Those following the reports of gay men fleeing Chechnya in the face of a Chechen government-backed campaign of intimidation may have wondered exactly why Novaya Gazeta has decided to publish these accounts right now
Chechen clergy led an assembly in the Central Mosque of Grozny on April 3, calling for retribution against Novaya Gazeta’s journalists for their reporting on persecution of LGBT in the republic.
Pro-Kremlin activists from the extremist movement that harass liberals such as Anti-Maidan have appeared again and again in different cities at times when public grief is required for occasions such as the deaths of Russian ambassadors.
When Russian media reported March 24 that 6 National Guardsmen and 6 militants were killed in a “shoot-out” in Chechnya, it was a typical story with scant details. Now Novaya Gazeta has evidence the Chechens were executed point-blank, contradicting the official report.
A recent opinion poll found that 46% of Russians admired Stalin; they were indifferent to Brezhnev and really disliked Gorbachev.
A new report by Russian activist Ilya Yashin describes the outline’s of Moscow’s plans to attempt to influence Ukraine through parties in the Ukrainian parliament that have been Russia’s traditional allies.
“Wherever there is oligarchy, Putin has a chance to bring people to power,” says opposition activist Ilya Yashin.
Reports of precise numbers and accounts of tracking Islamist fighters as they leave Russia and return open up the question of how much the FSB controls these fighters, not only to gather intelligence but to perform missions.
Russian state media managers have engaged in three types of propagandistic distortions: skewed selection and translation of US media; biased Russian investigation of US news stories; and outright fabrication of stories, sometimes loosely based on real US news stories.
A survey of RT and Sputnik tweets indicates a clear bias against Hillary Clinton in their coverage of the US election.
