Russia’s top scientific institution, the Academy of Sciences, has elected a new head following the departure of Vladimir Fortov, who had served in the post since 2013. The process of selecting a new RAS chief had been plagued by scandal and intrigue since March, when an attempt to hold elections for president was suddenly halted as Fortov and two other candidates pulled out of the race: rumor had it that the Kremlin wanted to replace Fortov with their own hand-picked candidate, Vladislav Panchenko.
However, ultimately Panchenko was unable to sway the vote in his favor, and the academics elected 62-year-old Alexander Sergeyev, who heads the Institute of Applied Physics in Nizhny Novgorod. Sergeyev had vehemently criticized the government’s forced reform of the Academy and was a member of the dissident club of scientists called the “July 1st Club.”
Russia was ordered to pay damages to relatives of victims and survivors of the 2004 Beslan School siege after the European Court of Human Rights ruled that authorities did not do enough to prevent the attack on the school and that subsequent use of heavy weapons against the attackers contributed to massive casualties.
The court ordered Russia to pay $3.5 million in damages, a sum seen as inadequate by the injured party in the case. Chechen separatists took more than 1,000 people hostage on September 1, 2004, and over 330 persons, including 186 children, died after the crisis ended with Russian security forces storming the building in the wake of explosions.
A new bill drafted by the Ministry of Development of the Far East offers Russian citizenship to anyone investing $10 million or more in business or real estate in the region. If the bill is enacted, those buying shares in Far Eastern companies would be obligated to own them for three years subsequent to receiving citizenship. As of the end of September, the bill has yet to be passed.
A small, symbolic revolution took place this fall in Moscow, one of 16 regions where local and regional elections were held. After months of campaigning that sought to unite opposition candidates and train a new generation of anti-Vladimir Putin politicians, nearly 270 people running on an opposition platform won their elections, taking over about 15 percent of the city council’s seats. Central and southwestern districts, which are generally considered more affluent, were particularly strong in their backing of the opposition. The central Tverskoy district put opposition candidates in 11 out of its 12 seats, a small but symbolic upset.
Of course, these municipal election results do not signify a tectonic political shift: municipal councils have very little authority in the grand scheme of decision making, and most councils are still dominated by the majority party, United Russia. Still, the makeup is now markedly different in these local political bodies than in, say, the State Duma, where there is not a single anti-Putin lawmaker.
Moscow’s opposition coalition was orchestrated by former Duma deputy Dmitry Gudkov, who was not elected to the current Duma, and politician and activist Maxim Katz. The coalition raised about $800,000 in small donations for the campaign, and about 1,000 people ran for office.
“With their own eyes, they saw that running for public office in a restrictive political system such as Russia’s is a realistic proposition,” wrote political observer Maxim Trudolyubov in Newsweek.
The Bolshoi Theater’s production of Nureyev, whose premiere was cancelled amid controversy earlier this year, in a turnaround unprecedented in the theater’s modern history, will now open on December 9, according the theater’s website.
Nureyev, about the legendary dancer-defector Rudolf Nureyev, was directed by Kirill Serebrennikov, who is currently under arrest in a case of alleged fraud; his prosecution is being widely decried by the arts community. Serebrennikov will probably not be able to see his ballet through the final stages of its preparation, said Bolshoi Theater Director Vladimir Urin.
These days, new Moscow monuments rarely leave people indifferent. The most recent case is a statue depicting weapons inventor Mikhail Kalashnikov. From the moment images of its design surfaced in the Russian media – showing Kalashnikov cradling his most popular creation, the AK-47, like a baby – Muscovites began criticizing it as a monument to war that has no place on Moscow’s Garden Ring (Kalashnikov, who died in 2013, lived most of his life in Izhevsk).
The response went from bad to worse when the statue (by Salavat Shcherbakov) was unveiled: a historian with a keen eye noticed a Sturmgewehr 44, a Nazi assault rifle, among images worked into the monument as part of the Kalashnikov story. Workers were quickly dispatched to the site with grinders to remove the offending feature. This left a giant hole, while Shcherbakov – a favorite of Moscow officialdom (he also designed last year’s gigantic Vladimir monument) – explained his mistake as something that “snuck in from the internet.”
Founder and head of Kaspersky Labs Eugene Kaspersky has announced that his company is not fleeing the US market in the wake of a September order by the US Department of Homeland Security banning Kaspersky Lab products on the computers of all US federal departments and agencies. “It isn’t much money…” Kaspersky told the Sputnik news agency. “We have never even participated in government tenders in America. So I’m not afraid of a drop in sales. Even if it were to happen, I am sure that we would be able to make up for it.”
In fact, the company appears to be doubling down. It will change its development strategy, Kaspersky said, and will open three new branches: in Chicago, Toronto and Los Angeles.
“The US market is strategic for our company, and we intend to continue developing and providing the best security on the market to our clients,” Kaspersky said.
Meanwhile, at press time, the Wall Street Journal reported that NSA secrets (specifically, how the US penetrates foreign computer networks and defends again cyber-attacks) were allegedly accessed when hackers working for the Russian government were alerted to sensitive files on a worker’s home computer after the worker’s computer ran an antivirus scan by Kaspersky antivirus software.
A few days later, the company, in an official response, said “As a private company, Kaspersky Lab does not have inappropriate ties to any government, including Russia, and the only conclusion seems to be that Kaspersky Lab is caught in the middle of a geopolitical fight.”
Teen figure skating sensation and gold medalist at the 2014 Sochi Olympic Games Yulia Lipnitskaya announced that she is quitting professional sports following a battle with anorexia. Lipnitskaya’s dizzying spins and unusually young age (15) secured her first place in the free program in Sochi and a legion of fans. Yet it later turned out that the teenager was struggling with overtraining, had been hit by a string of injuries, and often ate nothing but protein shakes to avoid gaining weight.
Lipnitskaya had left her coach, Eteri Tutberidze, but could no longer perform at her previous level, coming in last place at Moscow’s Cup of Russia. “I don’t want to go out on the ice anymore,” she said in an interview with fsrussia.ru after treatment in Israel. She is currently preparing for exams to enter Moscow State University.
Stanislav Petrov, a former Soviet military officer, who in 1983 made a decision not to report a computer’s (false) warning that the United States had fired missiles at the Soviet Union, died in his home outside Moscow in May, it became known in September. Reporting the warning could have triggered a retaliatory strike and resulted in a nuclear war.
Petrov was on duty at the Serpukhov Command Center when an alarm came through the USSR’s new anti-ballistic warning system indicating that a missile aimed at the USSR had been launched from a US base. Despite alerts of four more launches within minutes, Petrov made a decision not to trust the system and reported the warnings as false alarms. It later turned out that the system had malfunctioned due to cloud reflections. The incident only became known after the USSR collapsed, and Petrov was hailed as the man who prevented World War III.
Born in Vladivostok in 1939, Petrov was a graduate of the Kiev Military Aviation Academy. He received several awards over the past decades for his actions, but maintained a low profile and spoke modestly about what had happened. “I’m not a hero. I was just in the right place at the right time,” Petrov said in the 2015 film, The Man Who Saved the World.
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