Russian University to Train ‘Social Media Police’ for Fighting Online Extremism

Russia’s leading management university has launched an undergraduate program to train experts who can monitor and detect “extremism” online, the pro-Kremlin daily Izvestia reported Wednesday. Backed by Russia’s National Anti-Terrorist Committee, the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA) program aims to train future media managers as well as spokespersons for government ministries…

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Russian Activist Found in North Ossetia Jail After Disappearing in Georgia

A Russian left-wing nationalist activist has been placed inside a detention center in southern Russia after going missing in neighboring Georgia a month ago, the independent news website Mediazona reported Wednesday. Rafail Shepelev went missing on Oct. 12 in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, where he has lived since 2021, according to the human rights project Perviy…

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Russian Prosecutors Seek 8-Year Jail Term for Artist Over Supermarket Protest

Russian prosecutors on Wednesday requested an eight-year prison sentence for artist Alexandra Skochilenko, who was arrested last year for an anti-war protest in which she replaced supermarket price tags with information about civilian deaths in Ukraine. The 33-year-old artist and musician has been in detention since April 2022, when she was arrested for swapping out price tags…

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5 Killed in Attacks Against Occupied Donetsk, Kremlin-Backed Mayor Says

Ukrainian shelling killed five people and wounded 18 in the Russian-occupied city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, the city’s Kremlin-backed mayor said Wednesday, a day after the attack was said to have taken place.  Officials in the occupied region accused Ukraine’s military of using long-range missiles supplied by the U.S. to carry out Tuesday evening’s deadly attack…

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Ukraine Says It Was Behind Car Bombing of Russian Proxy Politician

Ukraine said Wednesday it was behind the assassination of a Russia-backed politician and former militia leader who died in a car bomb attack in eastern Ukraine. Mikhail Filiponenko, a deputy in the pro-Moscow Luhansk regional parliament, was killed on Wednesday morning when an “unidentified explosive device” detonated under his 4×4, Russian investigators said earlier. In…

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Russia Hands Jehovah’s Witness Follower 7-Year Jail Term for ‘Extremism’

A court in Russia’s Chelyabinsk region has sentenced a Jehovah’s Witness follower to seven years in prison on charges of “extremism,” the religious organization’s Russian branch said Tuesday.  Yevgeny Bushev had been under house arrest since September 2022 on allegations of “organizing actions to continue the illegal activities of a banned religious organization,” the religious…

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As Russia’s Permafrost Thaws, Ancient Pathogens Risk Re-Awakening

Ancient pathogens that have been preserved in northern Russia’s permafrost for millennia could reawaken as global temperatures rise, scientists warn, potentially putting humanity at risk of never-before-seen diseases. Jean-Michel Claverie, a virologist and emeritus professor at the Aix-Marseille University School of Medicine, is one of the few scientists worldwide who has studied “zombie viruses” in…

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Russian Pro-War Pop Star’s Thesis Heavily Plagiarized From Wikipedia – Dissernet

Pro-Kremlin pop singer Shaman plagiarized large portions of his final thesis at a prestigious musical college in Moscow, according to the prominent anti-plagiarism project Dissernet.  Shaman, whose real name is Yaroslav Dronov, has emerged as one of Russia’s most well-known pop stars over the past year, as he has been regularly invited to perform at state-sponsored…

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Deputy Police Chief in Russia’s Dagestan Arrested After Anti-Israeli Riots

Updated to include official confirmation of Ismailov’s arrest. The deputy police chief of Russia’s North Caucasus republic of Dagestan has been arrested over a week after an anti-Israeli mob stormed a local airport, state media reported Tuesday. Searches were underway at the home and workplace of Dagestan’s Deputy Interior Minister Rufat Ismailov, according to the…

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Russian Subsea Telecoms Cable Damaged in Baltic Sea

Finnish authorities said Monday that a Russian telecommunications cable in the Baltic Sea was discovered damaged in October, roughly coinciding with damage to subsea infrastructure in Sweden and Finland. “The Russian salvage vessel Spasatel Karev began to repair Rostelecom’s Baltika telecommunications cable in the Gulf of Finland on Nov. 6,” Finland’s economic affairs ministry said…

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Activists Take Over Vacant ‘Russian’ Building in Amsterdam – Het Parool

Russian and Ukrainian activists have taken over a vacant building in the Dutch capital of Amsterdam that purportedly belongs to the Russian government, the Dutch newspaper Het Parool reported Sunday. Citing a member of the self-identified “group of international artists,” the publication said the four-story corner building in southern Amsterdam is believed to be “owned…

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Russia Jails 6 for ‘Trafficking’ in First Surrogacy Probe

Four Russian fertility clinic employees and two surrogate mothers have been handed jail sentences of varying lengths as part of the country’s first surrogacy investigation, state media reported Friday. Authorities launched Russia’s first-ever surrogacy probe in 2020 after one of the babies born to a surrogate mother was found dead in an apartment outside Moscow. Moscow’s…

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Russian State Pipeline Firm Recruited Employees for Ukraine War – IStories

Russia’s oil pipeline monopoly Transneft sent hundreds of its employees to fight in Ukraine last summer as the Kremlin struggled to recruit soldiers for its war, according to an investigation by the independent news website IStories.  Journalists said that, in the months before President Vladimir Putin announced a “partial” mobilization in September 2022, Transneft was sending and…

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Secretly, Silently and Sneakily Yours

Втайне: secretly, in secret A translator friend of mine recently announced with some fanfare that he had found the most misspelled word in the Russian language. He had documented 11 misspellings, which is impressive — although I’m sure my personal record for misspelling здравствуйте over the years has topped that. In any case, the word…

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Alexander Lukashenko, President of the Republic of Belarus, and Alexey Likhachev, Rosatom Director General, visited Belarus NPP

Alexander Lukashenko, President of the Republic of Belarus, and Alexey Likhachev, Rosatom Director General, visited Belarus NPP. The ceremony at the NPP was attended by Alexander Lukashenko, President of the Republic of Belarus, and the management of the fuel and energy sector of the country. Alexey Likhachev, ROSATOM Director General, and Viktor Karankevich, Minister of…

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Russia Shrugs Off Latest U.S. Sanctions

The Kremlin on Friday dismissed a new package of U.S. sanctions, saying Russia had learned to “overcome” such economic hurdles since the Ukraine conflict began. Washington on Thursday sanctioned several Russian energy and finance companies as well as individuals and firms in Turkey, China and the United Arab Emirates it said were supporting Russia’s offensive…

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Russia Jails Activist Pyotr Verzilov 8.5 Years in Absentia for ‘War Fakes’

A Moscow court has sentenced exiled Russian-Canadian activist Pyotr Verzilov to more than eight years of prison in absentia for spreading “war fakes,” the Mediazona news website reported Friday. Moscow’s Basmanny District Court found Verzilov, who is currently residing outside Russia, guilty of spreading “deliberately false” information about the Russian Armed Forces. He was handed…

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Kremlin Orders Regions to Recruit Marginalized Groups for Military Service – IStories

The Kremlin has ordered regional officials to file weekly reports on the recruitment of marginalized people in Russia for its war in Ukraine, the investigative news website IStories reported Thursday, citing an official letter it obtained. The letter, which is dated Oct. 3, lists the office of the Presidential Envoy to Russia’s Central Federal District…

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Siberian Opposition Deputy Arrested on Extortion Charges

An opposition deputy who ran for governor of Siberia’s Krasnoyarsk region this fall has been arrested on charges of extortion, which the politician on Thursday dismissed as politically motivated. Investigators accuse Alexander Gliskov of blackmailing a state-owned company executive in 2016-17 in order to receive a large bribe.  Krasnoyarsk’s Tsentralny District Court ruled after a…

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Russia’s Chief Rabbi Condemns ‘Propaganda of Hate’ After Anti-Israeli Riots

The leader of Russia’s Jewish communities has condemned what he called the “propaganda of hate” after anti-Israeli riots rocked the country’s North Caucasus republic of Dagestan. Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar linked Sunday’s violence at Makhachkala International Airport to previous anti-Semitic attacks in Russia’s Muslim-majority regions that took place in the weeks since Israel launched a…

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Israel Has No Right to Self-Defense as ‘Occupier,’ Russia Says

Israel has no right to self-defense against Hamas militants in Gaza as an occupying power in Palestine, Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations said Wednesday. Vasily Nebenzya used his speech at the special UN General Assembly session on Palestine to condemn Western “hypocrisy” over Palestinian civilian deaths amid their criticism of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.…

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