MEDUZA/EN/VHF

In early August, an explosion thundered from beneath the steps of the Smolninskoye municipal hall in central St. Petersburg. This part of the city has been the subject of a protracted and bitter struggle for power between the head of the local council of deputies, Grigory Rankov (who failed to get re-elected two years ago, but managed to cling on to his post), and local oppositionists. Rankov's opponents on the council believe he's the mastermind behind the blast, and although law enforcement have not corroborated his involvement, Rankov has indeed exhibited some odd behavior in recent weeks. For example, posting a video of himself shooting a Kalashnikov rifle, accompanied by threatening comments. Meduza tracks Rankov's journey from IT teacher and ballroom dancer, to municipal councilman now known as "Detonator Greg."

On August 28, the far-right hate group "Male State" launched an attack on the Russian sushi delivery chain "YobiDoyobi" over an advertisement featuring a Black model. In response, the company pulled the ad and issued a public apology. The next day, Male State founder Vladislav Pozdnyakov called on his followers to go after "Tanuki," another Russian chain of Japanese restaurants, for featuring a Black model and the rainbow flag in its marketing materials. This time, however, the target of the attack has refused to succumb to the pressure - even after law enforcement received a string of reports about bomb threats at Tanuki's Moscow locations.

Russia's Central Election Commission (CEC) has decided to file lawsuits with the Supreme Court seeking to bar a number of candidates from running in September's State Duma election because they own foreign assets.

Russian artist Artem Loskutov is auctioning off a work of art online in support of the television network Dozhd and other media outlets that the Russian authorities have labeled "foreign agents."

Over the course of two weeks in August, 95 Afghan nationals reached out to the Moscow-based charity Civic Assistance Committee for help. They had all come to Russia before the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan; most came to study or to work. Now, they're seeking asylum, but this is no easy feat. Indeed, as of January 1, 2020, only 455 people in Russia were in possession of refugee status. For years and sometimes decades, tens of thousands of people have tried to seek asylum in Russia - usually in vain. Just last month, authorities in the Leningrad region expelled an Afghan girl and her family from the country; they had fled to Russia after the Taliban tried to force the 12-year-old child to marry. To find out more about the challenges Afghan asylum seekers face in Russia, Meduza spoke to "refugees sur place," an Afghan woman who fled to Moscow in 1997, and students who are now afraid to return to their homeland. Here are their stories.

On August 11, the Telegram channel Baza reported that Khalimat Taramova had made another attempt to escape Chechnya. The 22-year-old fled to a women's shelter in neighboring Dagestan back in June, but was forcibly returned to her family by Chechen police officers. Human rights activists don't know where Khalimat Taramova is now and some fear that she may in fact be dead. Meduza learned that not long before her first attempt to flee Chechnya, Taramova's parents sent her to an unlicensed "elite clinic" on the outskirts of Moscow, where alleged doctors spent several months trying to "cure" the young woman of her relationship with her partner, Anna Manylova. Here's what Meduza found out about what happened to Khalimat Taramova before and after she fled Chechnya.

The nature of political violence in Russia changed in the summer of 2021. What was once a disparate collection of draconian laws and legislative amendments (four categories of "foreign agent," a registry for "undesirable" organizations, and a growing list of "extremists") has now coalesced into a single campaign. Having destroyed the anti-Kremlin opposition, the Russian authorities have turned their attention to the free press. Since April, officials have designated seven newsrooms and 20 individual journalists as "foreign agents," and banned an entire outlet as "undesirable." The federal censor has blocked a handful of news websites, forcing several publications to close down permanently. The independent media outlets yet to receive any special status from the Russian government nevertheless operate in constant fear of police raids and lawsuits. The agencies responsible for this attack on Russia's free press have worked so swiftly that the public still knows alarmingly little about how this repressive system operates. Meduza special correspondent Lilia Yapparova investigated the apparatus that's been turned against Russia's independent journalists and uncovered how collaboration between a group of "civic informants," the state media outlet RT, and Russia's national security bloc fuels this summer's crackdown.

Under the instruction of President Vladimir Putin, the Russian Defense Ministry has organized the evacuation of more than 500 people from Afghanistan, Interfax reported on Wednesday, August 25.

Russian investigators have opened a felony case on charges of ecocide over Ukraine's decision to cut off water deliveries to Crimea after Moscow annexed the peninsula in 2014.

The Moscow Mayor's Office has rejected an application from the Journalists' and Media Workers' Union to hold a protest rally opposing Russia's "foreign agents" law. According to the Telegram channel Avtozak Live, city hall's Regional Security Department cited the ban on holding public gatherings imposed due to the coronavirus pandemic as the reason for turning down the application.