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Back in September, Sochi's 2021 Kinotavr Film Festival opened with a screening of a new documentary about the late Russian actor Sergey Bodrov Jr. (the film's wider release took place on October 7). Written and directed by Russian journalist and film critic Peter Shepotinnik, the documentary tells Bodrov Jr.'s story in an unexpected way: his friends and colleagues paint an optimistic picture of his life, interwoven with that of Alexey Balabanov, the director behind the cult films Brother and Brother 2. The documentary also features original piano compositions by Russian singer and songwriter Vyacheslav Butusov, who not only appeared in Brother but also wrote the music for the film. For Meduza, film critic Anton Dolin describes his impressions from the documentary's premiere.

On Monday evening, October 18, reports emerged that police officers had broken into a women's shelter in Kazan in search of two young women from Dagestan. The alleged officers took the women from the shelter, along with a small child, and handed them over to their relatives. On Tuesday, the father of one of the women told journalists that they had both decided to return home of their own free will. In turn, regional police officials said they were conducting a check due to abduction allegations lodged against "people in police uniforms." According to human rights activists, the two, twenty-year-old women in question -- identified as Aishat Saygidguseynova and Patimat Saygitova -- had been in contact with them for a year, seeking help escaping abusive marriages. Meduza breaks down what we know about the incident so far.

Thanks to a source familiar with the case materials, Forbes Russia published a scoop on the high-profile investigation targeting Marina Rakova, Russia's ex-deputy education minister, and Sergey Zuyev, the rector of the Moscow School for the Social and Economic Sciences ("Shaninka"). The two defendants stand accused of fraud and embezzlement of state funds that the Education Ministry's Foundation for New Forms of Education Development (FNFRO) -- formerly headed by Rakova -- paid to Shaninka as a subcontractor under two separate contracts.

Andrey Trubnikov, who founded the cosmetics company Natura Siberica, was called a tyrant, a genius, a provocateur, and a visionary -- all epithets that he eagerly embraced. Trubnikov frequently repeated that he couldn't stand business plans, he didn't make budgets, he didn't work with marketing consultants, and he based all his decisions on his own intuition. "Chaos is the highest form of order," he told Forbes, quoting Nietzche to describe his work style (in what turned out to be his last interview). In the months since his death in January of this year, it's become apparent that Trubnikov was the only person capable of controlling this chaos; Natura Siberica is rapidly falling apart. Meduza special correspondent Anastasia Yakoreva takes a look at the people who inherited the company -- and assesses its prospects for survival.

October 20 marks exactly seven years since Meduza's launch. And October 23 will mark six months since our newsroom was labeled a "foreign agent." We at Meduza consider this status discriminatory and unlawful -- and we've strived to draw our readers' attention to the impact of ending up on Russia's "foreign agent" registry. In this endeavor, we've had the help of many contemporary artists. Most recently, a well-known, international fashion photographer who goes by the pseudonym Zoi shot photos of Meduza's "foreign agent" merch. Meduza employees and their friends also took part in the shoot. Here are the results.

In Russia's southwestern city of Bryansk, on Wednesday, October 20, a court handed down the first verdict in the case against the creators of the online gambling company 1xBet. The court sentenced a local woman to three years in prison and an 800,000-ruble ($11,200) fine for "unlawfully organizing gambling," according to a press release from regional investigators. However, the accused was granted a respite, because she has a child under the age of 14. Local reporters from Bryansk.news identified the defendant as Olesya Mospanova, the manager of Bookmaker Pub -- a network of bookies in Bryansk. According to investigators, Mospanova allegedly accepted cash from clients and allowed them to place sports bets through the website 1xBet, whose activities are outlawed in Russia. Investigators estimate that the scheme pulled in 63 billion rubles (nearly $886 million) in illegal income -- a sum that's greater than the Bryansk region's annual budget.

As announced by President Vladimir Putin, Russia is to have paid "non-working days" from October 30 to November 7. This decision came against the backdrop of the record-breaking daily numbers of coronavirus cases and fatalities seen in October. Federal officials warn that the epidemiological situation is getting worse countrywide. The Moscow authorities are opting to go into a partial lockdown beginning on October 28 and plan to keep certain restrictions in place after the "non-working" period ends.

During a public conference with Vladimir Putin on Thursday, Novaya Gazeta editor-in-chief and 2021 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Dmitry Muratov complained that Russia's "foreign agent" legislation is enforced "extrajudicially," prompting the president's latest comparison to the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) in the United States, which the Kremlin (inaccurately) calls "analogous." Putin went on to argue that FARA is even harsher legislation than the regulations Russia recently began imposing on so-called "foreign agents." Notably, the president claimed that "foreign agents" risk felony charges in the U.S. but not in Russia. Mr. Putin is mistaken.

Latvian police have opened a criminal case over a tweet posted by an assistant to a member of parliament, reports the news site Delfi. The tweet, which has since been deleted, said: "The more Russian speakers die, the better for the Latvian language." It was authored by Selma Levrence, a well-known activist from the youth wing of the Latvian social-democratic party The Progressives, who works as an aide to parliamentarian Mara Micerevska. The criminal proceedings were initiated upon the application of another lawmaker.

The independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta claims to have uncovered a scheme in which Moscow police are fabricating dozens of misdemeanor charges, in order to implicate the accused in more serious criminal cases. As a rule, the alleged scheme appears to target migrants, who are picked up by police for petty offenses, jailed, and later indicted on felony charges -- usually, for alleged terrorism. Novaya Gazeta's journalists identified 11 cases that follow the same pattern, along with five defendants who are already serving time in prison as a result. Though this investigation was only based on data from court rulings in Moscow, Novaya Gazeta plans to continue its reporting, in order to determine if similar schemes are taking place in other parts of the country.