Возьмите известную легенду о том, что Ivan the Terrible – Иван Грозный – убил своего сына. Это ещё неизвестно, убивал он своего сына или нет. Многие исследователи считают, что никого он не убивал вообще, а придумал это всё папский нунций, который приехал к нему на переговоры и пытался Русь православную превратить в Русь католическую.
“Take the well-known leged that Ivan the Terrible... killed his son. It is still unknown whether he murdered his son or not. Many experts say he did not kill anyone, and that this was invented by the Papal Nuncio, who came to Russia for talks and tried to turn Orthodox Rus into Catholic Rus.”
“There is no conclusive evidence to point at Russia under the JIT (Joint Investigation Team) evidence… you can’t just pinpoint Russia.”
Сегодня мы видим, как США стреляют себе в ногу, одновременно нанося вред и глобальной экономике.
“Today we see how the United States is shooting itself in the foot, while at the same time damaging the global economy.”
Я надеюсь, вам понравится. Вот ключик, в этом можно запирать секретные вещи.
“I hope you like it. Here is a key, and you can lock secret things in it.”
“After 20 days in a coma, I woke to the news that we had both been poisoned… Our recovery has been slow and extremely painful. The fact that a nerve agent was used to do this is shocking. I don’t want to describe the details, but the physical treatment was invasive, painful and depressing.”
After a long standoff between the messaging app Telegram and Russian authorities, the Roskomnadzor internet watchdog blocked the service in Russia.
The messenger still works for many Russian users, because it constantly switches its IP address. This leaves Roskomnadzor playing internet Whack-A-Mole with the service, and has led to the inadvertent blockage of unsuspecting websites and services that have nothing to do with Telegram.
One investment company, Investory, sued Roskomnadzor after its clients could not use the company’s online investment tools due to the blockage. The government’s move has also inspired thousands to come out in protest against internet censorship, both in Moscow and other Russian cities.
Ironically, many Russian government officials and agencies continue to use the popular service, with many governors (Chechen strongman and social media heavyweight Ramzan Kadyrov, for one), as well as agencies, maintaining their own channels. At press time, the Russian Foreign Ministry was still posting to its Telegram channel.
In late May, Telegram founder Pavel Durov (who cofounded the popular VKontakte site, and fled Russia in 2014 after butting heads with the authorities who took over VK) accused Apple of blocking the app’s software updates, following an order by the Russian government to remove Telegram from Apple’s App Store. He later wrote that Apple decided not to carry out Russian orders, and thanked Tim Cook.
Russian-Kazakh director Sergei Dvortsevoy wowed audiences in Cannes, exposing the difficult living conditions of Central Asian migrant workers in Moscow. His movie, Ayka, tells of a young Kyrgyz woman living illegally in Moscow who gives birth but then abandons her baby in the hospital, only to later change her mind. This sets her on a quest to find the child.
Dvortsevoy said he has read about hundreds of women from Central Asia resorting to this measure in Moscow, because their lives and work make it impossible to raise a child in the capital.
The title role of Ayka is played by Kazakh actress Samal Eslyamova, who received the Cannes award for best female role. The director hired migrants who were not professional actors to play some roles. One was deported mid-production.
The film is Dvortsevoy’s second to be shown in Cannes. His movie Tulpan is about the life of sheep herders in the barren steppes of southern Kazakhstan. Eslyamova also played the leading role in that film. Tulpan received an Un Certain Regard prize in Cannes.
To accurately portray a woman who has just given birth, Eslyamova said in interviews she ran long distances and even jogged with a kettlebell in order to become physically fatigued.
In another Cannes triumph, Roman Zver (real name Roman Bilyk) of the Russian band Zveri (Animals) received the award for best soundtrack, for his work on the film Leto, about Soviet rock legend Viktor Tsoi. That film was directed by arrested director Kirill Serebrennikov.
This year’s winner of Russia’s prestigious National Bestseller Prize is Alexei Salnikov, a Yekaterinburg-based author hitherto ignored by publishers. The novel that scored Salnikov the award, The Petrovs in Various States of the Flu (Петровы в гриппе и вокруг него), has been hailed as a fresh take on seemingly ordinary lives in Russia – specifically those of the auto mechanic Petrov and his family. The Petrovs was Salnikov’s first novel, and he has already published his second, The Department (Отдел) – a dark parody of Russia’s security services.
His first novel is available to download in Russian on the website BookMate:
bit.ly/the-petrovs-salnikov
After taking flak for years for using a German-made Mercedes as his official mode of transportation, Vladimir Putin rode to his fourth presidential inauguration in a domestically-manufactured limousine. The Aurus automobile brand was developed by Russia’s NAMI (Central Scientific Research Automobile and Automotive Engines Institute), which partnered with engineers from Porsche and Bosch. The so-called Motorcade (Кортеж) Project began development in 2014, possibly as a result of the imposition of economic sanctions over Russian actions in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine.
Besides the limo, the Aurus brand line will include minivans and business-class models, which are slated to sell for “about 20 percent less than Rolls-Royce and Bentley,” according to former industry minister Denis Manturov.
Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich ran into trouble in May, when Britain unexpectedly refused to renew his investor visa. Although he quickly obtained Israeli citizenship, which allows him to reside in Britain for six months each year, not having a visa makes it difficult for him to run his business in the country, which includes ownership of the Chelsea Football Club.
Abramovich has put development of the team’s new Stamford Bridge stadium on hold, and British authorities have refused to comment on their action. It is notable that the decision comes amid a deep souring in relations between Moscow and London, in the wake of the poisoning of Sergei Skripal, which Britain has blamed on Russia.
Russia’s most prominent university, Moscow State University, has rebelled against plans to transform a portion of its grounds into a fan zone during this summer’s World Cup. Thousands of students have demanded that the fan zone, which will host some 40,000 Fan Fest guests, be moved to a different location, so as not to disturb students’ preparing for exams or the wildlife in nearby Vorobyovy Gory Park.
Fourteen thousand people signed a petition sent to President Putin protesting the fan zone, and several hundred staged a protest outside the university’s iconic main building. At press time, police had opened a vandalism case against a student accused of spray painting protest slogans on a World Cup information pillar.
Moscow’s independent Teatr.Doc theater, which has staged politically-charged plays and run into countless problems due to tensions with city authorities, has hit its roughest patch yet.
This spring the tiny theater lost both its artistic director, Mikhail Ugarov, and director, Yelena Gremina, the husband and wife team that founded Teatr.Doc, when both passed away within weeks of each other.
Both Ugarov and Gremina were playwrights and together they staged productions about migrants, political opposition, prisoners, opposition activists and various Russian subcultures. The theater was forced to move several times during the past four years and was raided by police when it showed a film about the Ukrainian Maidan uprising.
At press time, the theater was once again looking to move into a new building, and its leaderless troupe has declared that it will continue its work.
The Russian government has raised the official retirement age. The unpopular measure to be discussed in parliament this summer sets the retirement age to 63 years for women and 65 years for men, the first hike since the 1930s, from 55 and 60 years, respectively. Although Russian pensions tend to be very small, many healthy pensioners continue working after retiring, supplementing their incomes, so the new law could impact the quality of life of millions of people. The change would be phased in starting in 2019.
Дети одиноки в школе, в семье. И у них остается что? Интернет. А там суицид.
“While we are having this discussion, the child is being left alone with his problems. As a rule, these are well-to-do families. Children are lonely in school and at home. And what is left for them? The internet. And there, there is suicide.”
Это покушение на святыню.
“We are not talking about a crime against a property that has some value. We are talking about a crime against art, which is priceless. It is a crime against a sacred object… We are not demanding repression, just harsh sanctions for crimes against a work of art.”
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