The Moscow Times: Russia’s forest fires spread by a record margin on Monday, making the current wildfire season the country’s third-largest this century as smoke from the blazes wafts over huge expanses of Siberia, experts from Greenpeace Russia reported.
The Moscow Times: International monitors said Wednesday they would not send observers to Russia for next month’s general election because of a limit on numbers imposed by Russian authorities.
RFE/RL: Election officials in Russia’s northwestern city of Murmansk have officially accepted registration documents from the former leader of jailed opposition leader Aleksei Navalny’s team after she waged a hunger strike over alleged obstruction.
The Moscow Times: Russian opposition figure Lyubov Sobol doesn’t intend to quit politics despite a court-appointed curfew and a ban on running for parliament, she told The Moscow Times on Wednesday.
The Moscow Times: Former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, who is convicted of espionage in Russia, has not been in touch with his family for more than a month, one of his lawyers said Tuesday.
RFE/RL: Few doubt that the administration of Russian President Vladimir Putin is worried about the September 17-19 elections to the State Duma, Russia’s lower chamber of parliament.
Human Rights in Ukraine: Sakira Kantimirova was just 10 months old when the Russian FSB came for her father Eldar Kantimirov and seven other Crimean Tatars. If the current Russia regime has its way, she will be 15 when her father, a recognized political prisoner, returns from the imprisonment in Russia that for all too many Crimean Tatar families has become a second deportation.
