Our round-up of the week’s news
In other news:
17 July 2021
RFE/RL: Rights groups describe Kadyrov’s 14-year tenure as ruthless and oppressive, petty and vindictive, and serially abusive of women and minorities. But that hasn’t deterred a local youth group in northern Bosnia-Herzegovina from adopting Kadyrov as the face of a summertime Chechnya Fest music festival that they say actually has nothing to do with Chechnya or its strongman. They’re using images of Kadyrov, in full military dress, in promotional materials on- and off-line to attract visitors to the festival in Bileca, in the Serb-dominated part of the country, on July 22.
21 July 2021
RFE/RL: Events moved quickly at the offices of the municipal newspaper in this Sakhalin Island port town of some 10,000 people on July 14. About 10 a.m., two deputy directors of the Eastern Mining Company (VGK), Aleksandr Bosoi and Andrei Motovilov, showed up at the office of newspaper Editor in Chief Zinaida Makarova to discuss “the direction” of the paper’s coverage of the company.
RFE/RL: Moscow says Russian passport holders in parts of eastern Ukraine that are controlled by Russia-backed separatists will be able to vote online in upcoming Russian parliamentary elections. According to a resolution adopted by Russia’s Central Election Commission on July 20, Russian passport-holding residents in separatist-controlled areas of Ukraine’s Luhansk and Donetsk regions will have to register and cast their vote online if they want to take part in the September 19 elections.
22 July 2021
RFE/RL: The prominent Moscow theater Sovremennik (Contemporary) has been accused of propagating same-sex relations and insulting World War II veterans in a recent performance. The RIA Novosti news agency reported on July 21 that it had obtained the text of a complaint filed by the Kremlin-backed Officers of Russia nongovernmental organization against the theater’s performance of the play The First Bread.
RFE/RL: A Russian court has fined U.S. social-media giants Facebook and Twitter and messaging app Telegram again for failing to delete content Moscow deems illegal. The Magistrates Court in the Taganka district said on July 22 it had fined Facebook 6 million rubles ($81,000), Twitter 5.5 million rubles, and Telegram 11 million rubles ($149,000) on multiple protocols filed by Russia’s communications watchdog, Roskomnadzor.
RFE/RL: Russia has filed a complaint against Ukraine with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) saying Kyiv is responsible for the 2014 crash of a Malaysian airliner and civilian deaths and human rights abuses in Russia and Ukraine. The filing of the case on July 22 comes exactly five months after Ukraine filed its latest in a series of legal complaints against Moscow at the same court, which hears complaints over alleged breaches of the conventions on human rights.
