for Siberia.Realities, a regional news outlet of RFE/RL's Russian Service.
It was supposed to be a state-of-the-art medical center for Kamchatka, a remote Russian region in desperate need of quality health care in the best of times -- and now struggling to cope with COVID-19. Instead, some nine years after construction began, there's nothing but steel girders.
Schoolchildren from the village of Innokentievka in the Nanai district of Russia's Khabarovsk region spent their summer holidays in an unusual way, saving the Red Book turtles from forest predators and annual floods. The project is called Save the Far Eastern Turtle.
At first glance, people in the Russian Far Eastern city of Khabarovsk seem unfazed by the coronavirus that originated just next door in China. But with the border shut and flights canceled, the virus is affecting daily life and there are signs of creeping xenophobia.
