A Dangerous Campaign
An election booth run by volunteers for Alexei Navalny’s campaign in a park in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad was attacked by unknown assailants on Saturday, Navalny’s campaign manager said on Twitter. “We’ve not seen anything like this before,” Leonid Volkov wrote. “Three [people] in masks threw firecrackers inside the booth and blew it up.”
Freedom March
Activists held their second March for Internet Freedom this summer, with demonstrators taking to the streets in Moscow and other major cities in the country on Saturday. More than 1,500 people marched in downtown Moscow. Around two dozen people were detained and later released, the police monitoring OVD-Info website reports.
Murder in Gorky Park
Moscow police have identified a suspect in the murder of a man in Gorky Park in downtown Moscow on Aug. 13. Kornei Makarov, the 23-year-old son of television actor Sergei Makarov, is the main suspect, a law enforcement source told the state-run TASS news agency on Sunday. Stanislav Dumkin, 29, died of his injuries after being attacked in the central Moscow park, reportedly for the way he was dressed.
A Huge Plan
U.S. President Donald Trump's real estate company was pursuing plans to build a Trump Tower in Moscow in the midst of the 2016 election campaign. Investors and Trump’s company signed a “letter of intent” sometime in late 2015, the Washington Post cited several sources as saying Sunday. The project, however, was scrapped in January 2016 because of a lack of land and permits, the sources said.
Deadly Crash
A Krasnodar court has ordered the arrest of a driver and the owner of the company of the bus that plunged into the Kerch Strait last week. Russia's transportation watchdog Rostransnadzor says the cause of the accident was brake failure.
Rescue Over
Russia’s giant diamond producer Alrosa has called off rescue work after a weeks-long search for trapped workers at the Mir mine, in Yakutia. Eight miners died as a result of the flooding accident.
Show Must Go On
The Gogol Center Theater in Moscow has said that the premier of Kirill Serebrennikov’s “Small Tragedies” will go ahead as planned on Sept. 15, 16 and 17. Serebrennikov was arrested last week and charged with embezzling government funds. His supporters say the case is politically motivated.
Letter to Trump
Russian citizen Andrei Morozov has appealed to President Donald Trump requesting permission to see his 9-year old nephew, Daniel, now in the custody of the state of California. The boy’s father, Konstantin Morozov, was shot and killed by U.S. police a week ago. “I want him to grow up in an atmosphere of warmth and care, surrounded by his relatives and friends. I want to raise him like my own child,” wrote Daniel’s uncle.
Fight the Machine
Kalashnikov Concern, a subsidiary of state-owned Rostech, has presented a new armored police truck slated for crowd-management during protests. Its main feature is a giant steel wall that contains emplacements for riot police, as well as a water cannon.
Wear It
Voentorg, Russia’s leading purveyor of military clothing, is looking to take its military clothing collection, Army of Russia, abroad. Twelve countries, including Germany, have filed purchasing orders after the first Army of Russia store opened in Moscow, Voentorg’s deputy chief Arkady Telepnyov told the RBC business outlet. In May 2016, an Army of Russia store opened in downtown Moscow, across from the U.S. embassy.
A Chemical Ride
A taxi union in Russia's Far East has demanded the resignation of a driver who was filmed forcing nonpaying customers to douse a green antiseptic known as zelyonka over themselves. The driver should have appealed to law enforcement instead of reverting to “medieval methods,” union chair Alexander Sadkov told the Interfax news agency.
