Stories from RuNet Echo from September, 2012
Russia: Nation's Top Blogger Headed to Prison?
The criminal investigation targeting Russia's most prominent oppositionist blogger, Alexey Navalny, is heating up. Viacheslav Opalev, the former director of a logging firm in Kirov, has confessed [ru] to participating in...
Russia: Ridiculing the Winter Olympics Slogan
The just-announced slogan of the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics (“Hot. Cool. Yours.”) has spurred a brief episode of merrymaking on the RuNet. At first that may seem surprising, while the...
Russia: The Kostin Report & the Trojan Horse of American ICT
Earlier this week, the media got a sneak peek at a new report on the foreign penetration of the RuNet and the potential manipulation of the country's future elections. The...
Russia: Yekaterinburg Police Raid Regional Internet Publication
On September 27th Yekaterinburg-based internet news portal URA.ru was raided by city police, reports [ru] Evgeny Roizman, local anti-drug campaigner. Roizman is dating the editor-in-chief of the portal, Aksana Panova, who has...
Russia: Ominous Predictions of Conflict in Dagestan
Dagestan is among Russia’s most impoverished and ethnically diverse republics. Recent tension between Sunni Sufi and Salafi communities suggest more conflict may not be far to come.
Russia: Writers Put Down Pens to Stand Atop Soap Boxes
Now, nine people who self-identify as writers are running in the elections for the so-called "Coordinating Council of the Russian Opposition," and a tenth strongly considered registering as a candidate...
Russia: Human Rights Figures Petition Online to Free May 6 Prisoners
As the din of the Pussy Riot trial fades, some human rights activists in Russia are seeking to shift the public's focus to protesters arrested in connection with violence against...
Russia: Activist Journalists or Bolshevik Bloggers?
Anyone following the Russian protest movement cannot help but notice the degree to which many Russian journalists are involved with the opposition. In the age of Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram,...
Russia: After the APEC Summit
The 2012 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Vladivostok has come and gone. What remains is discussion of what APEC means to Russia’s Far East and the country as a whole....
Russia: Continued Scandals Plague the Registration of Opposition Candidates
Earlier today, blogger Maksim Kononenko highlighted [ru] the Coordinating Council candidacy of convicted terrorist and neonazi Nikolai Korolev, who was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of 15 people in...
Russia: Omsk Telecom Temporarily Bans YouTube
For roughy seven hours earlier today, Rostelecom's customers in Omsk were unable to access YouTube. The short-lived ban prompted a flurry of panicked online activity, including urgent tweets [ru] from the city's...
Russia: SocialCamp, Crowdsourcing and Open Data
A SocialCamp Russia 'unconference' took place in Moscow from 7th to 9th of September. Over the course of three days social activists spoke about projects aimed at raising awareness, improving...
Russia: Ksenia Sobchak's Civil Platform Candidacy
Earlier today, the Central Elections Committee officially registered a bevy of candidates for the coming elections of the first Coordinating Council of the Russian Opposition. Among today's new entries to...
Russia: Reading Genius into Putin's Blunders
One of the more striking things about Vladimir Putin, aside from his affinity for displays of machismo, is the degree of nuanced multidimensional-chess-like strategic planning attributed to him and his...
Russia: Forecasts for the Protest Movement's Elections
On October 20, the new "Central Elections Committee" will hold elections to select 45 individuals to form the first "Coordinating Council of the Russian Opposition." When this process is complete,...
Russia: Protest Movement Struggles with Keeping Itself Democratic
Maksim Martsinkevich, who goes by the nickname Tesak (Machete), gained notoriety on the RuNet between 2005 and 2007. A white-supremacist who later spent several years in prison for inciting ethnic...
Russia: Religiosity & the Murdered U.S. Ambassador
Responding to the attack on U.S. embassies across the Muslim world (specifically the murder of Ambassador Christopher Stevens in Libya), Russian bloggers have addressed the perceived growth of religiosity in...
Russia: New Competition in Social Media Analysis & Big Data Analytics
Former presidential staff member Konstantin Kostin [ru] and pro-Kremlin blogger Stanislav Apetian (online moniker: PoliTrash) have released new details about an upcoming initiative from their think tank [ru], the Civil Society Development...
Russia: Online Poetry's Vehement, Apolitical Politics
It's no surprise that a result of Russians' widespread interest in poetry is that there are plenty of online communities dedicated to its production and consumption. Stihi.ru, with a user...
Russia: Top Opposition Blogger Investigated for Ethnic Extremism
According to documents published online, police in Volgograd are investigating one of blogger Aleksei Navalny's newest crowdsourcing projects, the "Good Machine of Truth," for possible ethnic extremism in its propaganda...
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Maxim Edwards is the RuNet Echo editor. Email him story ideas or volunteer to write.
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