· November, 2009

Stories about Russia from November, 2009

Russia: Thousands Protest Against Trading Center Construction

RuNet Echo  29 November 2009

On November 29, thousands of people in Moscow went out on the streets to protest against the construction of a new trading center. This center would replace the “Cherkizovski” market [ENG], which was closed down in June because of many illegal activities on its premises. The photos of the protest...

Russia: Free Wi-Fi To Be Installed At Moscow Railway Stations

RuNet Echo  26 November 2009

The Russian Railroads company announced [RUS] today that free wi-fi hotspots would be installed at every passenger terminal in Moscow by December 7, 2009. The company expects around 1,500 wi-fi users per day but many Russian bloggers think the figure will be much larger.

Russia: Website Administrator Faces Trial on Libelling

RuNet Echo  26 November 2009

Alexander Batalov, a former administrator of the official Web site for the town of Irbit, faces libel charges for anonymous comments left by someone else on the site. Batalov is accused of allowing unapropriate comments online and, if found guilty, will be required to pay $8,000 penalty. The full story...

Russia: Defense Ministry Reports “Non-Combat Losses” Online

RuNet Echo  26 November 2009

Russia's Defense Ministry reports on its website that suicides, accidents, murders, and, possibly, manslaughter claimed 297 lives in the country's armed forces from Jan. to Oct. 2009, and that 149 of these deaths were suicides. Andrei Skvarsky reports on some of the Russian netizens' reactions to these figures.

Russia Begins Registering Domains in Cyrillic

RuNet Echo  25 November 2009

November 2009 will take a special place in the history of the Russian Internet. It is the month when a Cyrillic domain zone was born - .РФ (Russian Federation). Russia became the first country that allows top-level domains in non-Latin characters. Up until now, governments, companies and individuals could register domain names based on different languages only in Latin transliteration. The current Internet domains system will go much further allowing to use Cyrillic characters in a URL.

Russia: Mansion of The President Has A Lot To Offer

  24 November 2009

The Russian president's mansion became a topic of discussions on the Internet when people found a bidding offers invitation for services at the government Web site [RUS] dealing with different types of tenders. Giving the coordinates identical with the ones of the most important residency in the country, the government...

Russia: Anti-fascists Mourn Murder of Activist Killed By Neo-Nazis

RuNet Echo  23 November 2009

Hundreds of young anti-fascists gathered in the center of Moscow. They mourned the murder of Ivan Khutorskoy, an activist of “Antifa,” Russian anti-fascist movement. A blogger chtodelat claims [ENG] it's the sixth “Antifa” murder in Russia during the last few years. The photos of the gathering made by lj-user ottenki_serogo...

Russia: Local Authorities Slow Broadband Development

RuNet Echo  20 November 2009

On November 10, activists held a rally calling for broadband Internet and protesting against Internet provider monopoly in the township of Kraskovo (Moscow region, 10 km from the Moscow beltroad). This is the first known case of a protest dedicated to the defense of the Internet rights in Russia. The event also raised the issue of the overregulatedness of the process of Internet providing in the country.

Russia: 6,5 percent of all Web sites are Russian

RuNet Echo  20 November 2009

There are 15 million Web sites in the Russian segment of the Internet. They account for 6,5 percent of all Web sites available online. An average Russian Web site contains 255 pages, 159 thousand words, and 204 images.  These facts were revealed in the latest research “The Runet Content” by...

Russia: Blogging the Winter in Yakutia

RuNet Echo  20 November 2009

Winter is yet to arrive in much of Europe, but one of its geopolitical attributes is already back in the spotlight: fears of disruptions of Russian gas deliveries are growing more intense, due to the recurring dispute between Russia and Ukraine. Politics aside, though, in some of Russia's regions winter has been there since early fall. In Yakutia, for example.

Russia: Young People Trust Internet

RuNet Echo  18 November 2009

Fifty one percent of young Russians (ages 16 – 24) consider the Internet a reliable source of information. This makes the Internet the second most trustworthy source  after TV among the youth.  This and other findings are available in a newly published report [RUS] by the Public Opinion Foundation.

Ukraine: News and Views Roundup

  17 November 2009

Ukraine roundup: flu and politics – at What's Up, Ukraine? and at Jamestown Foundation Blog, here and here; the latest on the tense relationship between the Ukrainian president and PM – at Ukrainiana, as well as two posts – here and here – on one of the 18 presidential candidates,...

Russia: Medvedev's Speech and IT; Twitter and the Police

RuNet Echo  17 November 2009

Profy writes about the IT dimension of president Medvedev's annual address: “The draft speech was initially published online as a lengthy article by the president and he invited all the citizens to voice their opinions out via the Kremlin official website – and people were definitely very willing to participate...

Russia: Forbes Website

RuNet Echo  17 November 2009

Profy writes about the newly-launched ForbesRussia.ru website and “their obvious lack of interest in anything local and specific to the Russian market, in particular in the field of social media and social networking.”