🥣What dish is the main accompaniment of the New Year's table in your country? Write in the comments. In Russia, it's the Olivier salad! Every house have its own version.

What ingredients were added to the original version? We show it in the video.

Watch the whole episode with the recipe of the dish in our telegram channel with documentaries. Happy New Year!

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🪖For war correspondents the front line is a second home, where they see the fighters more often than their own families. They also sleep in trenches, come under bombardment and risk their lives. But journalists as well as soldiers know well what they do it for. ‘Thanks to us… at least in some part of the world, people know how things really are,’ says Evgeny Poddubny, one of the subjects of our documentary. Evgeny has much experience in reporting war zones. He worked in Libya, Syria, South Ossetia and now is performing in Donbass, too.

To learn more about the work of Evgeny and other war correspondents - Pavel Kukushkin, Murad Gazdiev, Georgy Medvedev - see our video and the film War Correspondents.

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🎁Giving gifts in China is a whole art. For example, a business gift is necessarily presented in a gift box, which will not be opened in front of you. This is done specifically so that the giver doesn't see the recipient's facial expression in the event the latter doesn't like it.

When receiving a gift, there is also a special rule: first you need to refuse the presented gift, and only then accept it, and always with two hands. By the way, do you know what the Chinese will never present each other? The answer is in our video.

Are you interested? Then watch a whole documentary on this cultural curiosity.

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🧖‍♂️Visiting the banya is an integral part of Russians’ New Year holidays. The experience consists of sitting in a closed room with the temperature around 60-90 degrees Celsius, receiving a beating on the back with birch branches and then submerging into icy water, and then starting from the very beginning. It may shock some, but Russians really enjoy the extreme pastime, some even believe that the banya helps them to become cleansed physically and spiritually.

Take a look at a traditional visiting of banya in our video and the film Suffering for soup: The secret of authentic ‘ukha’– an episode of Taste of Russia series.

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‘Suddenly I heard they had commenced bombarding of the airport. Of course, I was so frightened! So much! I dropped the hose, I dropped it all! I ran for my life. Didn’t think about anything’.

In 2014, hegumene Michaela (Shevchenko) and a monastery worker Yulia suddenly found themselves in the centre of the battles for Donetsk airport. The militias were engaged in a fight with Ukrainian forces, which had seized control of the facility. Listen to the subjects of the film Portaitissa of Donetsk, who talk about their lives under shelling in our clip.

Though the inhabitants had to live through the worst hardships, they say it was the happiest time of their lives. What do they mean? On World Day of Prayer for Peace, marked by some countries on January 1, watch the documentary and find out.

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👨‍👩‍👦‍👦Omar has not seen his family for a long time due to the Iraq War.

After 40 years, he can finally meet them in Baghdad. However, the ongoing military conflicts have changed the capital of Iraq and divided all of the family. How did this heartbreaking story end? Watch in our video.

Find out more in our film Iraq. The Story of My Family.

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💭‘But imagine what would happen travelling in a white ambulance with red stripes…It’s a real target.’

Natalya, medical platoon leader with the ‘Rus’ Battallion, explains why their medical vehicle has been repainted. Doctors try not to attract too much attention in the combat zone. The enemy never used to touch the red crosses, but now, that's changed. Natalia says the nationalists are targeting doctors.

An exerpt from our documentary Feminine Front. Share it with others.

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Her husband and child are rag dolls.

Meirivone Rocha Moraes, 37, from Brazil, married a doll her mother made for her. She took pity on her daughter, who had suffered from loneliness and could not build a family of her own. So she made her a boy, complete with a moustache, dark hair, and blue eyes out of cloth. Meirivone liked him so much that she first got engaged and then married him.

That wasn’t the end of the story. A few months ago, the woman ‘gave birth’ to a son. She broadcast ‘the birth’, which included a doctor and a nurse, on social media. After that, the young family suffered both breakups (allegedly because of her husband’s cheating) and happy reunions. Check out our video for more details.

In Japan, perhaps more than anywhere else, dolls are preferred over real partners. The main character of I Married a Hologram (2021), Akihiko Kondo, is married to a fictional character, but has different versions of his wife – digital, human-size one and small. He says he would never trade her for a live woman. Why so? Watch the film and find out.

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