Russia's federal censor (Roskomnadzor) has blocked bok-o-bok.com, a website run by the Side by Side ("Bok o Bok") LGBT International Film Festival.

Russia is reporting 38,893 new coronavirus cases on average each day. Despite that, most Russians have little desire to get the COVID-19 vaccine. Indeed, only 35 percent of the country's population is fully vaccinated. The authorities in the Kremlin are well-aware of this fact -- and, according to Meduza's sources, they want to change the situation. As Meduza found out, President Vladimir Putin's Executive Office (the Presidential Administration) is going to take charge of rebooting Russia's mass vaccination campaign. Officials in Putin's administration complain that anti-vaccine rhetoric has "become mainstream" on the Russian Internet, and therefore plan to focus their efforts on promoting vaccination online. But although the Kremlin expects to be able to win over people who are on the fence about getting the jab, there are worries that forcing vaccinations could bring down Putin's ratings.

Representatives of the Russian Union of Journalists and the Presidential Human Rights Council have prepared amendments to Russia's "foreign agent" legislation and submitted them to lawmaker Alexander Khintsein, the head of the State Duma Committee on Informational Policy.

A day after Pentagon spokesman John Kirby accused Russia of littering the space around Earth with hundreds of thousands of pieces of debris after testing a direct ascent anti-satellite weapon, Defense Ministry officials in Moscow have confirmed that a military test resulted in damage to one of Russia's inoperative orbital spacecrafts. Russian officials say the incident involved its "Tselina-D" satellite, which the USSR launched back in 1982.

President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree instructing the government to take steps to ease access to Russian markets for goods from the "Donetsk People's Republic" (DNR) and the "Luhansk People's Republic" (LNR), reports the state news agency TASS.

Russian Jehovah's Witnesses have been fleeing to Belarus ever since Russia banned the religious group in 2017. Since then, Russia's Attorney General has asked Belarus to extradite at least two Russian Jehovah's Witnesses back to their home country. But in both cases, Belarus refused. The exact number of Russian Jehovah's Witnesses who've fled to Belarus is unknown. Meduza tells the stories of several Russian asylum seekers who fled their home country in order to continue practicing their faith.

Catering tycoon Evgeny Prigozhin has filed a complaint with prosecutors against Irina Levontina, a forensic linguistics expert who works for the Russian Language Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Levontina served as an expert witness in two defamation lawsuits that Prigozhin filed against journalists. According to Novaya Gazeta, the Kremlin-linked oligarch is accusing Levontina of "misconduct" because she included the Russian Language Institute's official seal on paperwork submitted to the courts as expert evidence. Levontina believes that the complaints are an attempt to have her opinions, which don't support Prigozhin's claims in either case, thrown out.

The Russian authorities have taken an interest in another standup comic. Denis Chuzhoi revealed last week that the police in his hometown started questioning his friends, immediately following the release of his third solo performance, which includes jokes about Alexey Navalny, corruption, and even President Putin. At Meduza's request, comedy critic Ashot Danelyan reviewed Chuzhoi's act, arguing that it's a worthy show, despite some obvious shortcomings. Generally, there are three avenues to success in Russian standup: television, alternative clubs (like Stand-up Club No 1, Outside Stand-up, and others), and the indie scene, where a comic builds a relationship directly with the audience. Denis Chuzhoi is traveling this latter route.

As the coronavirus continues to spread out of control in Russia, the federal government has submitted draft legislation to the State Duma that would require people to present QR codes documenting either vaccination against COVID-19 or a past diagnosis in order to enter public places or access certain forms of transportation.

The Russian Justice Ministry has designated well-known LGBTQ+ rights activist Igor Kochetkov as a "foreign agent." The ministry added Kochetkov to its "foreign-agent media" registry on Friday, November 12.