Mere minutes before midnight on September 18 when the new policy he was announcing would take effect, Telegram founder Pavel Durov published a statement on his personal channel explaining that the network would begin blocking bots "involved in campaigning" in accordance with Russia's "election silence" law. His announcement did not begin with this information; Durov spent the first three paragraphs of his message berating Apple and Google for bowing to Russia's censorship demands. "It's a dangerous precedent," he said, referring to the two American companies' decisions to disable access inside Russia to the Navalny app on their respective app stores. "I've written many times that the Apple and Google oligopoly poses a threat to free speech." After these condemnations and praise for Telegram as "still the freest platform on the Web," Durov got to the core of his announcement. Meduza explains what's wrong with his explanation.

On Friday, September 17, Moscow's Basmanny District Court jailed suspects Dmitry Chebanov and Nikita Kreshchuk on charges of "inciting mass riots" amid this weekend's State Duma elections.

On September 14, investigative journalists from iStories identified an alleged Russian Foreign Ministry employee by the name of Svetlana Polyakova as the longtime "female companion" of Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. The journalists discovered that several of Polyakova's friends got jobs in branches of the Ministry, while she herself accompanied Lavrov on a number of working trips -- some people even saved her contact information as "Svetlana Lavrova." Building off the iStories investigation, Team Navalny published its own deep-dive into the relationship between Sergey Lavrov and Svetlana Polyakova on September 16. Meduza summarizes their findings here.

As nationwide voting in Russia got underway and just hours after company representatives met with members of the Federation Council's "Sovereignty Committee," the American tech giants Apple and Google both blocked Russian users' access to Alexey Navalny's mobile app on their online stores, the App Store and Google Play. Still accessible to users outside Russia, the Navalny app was one of the key platforms the imprisoned opposition leader's team hoped to use to disseminate strategic voting recommendations in parliamentary races across the country. Meduza summarizes how the Russian authorities managed to disable the anti-Kremlin opposition's key online mobilization tools, precisely when activists needed them most.

On September 17, voting began across Russia in parliamentary elections that will span three days. These contests are taking place against the backdrop of an unprecedented crackdown on opposition politicians, independent media outlets, and generally anyone who's managed to rub the state authorities the wrong way. In this campaign of repression, various laws adopted by the State Duma (the very institution now up for grabs at the polls) have provided the key legal grounds for Russia's expanded policing. For a better grasp of what Russia's parliamentarians have actually been doing all these years, the German project dekoder and journalists at Novaya Gazeta analyzed everything said at State Duma sessions between 1994 and 2021. One finding in this study: unlike Russia's president, the country's federal lawmakers are not shy about speaking Alexey Navalny's name.

On Friday, September 17, Russia kicked off the first of three days of voting in the State Duma elections, as well as in a number of regional parliamentary elections. Things got off to a busy start with many polling stations seeing abnormally long lines of civil servants and military personnel looking to cast their ballots first thing in the morning. Journalists, human rights activists, and election observers were quick to point this out. According to Meduza's sources, government employees were pressured to vote en masse before noon on Friday, to ensure maximum turnout from the get-go.

From September 17-19, Russians are heading to the polls to cast their ballots in the 2021 State Duma elections. The first day of voting on Friday was marked by abnormally long lines at polling stations, reportedly due to pressure on civil servants meant to ensure high turnout right from the start. Allegedly, the authorities are gunning for the United Russia to win 45 percent of the vote. But heading into the elections, the ruling party's polling results were less than ideal. Will United Russia win its proclaimed "optimal" result? Meduza breaks down this question and other key intrigues surrounding the elections here.

Anastasia Vasilyeva, the director of the Doctors' Alliance labor union and an ophthalmologist who has treated Alexey Navalny directly, says she no longer wishes to be associated with Navalny's most recognizable political project. In a post on Facebook, the activist accused "the management of the Anti-Corruption Foundation" of exploiting her labor union and then forgetting about the group when they no longer needed it. Meduza has confirmed that Vasilyeva herself wrote the post; no one has hacked her Facebook account.

Moscow's Zamoskvoretsky District Court handed down fines to iStories journalists Alesya Marokhovskaya, Irina Dolinina, and Polina Uzhvak on Thursday, September 16.

Russian President Vladimir Putin says the coronavirus outbreak in his inner circle has affected "several dozen people."