The Movement and the Mural: It started as an act of graffiti at a playground in Minsk. It turned into a remarkable campaign of defiance against an increasingly totalitarian regime. (New York Times Magazine)

Hope and Hopelessness in Taipei: She watched as Hong Kong’s protests were put down, her friends jailed. Now she fears for her own future — and Taiwan’s. (New York Times Magazine)

The Disappeared: In a China increasingly hostile to its Uighur minority, her parents tried for years to live as model citizens. Then one day they stopped answering her messages. (New York Times Magazine)

The Teacher and the Genocide: He dreamed of educating the children in his village. But soon he learned that it was dangerous for the Rohingya to dream. (New York Times Magazine)

The View from Moscow: How the slights of the post-Cold War Era — and a power vacuum left by America — propelled Russia’s resurgence as a global power. (New York Times Magazine)

The Life and Death of Denis Voronenkov: After a former Russian parliamentarian was murdered on the streets of Kiev, Ukrainian officials were quick to blame the Kremlin. The truth was more complicated (New York Times Magazine)

The Boys from Baga: How four boy soldiers survived Boko Haram (New York Times Magazine)

Sons and Daughters: The village where girls turn into boys (Harper’s)

Attack of the Killer Robots: Killer Robots Are Coming And These People Are Trying To Stop Them (Buzzfeed)

The Hunt for Poland’s Buried Nazi Gold Trains(Buzzfeed)

The Bears Who Came to Town And Would Not Go Away (Outside)

Two Sisters’ Escape from Syria (New York Magazine)

Fugue State: The struggle for national identity in wartime Ukraine (Harper’s)

A Black Cat in a Dark Room: A week in the Mysterious Sleeping Villages of Kazakhstan (Buzzfeed)

“Don’t Shoot! I’ll Put the Animals Back! Please!”: How a flash flood that killed hundreds of animals at the Tbilisi Zoo explains the failure of Post-Soviet Georgia (The New Republic)

Guns and Poses: Smuggling and subterfuge in the North African desert (Harper’s)

If we run and they kill us, so be it. But we have to run now: The Nigerian school girls who escaped Boko Haram (Matter)

The People’s Assembly: How Egypt lost its parliament (Harper’s)

Tea and a Kidnapping: In the desert with the world’s friendliest hostage-takers (The Atlantic, reprinted in Best American Travel Writing)

This is How You Start a War: Libya’s Frantic Fight for the Future (GQ, reprinted in GQ Japan)

Gaza’s Surfer Girls (The Atlantic)