Author Archives: Vadim Birstein
In the program ClapBack, aired by the American Fox News channel on May 18, 2017, the Russian-speaking host Julie Roginsky continued the squabble with the press secretary of the Russian Embassy in the United States, Nicolai (Nick) Lakhonin. Previously, on May 11, during her show Roginsky made several statements in Russian. Then she switched to English and ironically… Read More »
Denis Katsyv, the son of the vice-president of the company “Russian Railways” (RZhD) Pyotr Katsyv, will pay $ 5.9 million to the US Treasury in connection with the first case in the West linked to the Magnitsky Case on laundering 5.4 billion rubles (230 million dollars) stolen from Russian citizens. Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who uncovered the massive corruption… Read More »
On May 4, 2017, the Moscow City Court rejected the complaint by Aleksandr Khinstein, Adviser to Army General Viktor Zolotov, Director of the Rosguards (the Russian security army that reports directly to President Vladimir Putin), and a publicist, to the decision of Presnensky Regional Court of Moscow on the case of the memoir by the former KGB Chairman… Read More »
On May 3, 2017, the Russian Internal Affairs Ministry (MVD) announced that the number of its officers assigned abroad will be increased from 41 to 100 representatives. These are not traditional SVR rezidenturas, intelligence officers involved in espionage at Russian embassies, but a type of MVD rezidentura. A draft of the Decree of Russian President Putin detailed the future changes.… Read More »
On April 21, 2017, the Presidium of the Higher Attestation Commission recommended transferring the discussion of the doctorate dissertation by Vladimir Medinsky, Russia’s Minister of Culture, to the Dissertational Council of the Belgorod State National Research University. Previously, Medinsky’s seriously criticized doctoral thesis “Problems of Objectivity in Descriptions of Russian History of the Second Part of the 15th-17th… Read More »
On March 18, 2017, an official rally on the anniversary of the annexation of the Crimea took place in front of the main building of Moscow State University. For this event in Moscow and similar rallies in other cities, students, teachers and university personnel were ordered to come with posters with such slogans like “Putin is the savior of… Read More »
On March 21, the British investor Bill Browder, a vocal critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, reported that Nikolai Gorokhov, who currently represents the Magnitsky family, was “thrown from the top floor of his apartment building.” Gorokhov was hospitalized with severe head injuries at Moscow’s Botkin Hospital. The Russian official version was that Gorokhov was allegedly injured while… Read More »
In my recent article on torture, I mentioned the case of Nikita Belykh, the politically active ex-governor of Kirov Region, who was arrested on a questionable charge in June 2016. On March 17, 2017, Nikita Belykh was indicted on a new bribery charge in a Moscow court. In response, Belykh firmly stated that he “has never taken bribes and has no… Read More »