Novaya Gazeta has obtained a document indicating that Aleksandr Bastrykin, head of the Investigative Committee, has submitted his resignation.
TV Rain, the last independent TV station in Russia, has found that businessman Pyotr Kolbin a former co-owner of the Gunvor, was a childhood friend of President Vladimir Putin.
Natalya Kasperskaya, a prominent Russian IT entrepreneur and president of the InfoWatch group of companies said at a business conference today that the government “really was talking about decrypting and analyzing all Internet traffic of Russian citizens” and this was a good thing. Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Fund exposed her own business interest in selling DPI (deep packet inspection) software to the government.
President Vladimir Putin has made two major personnel shuffles and urged the “optimization” of the number of parties in Russia, indicating further consolidation over an already-docile parliament and intelligence service and preparation for his installation as president in 2018.
US Secretary of State John Kerry said Russia was living ‘in a parallel universe’ as diplomatic niceties were dropped clash with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov over Syria policy at the UN.
Yesterday, September 20, Furat Media, an ISIS affiliate, released a video plea allegedly of a captured agent of the Federal Security Service (FSB), Russia’s domestic intelligence agency.
Yevgeny Zhilin, a Ukrainian critic of EuroMaidan and leader of the Oplot [Stronghold] organization in Kharkiv was murdered in a Moscow suburban cafe yesterday.
Not surprisingly, the ruling party, United Russia, has overwhelmingly prevailed with 76% of the State Duma; the Communist Party, Zhirinovsky’s party and Just Russia have far fewer seats. No opposition party has cleared the 5% threshold to enter parliament, but candidates from Rodina and Civic Platform as well as one independent have obtained seats in single-mandate districts.
LIVE UPDATES: Today Russians go to the polls to elect members of the national parliament, local legislatures and governors. Monitors report massive violations across Russia, notably use of the notorious ‘carousel’ system of multiple voting, ballot-purchasing, intimidation of monitors and ballot-box tampering. Welcome to our column, Russia Update, where we will be closely following day-to-day […]
A self-styled “Museum of Novorossiya” in St. Petersburg was raided by officers of the Investigative Committee and Federal Security Service this morning, possibly in connection with two IED blasts in the last year near traffic police posts.
