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August 25, 2014 Marina Galperina

Four alleged protest artists are facing criminal charges after climbing a 577-foot-tall, Stalin-era tower in Moscow, after the golden signature Soviet star up top was painted part blue sometime around August 20th at dawn. It was later topped with the Ukrainian flag of matching colors later that the morning. It lasted three hours before being removed. Yevgeniya Korotkova, Anna […]

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August 4, 2014 Sophie Weiner

Last Friday, a bird took a well-timed shit on Vladimir Putin, while he was giving a speech at the unveiling of a monument commemorating the 100th anniversary of World War I. The poop landed on the Russian President’s tailored suit shoulder, as he said, “Humankind should grasp one truth: violence generates violence.” Watch the video […]

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July 28, 2014 Sophie Weiner

In theme with Russia’s war on anonymity and “extremism” on the internet, the country’s interior ministry is recruiting hackers to decrypt identities of Tor users. The ministry is offering 3.9 million rubles (about $110,000) to anyone who can crack the encryption service, BBC reports, which is a lot better than their previous contest where you get a free refrigerator for giving birth on June […]

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July 25, 2014 Sophie Weiner

Russia recently launched a satellite full of geckos into space, in order to obverse their mating activities in zero-gravity conditions. The satellite has now stopped responding to commands sent by mission control. But the equipment on board is still sending data back to Earth, a spokesperson for the Russia’s Institute of Biomedical Problems told the Wall […]

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July 24, 2014 Marina Galperina

According to a non-sarcastic headline on Russia Today, “Moscow authorities promise to protect student campuses from internet porn.” The limitations will be imposed in line with the recently introduced Russian laws on information, on protection of children, and on countering extremism. As part of Moscow City Hall’s massive $20 million plan to equip college campuses and […]

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July 14, 2014 Marina Galperina

The Russian state media is a joke that keeps playing itself. Its latest tune is this report on a political “art exhibit” staged for a very shoddy state television news segment. As discovered by Radio Free Europe, the reason why the newscaster doesn’t name the gallery is because it isn’t a gallery. It’s a hallway. Here’s […]

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July 8, 2014 Marina Galperina

Russia is full of problems. Good thing there’s one singular political entity responsible for most of the country’s bans on things — Rospotrebnadzor aka Russia’s Federal Service for Supervision of Consumer Rights Protection and Human Well-Being. So if you bored by the censorship, imprisonment and murders of Kremlin policy critics, here’s a nifty list of things Russia has recently banned for you […]

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June 26, 2014 Marina Galperina

This is Maxim Kurlenko aka “Nastoyatel.” He is a practicing priest in a small town of Cheboksary. He is a rapper. “Where has morally pure, white Russia gone?” he raps. The Russian offshoot of Christian rap has been rising in popularity lately, as more and more Russians identifying as Eastern Orthodox. Calvert Journal has comprised a very […]

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June 16, 2014 Marina Galperina

Under Communism, the Russian city of Zarechny did not officially “exist.” The public wasn’t informed of such “closed cities” until 1986, with more than one million people having lived in places that were not even on the map. Slowly, they are being “opened up.” Photographer Ksenia Yurkova, featured in The Calvert Journal, went to Zarechny to document the daily life […]

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June 5, 2014 Marina Galperina

Anna Politkovskaya, a hard-hitting journalist known for her reporting on corruption under Putin’s rule and the political misconduct of Russia’s Chechen War, was gunned down on the stairs of her Moscow apartment building on October 7, 2006. Her murder went unsolved for many years and the incompetent investigations and botched trails sparked outrage from rights groups world-wide. Former […]

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