The Moscow Times: Russia on Friday reported another record high number of both new coronavirus cases and deaths. Officials reported 37,141 new coronavirus cases and 1,064 fatalities from Covid-19 over the last 24 hours.
RFE/RL: Six officials at the Moscow regional prosecutor’s office have reportedly been fired for liking social media posts by jailed opposition politician Aleksei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), which is banned in the country as extremist.
RFE/RL: Russian opposition politician Lyubov Sobol says she doesn’t feel “fully safe” after recently fleeing Russia in the summer, but she insists she will continue to fight against President Vladimir Putin’s “criminal regime” and widespread corruption in her country.
The Moscow Times: Golos, an independent vote-monitoring movement, was named a “foreign agent” by Russia’s Justice Ministry in August after receiving a $3 contribution from an Armenian citizen, the movement’s co-chairman Grigory Melkonyants said on Facebook. A Russian court denied Golos’ challenge against being designated a “foreign agent,” explaining that the grounds for the vote-monitoring organization being added to list was two transfers of “about 200 rubles” ($2.80) from a citizen of ex-Soviet republic Armenia, Melkonyants said. The Russian Justice Ministry included Golos, a local organization that observes elections, in its list of “foreign agents” just weeks before September’s parliamentary elections in a move widely decried as a ploy to frustrate their efforts to monitor and report on election fraud.
RFE/RL: If a report is deemed erroneous, a designated “foreign agent” could face a fine of up to 300,000 rubles ($4,250) or a prison term from two to five years.
RFE/RL: А former Russian inmate who leaked a massive cache of videos showing evidence of rampant torture in Russian prisons said he believes prison guards were prone to using sexual assault against their victims “because it is the cruelest.”
Human Rights in Ukraine: Asan Akhtemov has been held prisoner in a ‘quarantine cell’ in occupied Simferopol for 44 days without any medical grounds, yet with no end in sight.
The Moscow Times: The European Commissioner for Climate Action Frans Timmermans will not travel to Moscow to discuss climate action ahead of the crucial COP summit in Glasgow next month, an EU Commission spokesperson told The Moscow Times.
