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At this very moment, Kirov police are searching [ru] Alexey Navalny's local headquarters, established to coordinate the blogger's public outreach in the city where he currently stands trial for embezzling roughly half a million dollars. The case has attracted international attention as the latest in a long series of politicized Russian judicial proceedings, including the trials of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, three members of Pussy Riot, and others. More »

Dissidents have fled Russia for as long as there has been a Russia from which to flee. Earlier this week, April 7, 2013, activist Ilya Yashin startled many when he announced [ru] on Twitter that protest figure and former World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov had abandoned his leadership position in the oppositionist group “Solidarity,” and likely decided to emigrate. More »

Russian Internet censors at Roskomnadzor have reversed a decision to ban Wikipedia's entry for “cannabis smoking,” following a reexamination of the article after a new round of edits by Wikipedian volunteers. In a statement [ru] on its website today, April 10, 2013, Roskomnadzor announced the unbanning, though at least nine [ru] other Wikipedia articles apparently remain on the RuNet blacklist.

As RuNet Echo previously reported [GV], Alexey Navalny has appealed to his readers to make up their own minds about his innocence or guilt in an upcoming embezzling trial by releasing for download the financial documents of the firms involved. Now, his opponents appear to have taken a page out of his book, creating a website which is a direct copy [ru] of Navalny's original [ru]. Unlike Navalny's “Why is Navalny Not Guilty?”, this one is titled “Why is Navalny Guilty?” and makes available for download allegedly relevant excerpts from Navalny's previously hacked email correspondence [GV]. Since the emails have been publicly available for quite some time, the page is likely created in the spirit of “trolling” rather than any real attempt at an exposé.

On April 1, 2013, the 20 year anniversary of Novaya Gazeta, a Russian newspaper critical of the government and known for its investigative reporting, Head of the Chechen Republic (formerly President) Ramzan Kadyrov took to his Instagram [ru], as he often does these days, to publicly express respect for the publication and its journalists, even thought he “sometimes disagrees with them.” Some bloggers [ru] were flabbergasted [ru] – after all, it is a widely held belief on RuNet that Kadyrov (then Chechen Prime Minister) is at least partially responsible for the assassination of Novaya Gazeta reporter Anna Politkovskaya in 2006.

A photo-blogger based in the city of Voronezh, located in central Russia not far from the Ukranian border, has taken a series of striking photographs [ru] (including an animated panorama) of a small, forgotten “slum” hiding in the center of an otherwise modern and populous urban area. The “slum”, which turns out to be mainly abandoned buildings, looks like a set for a WWII movie — ironic in a city that was rebuilt after heavy destruction during the war.

Alexey Navalny, unofficial protest leader, took to his blog [ru] on March 27 to defend himself from what he says are unfair allegations of corruption. Navalny is currently a suspect in two different embezzlement investigations. One of these, the so-called KirovLes case, involves the supposed use of a shell company to steal several million rubles worth of materials from a Kirov Region lumber mill.
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Russia's best known anti-corruption blogger, Alexey Navalny, shocked [ru] many of his supporters when he attended a banquet at the Kremlin yesterday, March 18, 2013. More »

Earlier today, the Russian Railways concluded its official investigation into the death of Elena Soboleva, who died on January 18 crossing the tracks at the Saltykovskaia train platform [ru], located just east of Moscow. The Railways (or RZhD, as it's known in Russian) determined [ru] that Ms. Soboleva was responsible for her own death, having elected to cross the tracks despite numerous signs and signals that a speeding train was approaching. More »

On February 1, the Russian human rights group Agora released a report [ru] on RuNet censorship in 2012, titled “Russia As a Global Threat to a Free Internet,” documenting various limitations on Internet usage in Russia, including violence, administrative pressure, and other forms of intimidation and punishment used against netizens by state authorities. Agora has also created [ru] a “map of free Internet violations” for 2012, showing which areas of Russia are least friendly to bloggers and netizen journalists.

Anonymity affords ordinarily timid individuals the courage and opportunity to behave dishonestly. That, anyway, is the story we typically hear, especially in the context of the Internet. As Oleg Kashin recently pointed out in his column [ru] at openspace.ru, however, it takes two to make a successful prank (the prankster and the sucker)—a point on vivid display in a minor RuNet scandal last week. More »

RuNet Echo contributor Donna Welles compiles [en] netizen reactions to President Putin's Address to the Federal Assembly (ru, en), highlighting which passages best resonated with bloggers and how they interpreted and understood his latest initiatives.

LiveJournal, owned and managed by Russian company SUP Media, just announced [ru] a grant program that will target the development of “interesting, but less well known blogs.” The grant funds could be used by a starting blogger to promote their blog through various paid “promo” services run by the company.

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Earlier today, Kommersant newspaper announced that it has fired columnist Oleg Kashin, one of Russia's best known journalists. In comments to Lenta.ru, Kommersant's chief editor, Mikhail Mikhailin, explained [ru] that Kashin's output has slipped in previous months, becoming too little to sustain his employment. Other sources indicate that Kashin's decision to join [ru] the political opposition's Coordinating Council represented a conflict of interest for Kommersant. More »

When internet domains are hijacked, the theft is usually facilitated by hackers. A stolen email password, a virus, or compromised server can wreak havoc on the ability of owners to maintain control of a website. However, it now appears that technological savvy is unnecessary for such a hostile takeover.  More »

Thanks to a temporary glitch [ru], the Russian federal government briefly banned the entirety of YouTube earlier today. This comes shortly after Google's IP address [ru] also temporarily appeared on the state's Internet blacklist. Russian bloggers were quick [ru] to sound the alarm in both instances, prompting officials to correct the mistakes within hours.

In an article [ru] published earlier this week, Izvestia newspaper cited anonymous sources inside the Kremlin who claim that the federal government is now discouraging regional heads and governors from communicating publicly through Twitter. More »

Earlier this week, an online spat between the chief editors of Russian GQ and Russian Tatler magazines came to physical blows on the steps of the famous Bolshoi Theater. First, Tatler's Eduard Dorozhkin insulted GQ's Michael Idov in a Facebook post that had anti-Semitic overtones [ru]. Idov, a Jewish emigre whose parents fled the Soviet Union to escape bigotry against Jews, took such offense that he accosted Dorozhkin by slapping him in the face. More »

Eight hours after online voting for the Russian opposition's “Coordinating Council” began, unknown assailants launched a sustained Denial-of-Service attack against the Election Commission's website, disabling the primary voting portal. More »

Two days ago Alexander Tkachev, governor of the the southern Kradnodarskiy Krai (one of Russia's 87 federal regions), announced a “twitter-conference” [ru], soliciting questions from his followers. Today he spent a few hours answering several dozen of them. The new-media-savvy public relations move met with hundreds of “trolling” questions like “how is your billionaire niece doing?” and “what types of off-shores do you recommend?” Of course, Tkachev did not answer these [ru]. However, he also failed to address some of the more legitimate concerns, for example about the recently flooded city of Krymsk or local corruption. More »

On October 16 two high profile candidates in the opposition's Coordinating Council elections announced they are withdrawing from the campaign. Economist Irina Yasina and writer Liudmila Ulitskaya published a statement [ru] on Yasina's blog, explaining that there are other “younger” and more “active” “young people” involved in the process, and that they are satisfied with having attracted public attention to the election process. Both were members of Ksenia Sobchak's electoral “block.” More »

Leonid Volkov, the brains behind technical aspects of the coming independent opposition elections [ru], has posted an interesting bit of statistics [ru] on his blog. Out of the approximately 90,000 people currently registered to vote, 34.6% are from Moscow and Moscow Oblast, and 11.7% are from St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast. This means that almost half of these relatively active members of the opposition come from Russia's two capitals. What is more striking is that next on the list are Sverdlovsk Oblast with 3.2% and Samarskaya Oblast with 1.8%. More »

On September 27th the three imprisoned members of Pussy Riot wrote a letter [ru] which registered their desire to nominate their lawyers for the Nobel Peace Prize. This predictably caused outrage [ru] from pro-government bloggers. One of the lawyers, Mark Feygin, tweeted [ru] that the move was political — a nomination would create a protective “umbrella” over the accused. (A couple of days later one of the young women successfully petitioned [GV] the court to change her defense team.) More »

Interfax new agency reported [ru] today that a fringe group of Russian Orthodox activists (including some priests) has “on a number of occasions” staged public protests against the maker of the iPhone and iPad, Apple Inc., on the grounds that the company's logo (a monochrome “bitten” apple) constitutes an anti-Christian symbol. More »

Earlier today, oppositionist blogger Oleg Kozyrev took issue [ru] with an apparent gag that graced the website of Echo of Moscow. In an article titled “Leader of the Khimki Ecologists and Mayoral Candidate Evgenia Chirikova Complains About Interference In Her Election Campaign,” the accompanying photo [ru] features Chirikova against the background of a large American flag (ostensibly implying that she is an American agent). More »

The criminal investigation targeting Russia's most prominent oppositionist blogger, Alexey Navalny, is heating up. Viacheslav Opalev, the former director of a logging firm in Kirov, has confessed [ru] to participating in the embezzlement of 16 million rubles (over half a million U.S. dollars), and named Navalny as the scheme's mastermind. More »

On September 27th Yekaterinburg-based internet news portal URA.ru was raided by city police, reports [ru] Evgeny Roizman, local anti-drug campaigner. Roizman is dating the editor-in-chief of the portal, Aksana Panova, who has apparently managed to leave the country before masked operatives arrived at her apartment and scared her mother and young son [ru]. URA.ru has in the past done original reporting critical of the recently appointed local heads of police and prosecutor's office, a story which Global Voices has previously covered.

As the din of the Pussy Riot trial fades, some human rights activists in Russia are seeking to shift the public's focus to protesters arrested in connection with violence against police at a mass demonstration in early May. Twenty-three of Russia's most noteworthy intellectuals and activists have signed an online petition [ru] calling for the 12 prisoners’ release, demanding that the authorities “come to their senses” and “end the repressions.” The petition has been signed [ru] by another 65 RuNet users.

Earlier today, blogger Maksim Kononenko highlighted [ru] the Coordinating Council candidacy of convicted terrorist and neonazi Nikolai Korolev, who was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of 15 people in 2006. More »

For roughy seven hours earlier today, Rostelecom's customers in Omsk were unable to access YouTube. The short-lived ban prompted a flurry of panicked online activity, including urgent tweets [ru] from the city's most vocal netizen, Viktor Korb. The short-lived ban was apparently in response [ru] to YouTube hosting clips from the film “Innocence of Muslims,” which sparked recent anti-American riots across the Muslim world. Minister of Communications and Mass Media Nikolai Nikiforov indicated [ru] on Twitter that he expects Russian courts formally to ban the film soon, which Google will then block on YouTube.