MEDUZA/EN/VHF

Since 2007, on October 29, the Memorial Human Rights Center has organized "Returning the Names" -- an annual commemorative event dedicated to victims of Soviet-era repressions. In past years, participants read out the names of victims of Joseph Stalin's Great Terror at the Solovetsky Stone in Moscow's Lubyanka Square. But, due to the coronavirus pandemic, "Returning the Names" has taken on a different format since 2020. Rather than gathering together, participants were asked to record videos in historical or symbolic locations, and send them to the organizers to be broadcast in a live stream. The commemoration is taking place from 10:00 a.m. until 10:00 p.m. Moscow time, today, on the eve of Russia's Day of Remembrance of Victims of Political Repression. You can watch the broadcast below. Details on how to participate in the commemoration are available in Russian here.

The number of political prisoners in Russia today is nearly five times higher than it was five years ago, according to the latest report from the Memorial Human Rights Center. Activists began maintaining a list of Russian political prisoners in the late 2000s, and for a long time it was made up of a few dozen names. But this tally has increased sharply since 2015. Today, the country has 420 political prisoners and is poised to catch up to the numbers seen during the twilight years of the USSR. All of these people are being persecuted for their political or religious beliefs. To find out more about the nature of political persecution in Russia today, Meduza spoke to prominent human rights activist Sergey Davidis, who leads Memorial's "Support for Political Prisoners" program.

On the eve of Russia's 2021 parliamentary elections, the Investigative Committee launched a criminal case for "inducing mass riots" using Telegram. According to investigators, "at least eleven people from seven regions of Russia" are considered suspects. But the authorities have only named one of them so far -- 44-year-old Dmitry Chebanov, a Moscow resident who created a Telegram channel called "Chto-Delat!" ("What to Do!"). In turn, human rights activists and journalists identified several other people who are facing felony charges for allegedly trying to instigate mass riots during September's vote. If convicted, they will face a maximum punishment of ten years in prison. As Meduza uncovered, these defendants are also associated with Chebanov's little-known Telegram network. To piece together the story behind this criminal case, Meduza special correspondent Kristina Safonova spoke with the lawyers, family members, and friends of the accused.

Russia's censorship agency (Roskomnadzor or RKN) has added the messaging app Telegram and the blogging platform LiveJournal to its registry of social networks. By law, these two platforms are now required to moderate and block content prohibited in Russia.

Russian authorities have reportedly launched another criminal case against opposition figure and Navalny associate Lyubov Sobol on the application of Kremlin-linked oligarch Evgeny Prigozhin.

The Russian restaurant chain "Tanuki" has requested that prosecutors in the Nizhny Novgorod Region investigate everyone who made donations to the far-right hate group "Male State" for financing extremism.

Lydia Medvedeva, who lives in Russia's Astrakhan region, successfully sued a district hospital for one million rubles ($14,300) over the death of her husband from COVID-19. On October 18, the Astrakhan Regional Court ruled that by belatedly testing Medvedeva's husband for the coronavirus, the hospital failed to provide him with adequate medical care. Medvedeva's husband died in June 2020, less than 10 days after he first visited the hospital complaining of a cough and chest pain. According to Lydia Medvedeva's lawyer, this isn't the first time a Russian court has ordered a hospital to pay compensation due to the death of a coronavirus patient. However, compensation amounts are typically much smaller.

For several months, popular bloggers and major media outlets, including state-owned publications, have been talking about a plan titled "20 Ideas for the Development of Russia." The program is authored by a certain "Dmitry Davydov" -- but it's unclear who this person actually is. Indeed, some doubt he even exists. In a new investigation, BBC News Russian journalist Andrey Zakharov tries to figure out who's behind the program and how they managed to pay for what appears to be a massive advertising campaign. Meduza summarizes his findings here.

A new project from Tayga.info, titled "An Encyclopedia of Violence in the Prisons and Pretrial Detention Centers of the Irkutsk Region," examines a protest by inmates at Prison Number 15 in April 2020 and its consequences. That incident began when several prisoners slit their own wrists in a demonstration against alleged abuse by administrators. Several maintenance buildings and the prison's front office soon went up in flames. The protests continued for roughly a day until the Federal Penitentiary Service dispatched special forces who brutally suppressed the uprising. According to Tayga.info, hundreds of inmates may have been raped and beaten at detention facilities throughout the region in the protest's aftermath. One of the felony investigations into these assaults became the most sweeping criminal case in Russian history, encompassing at least 18 victims. That probe is still underway.

Russian investigators have allegedly opened two new criminal cases against jailed former Khabarovsk Krai Governor Sergey Furgal -- one for fraud and another for organizing a criminal community.