Features
Katie Marie Davies
Journalist
United Kingdom
NCTJ-qualified, Russian-speaking reporter with indepth experience writing news, features, and social media content.
United Kingdom
NCTJ-qualified, Russian-speaking reporter with indepth experience writing news, features, and social media content.
Features
When the artist Polina Osipova saw photos of civilian bodies strewn across the street in the Ukrainian village of Bucha, she found she had no Russian words left to describe the atrocity. Instead, she sat and wrote an anti-war message in her mother tongue: Chuvash.
Half of Kazakhstan is under 29, which means young people are the future more than ever. But can they make their voices heard in a country where old-world values still rule?
When Russian troops began to cross the Ukrainian border on February 24, President Vladimir Putin launched two simultaneous wars. The first was a devastating military strike against Ukraine. The second was a crackdown against his own people.
The Russian government used to be known as a social media innovator. So why is its latest foray into TikTok so amazingly bad?
In Russia’s far eastern republic of Yakutia, something remarkable is brewing: a cottage film industry dedicated to bringing the lives and legends of indigenous people to the big screen. But as awards and international collaboration start to flood into the region, is the unique cultural ecosystem in danger of being overrun?
How do you report from a secretive nation where information is scarce and the absurd often proves to be true?
Tech and Business
Delivering newspapers in Belarus is dangerous work. But Telegram is creating a new wave of printed, underground samizdat.
I'm standing in a darkened room in Warsaw while an assistant straps me into a virtual reality headset. Two controllers are placed in my hands. The screen in front of my eyes goes black, plunging me into darkness before a street unfurls before me.
Belarus has worked hard to rebuild its image as an Eastern European tech success story. But as President Alexander Lukashenko cracks down on pro-democracy protests, many startup leaders believe he is also destroying Belarus' potential as a hi-tech hub.
Traditional media in Belarus has been repeatedly targeted by censorship, harassment, and attacks. Now, a new generation of decentralised news outlets have joined the fray — but new-tech solutions offer just as many pitfalls as perks.