Russia's censorship agency (Roskomnadzor) threatened to block the website of the investigative journalism outlet iStories over a report on Rostec CEO Sergey Chemezov's connections in the waste removal industry.

A Russian court has acquitted a Jehovah Witness charged with extremism for the first time since the country's Supreme Court outlawed the religious group in 2017.

In November, Russia's prosecutor general filed a lawsuit to liquidate Memorial International -- Russia's oldest and most authoritative human rights organization. Memorial was accused of violating Russia's legislation on "foreign agents" by failing to include the required labels on its materials. Almost all of Memorial's alleged violations were reported to Roskomnadzor, Russia's federal censorship agency, by the FSB's Ingushetia office. Meduza explains why that particular office has played such an important role in this story, and whether its complaints against Memorial are at all justified.

In a study of Russian youth attitudes for Carnegie Moscow Center, a research team led by Andrey Kolesnikov and Denis Volkov gathered a total of six focus groups in three cities (Moscow, Yaroslavl, and Bryansk), assembling two groups in each location, one comprising 18-25-year-olds and the other 30-35-year-olds. The project was designed, in part, to test speculation that a supposedly liberal-leaning, relatively oppositionist new generation of Russians will challenge the current regime's grip on power. Kolesnikov and Volkov attribute the "myth" that youths formed the heart of this year's pro-Navalny protests to the Kremlin's own propaganda, arguing that the authorities used this narrative to depict the Navalny movement as an illegal enterprise, thus justifying a police crackdown. At the same time, however, the narrative betrayed the Kremlin's own concerns about "losing" the next generation.

The State Duma Commission on Mandates Issues has recommended that parliament remove the immunity of veteran Communist Party (KPRF) lawmaker Valery Rashkin, Interfax reported on Monday, November 22.

The Chechen parliament submitted a draft law to the State Duma that would ban the Russian press from mentioning the nationality and religion of people involved in committing crimes. The bill would also prohibit mentioning whether a criminal belongs to an indigenous group.

Russian governors are being bombarded with comments and messages on Instagram, urging them to oppose draft legislation that would impose new QR-code vaccine passport prerequisites for accessing public places and certain modes of transportation. Journalists from Taiga.Info first reported the online campaign on Thursday, November 18, tracing it to conservative Orthodox groups and other organizations that promote so-called "traditional values." In posts on social networks, these groups called on their supporters to write to their representatives en masse, in an effort to pressure officials to publicly condemn or withdraw the legislation, which could enter force as soon as February 1, 2022.

The Security Service of Ukraine (the SBU) claims to have thwarted a purported "anti-vaccination" ring that's supposed real aim was to destabilize the socio-political situation in the country. Allegedly, this network operated in various regions of Ukraine and Russian handlers are possibly responsible for coordinating its efforts. On November 16, media reports emerged that SBU operatives were searching the home of prominent Lviv anti-vaxxer Ostap Stakhiv as part of the case. Stakhiv's arraignment, which was initially adjourned because he was allegedly seeking medical treatment and therefore failed to appear in court, took place on November 18. A Lviv district court remanded Stakhiv in custody for two months pending trial, setting bail at almost $38,000.

In September, Russia's State Hermitage Museum raked in almost $450,000 by auctioning off famous paintings from its collection in the form of NFTs (non-fungible tokens). Despite the fact that cryptocurrency transactions are prohibited in Russia, the state museum still managed to collect the money from the sale of these digital reproductions. To do so, the Hermitage relied on the services of an intermediary, which transferred the money through a chain of third parties based abroad, according to a new report from BBC News Russian.

On Monday, November 22, Tatarstan became the first Russian region to require commuters to present QR codes documenting either vaccination against COVID-19 or a past diagnosis in order to access public transportation. And although local authorities tried to spread the word about the new rules ahead of time there was still some confusion.