Leadership of Vkontakte, Russia's most popular social network, will likely fall to the son of the Kremlin's domestic policy czar, two sources told The Bell on Friday, claiming "95-percent certainty" that Vladimir Kiriyenko will take over as CEO. A day earlier, another source claimed that Kiriyenko Jr. might find work in the insurance behemoth Sogaz, which acquired control over VK on Thursday in a monster deal with Alisher Usmanov's USM holding company. Another two sources confirmed to the news website RBC that Vladimir Kiriyenko will be VK's next head.

On November 25, Russia experienced its deadliest mine accident since 2010. A methane explosion at the Listvyazhnaya coal mine in Siberia's Kemerovo region killed 51 people -- 46 miners and five rescue workers. In the town where the Listvyazhnaya mine is located, it's difficult to find a family that doesn't have a connection to the industry. The people of Gramoteino have been mining coal for generations. Entire families work in the mines and some continue to dig for coal despite the fact that their loved ones have died underground. For Meduza, photographer Sergey Stroitelev traveled to Gramoteino to talk to surviving miners and local families about how they're coping in the aftermath of the disaster.

The Russian Communist Party's faction in the Komi Republic's State Council has a new, unlikely leader: Viktor Vorobyov, a 32-year-old politician who is not a party member or even a leftist. Before he started working with the Communists, Vorobyov tried to register a wing of Alexey Navalny's political party in St. Petersburg, ran for a seat in the State Duma as a Just Russia candidate, and was once a card-carrying member of the liberal opposition party Yabloko. Meduza special correspondent Andrey Pertsev examines how this man with libertarian views and a turbulent political career ended up the leading Communist in Komi's parliament.

Working abroad in exile, Alexey Navalny's team of researchers has released a new investigative report revealing that Russia's Federal State Register has completely hidden from the country's Unified State Register of Real Estate all records pertaining to the property holdings of several high-ranking government officials, Federal Security Service officers, and their families. The findings, presented by Maria Pevchikh and Georgy Alburov, were published on Navalny's website, which is now blocked inside Russia.

Russia's federal censor, Roskomnadzor, has added the e-commerce website Etsy to its listed of banned domains. The agency is enforcing a court order from Tambov in June 2019 that found an Etsy vendor of Gucci knockoffs guilty of violating intellectual property rights.

Russia's censorship agency (Roskomnadzor) has filed an administrative protocol against GitHub for failing to delete the list of "Smart Vote" endorsements published by Alexey Navalny's team ahead of the State Duma elections in September.

Moscow's Simonovsky District Court has replaced the suspended sentence handed down to opposition figure Lyubov Sobol in the "apartment case" with a real prison term.

Many people associate Memorial with the study of Joseph Stalin's Great Terror. But for more than 30 years, this organization has also carried out crucial human rights work, on top of preserving the memory of victims of Soviet-era political repressions. Memorial's staff have played a key role in everything from hostage negotiations to helping refugees and political prisoners. Nevertheless, in November of this year, the Russian Attorney General's Office moved to liquidate the group's parent organization, Memorial International, for allegedly violating the country's legislation on "foreign agents" by failing to include mandatory disclaimers on its public materials. In this brief history, Meduza looks back on the life and work of Russia's oldest and most prominent human rights organization.

In 2020, the Russian Supreme Court declared AUE an illegal extremist organization and banned its activities. In its ruling, the court referred to AUE as an "international social movement." But by all appearances, this purported extremist group lacks organizational principles, a hierarchical structure, and other characteristics that typically define a social movement. Indeed, AUE -- short for "Arestansky Uklad Edin," which can be roughly translated as "Prisoner's Lifestyle is Unified" -- is more often described as an informal network. Or as a criminal subculture, whose mostly teenage followers romanticize prison culture and criminal aesthetics. To find out more about AUE and its actual influence in Russia, Meduza spoke to anthropologist Dmitry Gromov about the research behind his forthcoming book, titled "AUE: Criminalization of Youth and Moral Panic."

In an interview with RIA Novosti, Belarusian head of state Alexander Lukashenko said that he and Russian President Vladimir Putin had agreed on a visit to Crimea. According to Lukashenko, this trip will signify Minsk's recognition of the peninsula as part of Russia.