Tag: Russia
A few hours ago, Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokonnikova and Masha Alekhina were walking down the street in Sochi when they were detained by the police for alleged hotel theft. Along with several activists and journalists who recently arrived to the Winter Olympics site, they were roughly shoved into vans. “We are not resisting arrest; they […]
To highlight Russia’s heightened security measures put in place to keep Sochi safe beyond the so-called “ring of steel,” NBC News filed a report from the North Caucasus on Ramzan Kadyrov, the notorious, social media-savvy ruler of the Chechen Republic. Despite his macho image, he’s also a devout Muslim who wasn’t afraid to cry when […]
Soft snow at the Winter Olympics in Sochi has led to international condemnation from athletes riding the half pipe, lots of injuries, and an emergency delivery of large grain salt from Switzerland to make the slopes icy enough to compete. But today, it wasn’t the snow that was keeping events from taking place, it was […]
Yevgeny Vitishko, geologist and outspoken critic of the Sochi Winter Olympics’ devastating impact on the region’s environment and biodiversity, is being jailed for three years in a penal colony. In 2012, the 40-year-old environmental activist spray-painted ‘The forest is for everybody” on a corrugated metal fence around an illegal construction zone inside Sochi’s national park. Behind […]
Last week, Nadya Tolokonnikova and Masha Alyokhina, formerly of Pussy Riot, were the center of a cocktail party fundraiser for the VOICE project, an NGO that ran their legal fund. I say “center,” rather than “hosts.” Nadya and Masha smiled for the cameras, paid tribute to Russian political prisoners, then disappeared upstairs. Their appearance lasted […]
The Winter Olympics are in full swing in Sochi. ANIMAL is relaunching MedalCount.com, the micro-site that tracks the news that really matter — who is winning? But this year, we’re using our high-profile piece of internet real estate to aggregate and disseminate news that really really matters — all the stories that cover the enforcement of Putin’s discriminatory “anti-gay […]
In a show of protest against Russia’s oppressive anti-gay laws, Toronto is flying a rainbow above its city hall during the Sochi Winter Olympics, along with a host of other Canadian cities. Mayor Rob Ford, who never saw an issue he couldn’t make an ass of himself over, is upset about it. “This is about […]
It’s the first day of the Winter Olympics in Sochi and the first protestors have already been arrested in St. Petersburg. LGBTI group leader Anastasia Smirnova held the banner “Discrimination is incompatible with the Olympic Movement. Principle 6. Olympic Charter,” calling out Russia’s anti-gay legislation as incompatible with ethical principles outlined by the International Olympic Committee. Four people have been […]
“We’re not here to define or decide for Pussy Riot. We are just two people that spent time in jail for participating in a Pussy Riot action,” Nadya Tolokonnikova told the Barclays pressroom, flanked enthusiastically by Amnesty International reps and their celebrity spokespeople du jour, hours before the big show. We didn’t know it yet, […]
Here’s a sexy little luge video from The Canadian Institute of Diversity and Inclusion in response to Russia’s insane “anti-gay propaganda” laws which persecute LGBT nationwide, deny their right to exist and inspire violent homophobic attacks. “The games have always been a little gay… let’s fight to keep it that way,” the TV ad reads. Yes. […]
