As Australian chess player David Bukata was joining the Russian chess federation last year, three Russian players whose surnames also start with B were quitting it. Screenshot of the 2023 transfers page on FIDE’s website.
In 2023, 104 Russian chess players changed their national affiliations, according to information published on the website of the International Chess Federation, FIDE.
Among the top hundred players in the world chess rankings, Sanan Sjugirov (40th place), Alexey Sarana (41st), Vladimir Fedoseev (45th), Nikita Vitiugov (50th), Alexandr Predke (64th), Kirill Alekseenko (89th) and Alexandra Kosteniuk (11th in the women’s rankings) quit the Russian national chess federation.
In turn, five competitors transferred their affiliation to the Russian chess federation last year: Yuriy Ajrapetjan and Viktor Filonov from Ukraine, David Bukata from Australia, Kanan Geidarli from Azerbaijan, and Nadezhda Iskichekova from Kazakhstan.
In the almost two years since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, 192 Russian chess players have changed their national sporting affiliations.
Former Russian deputy prime minister Arkady Dvorkovich is FIDE’s current president.
Arkady Vladimirovich Dvorkovich (Russian: Арка́дий Влади́мирович Дворко́вич; born 26 March 1972) is a Russian politician and economist, currently chairman of the International Chess Federation, FIDE. He was Deputy Prime Minister in Dmitry Medvedev’s Cabinet from 21 May 2012 until 7 May 2018. He was previously an Assistant to the President of the Russian Federation from May 2008 to May 2012. He has the federal state civilian service rank of 1st class Active State Councillor of the Russian Federation.
Dvorkovich was considered to be a close confidant of Dmitry Medvedev and an important figure in Russian politics. He rose to prominence during Medvedev’s presidency but has suffered from the resurgence of Igor Sechin. From 2018 to 2022 he was the Chairman of Skolkovo Foundation. Since 2015, he is also the Chairman of the Board of the Directors in Russian Railways company.
[…]
In March 2022, Dvorkovich condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, saying that “Wars are the worst things one might face in life…including this war. My thoughts are with Ukrainian civilians.” Andrey Turchak, a lawmaker from Putin’s United Russia party, condemned Dvorkovich’s anti-war stance and called for his “immediate dismissal in disgrace,” saying: “This is nothing but the very national betrayal, the behavior of the fifth column, which the president [Putin] spoke about today.” Later Dvorkovich said on the website of the Skolkovo Foundation that he was “sincerely proud of the courage of our (Russian) soldiers” and that Russia had been targeted by “harsh and senseless sanctions.”
In August 2022, he was re-elected for a second term as FIDE president receiving 157 votes as against 16 by his rival Andrey Baryshpolets.
The Hustle, “The Economics of Pickleball and the Sport’s Sound Problems”
MBARI, “Scientists solve mystery of why thousands of octopus migrate to deep-sea thermal springs”Sergei Okrushko
Solidarity Zone has begun supporting Sergei Okrushko
On July 28, an explosion occurred at the Kuibyshev Oil Refinery in Samara. The same day, 42-year-old Sergei Okrushko, who was born in Ukraine and worked as an electrician at the refinery, was detained at the border with Kazakhstan whilst trying to leave Russia. The FSB charged him with “sabotage” (per Article 281 of the Russian Federal Criminal Code of the Russian Federation “Sabotage”, and a court in Samara remanded him in custody to a pretrial detention center.
Okrushko confessed, and at his bail hearing he said that he held anti-war views and committed the action for political reasons.
It also transpired that Okrushko had earlier tried to enter Ukraine, but he was not admitted because of his Russian passport. During his stay in Moldova, he had repeatedly participated in anti-war protests.
No one was injured during the explosion at the refinery. According to the investigation, more than 30 million rubles in physical damage was caused, however.
The Kuibyshev Oil Refinery is the largest enterprise in the Samara Region, processing about seven million tons of oil per year. The plant specializes in the production of fuel for all types of transport from automobiles to ships.
On August 3, Okrushko refused the services of Solidarity Zone-affiliated lawyer Zakhar Lebedev, whom he had agreed to let defend him two days earlier. While Okrushko was writing the waiver of counsel, the lawyer noticed fresh injuries on Okrushko’s body: “I noticed that his left arm, namely most of his shoulder and forearm, was purple. It was clear that these were hematomas, which hadn’t been there on August 1 when I visited him at the pretrial detention center. When I asked Sergei where he had got such bruises, he said, without hesitating, “When they arrested me.” When I asked why they had not been there when I’d visited him at the pretrial detention center, Sergei hesitantly said that they’d shown up only now.”
We believe that the fresh bruises and his sudden and unmotivated waiver of counsel testify to the fact that Sergei Okrushko was tortured between August 1 and August 3.
Subsequently, the authorities stopped admitting any lawyers into the pretrial detention center, except for the court-appointed lawyer Vyacheslav Pavelkin. Later, it transpired that Okrushko was taken to the FSB several times without a lawyer.
Unfortunately, at this stage we have been unable to provide Sergei with defense counsel. But at the very outset of his ordeal, we sent him a care package and books, placed an order at the online Federal Penitentiary Service store, and transferred money to his personal account at the pretrial detention center. We recently learned that Sergei received all these things, which means that we were able to provide him with at least minimal humanitarian support. In the coming days, we will put together another care package for Sergei and continue to support him as much as possible.
Solidarity Zone’s mission is to support people imprisoned for anti-war direct-action protests and not let them face the system alone. We cannot always provide full-fledged support due to interference from the security forces, but we consider any reduction in the harm caused by the actions of the Russian state to be a decent outcome.
If you want to support us, you can find our details here.
Address for letters and parcels:
Okrushko Sergei Aleksandrovich (born 01.03.1981) 22 Sadovyi proyezd, SIZO-1 Samara 443021 Russian Federation
Source: Solidarity Zone (Facebook), 24 August 2023. Translated by the Russian Reader. People living outside of Russia will find it difficult or impossible to send letters to Russian prisons via Zonatelecom or regular mail. In many cases, however, you can send letters (which must be written in Russian or translated into Russian) via the free, volunteer-run service RosUznik. Mr. Okrushko has not yet appeared on their list of supported addressees, however. You can write to me (avvakum@pm.me) for assistance and advice in sending letters to her and other Russian political prisoners.
Recommended for ages 16 and up. This production contains sexually suggestive language, references to suicide, and depictions of drug use, extreme physical violence towards humans and animals, and self harm. This production also contains the use of herbal cigarettes, haze, and a brief flash of light.
This ad for a “big stadium concert” by the Russian nationalist pop singer Shaman, scheduled for 7 p.m., September 9, at Petersburg’s Gazprom Arena, showed up this morning (for the second or third time in the last mont) in the weekly email newsletter I get from Bileter.ru, a Russian online retail ticket vendor. The aesthetic here is both strikingly fascistic/nationalistic and pointedly un-Russian. I would say it’s almost American in its inspiration, if I didn’t know better. ||| TRR
This showed up in my mailbox today too:
За последние две недели в редакции произошли изменения. У нас теперь новый руководитель редакции, а потому скоро вы ощутите изменения, которые make Inc. great again.
Here’s my translation:
There have been changes to [our] editorial board over the past two weeks. We have a new editorial director now, and so you will soon feel the changes that [will?] make Inc. great again.
These days, all “progressive” Russians are fluent in English, supposedly, and this is often how they signal their “progressive” values to each other: by shouting out their true reactionary colors in Rusglish.
In this case, the progressive reactionaries hale from Inc. Russia, “a magazine for entrepreneurs [that] focuses on small and medium-sized businesses, advanced technologies, and the people behind it all.” Founded in the US in 1979, the Russian edition has been in existence since 2016.
The passage that I quoted and translated, above, led off Inc. Russia‘s weekly email newsletter.
Immediately after Russia’s brutal, unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, the Russian Inc.ers were openly dismayed by the sudden turn of events in their otherwise entrepreneurially progressive country—without, however, ever going so far as to oppose the war explicitly. This dismay and confusion gradually and visibly diminished as the war continued. Now, apparently, Inc. Russia has come full circle: they are determined to show that they and their readers live in nearly the best of all possible entrepreneurial worlds. They’ve definitively stopped paying any mind to their country’s breakneck plunge into fascism, much less to the war itself.
And yet the new realities occasionally puncture Russian Inc.‘s otherwise now-placid surface, as in this news item published on their website earlier today:
English to become optional in the subway
It may become option to duplicate information in subways in English. The Transport Ministry has published a law bill addressing the matter. The Moscow subway stopped duplicating [station] names back in 2021, while Nizhny Novgorod and Kazan do not plan to give up English until instructions are received.
As reported by Kommersant, the Transport Ministry has published a draft law on amendments to the orders regulating the “standard rules” for the use of subways, monorails, funiculars, and suspended cable cars.
Carriers are currently required to duplicate all information on diagrams, signs, inscriptions, and station announcements in English. The Transport Ministry proposes doing away with this obligation, leaving the decision to the regions.
The proposal was prompted by “numerous appeals from citizens and [regional governments], due to the considerable informational burden on passengers and taking into account the socio-political situation.”
Moscow’s Metro, Central Circle, and Monorail stopped announcing stations in English back in 2021, after a drop in the number of tourists due to the pandemic and “passenger complaints about additional information.”
Oleg Yaushev, director of the Nizhny Novgorod Metro, said that none of the city’s residents had complained about the English dubbing in the city’s subway, so the company does not plan to remove it.
“We installed this information system relatively recently and spent a lot of money on it. Why remove it now? Tourists who are native English speakers travel to the city. The language is widely spoken, and we welcome them. Of course, if there is a directive to remove everything and leave it only in Russian, we will comply. But it’s not worth freaking out about it,” he said.
Kazan’s Metroelectrotrans also expressed its willingness to execute the order, “if it is issued.” However, local residents there have also not petitioned the company to cancel the dubbing of station names in English.
Russian streaming service Amediateka (thanks to the good offices of sanctions busters HBO) keeps its viewers comfortably ensconced in an alternate reality dominated by the Great Satan’s pop culture:
The second season of the sports series “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty” recounts the period between 1980 and 1984. It deals with the rivalry with the Boston Celtics, as well as with the personal lives of the players, which prove no less emotional and striking than their play on the court. Jerry Buss wants to get his sons involved in working with the Lakers, Magic Johnson learns to be a good father, and Larry Bird plunges into family squabbles. Won’t this prevent the lads from becoming NBA champions?
Source: Amediateka email newsletter, 14 August 2023. Translated by the Russian Reader
Finally, here is yet another reflection of the Russian petite bourgeoisie’s (and, hence, Russian officialdom’s) peculiar love-hate, cargo-cultish relationship with the “collective west” (i.e., the United States) and the English language.
Russian businessman, owner of the Concord Group of companies, “Putin’s chef” and confidant of the president, founder of a media empire and the Wagner Group, and one of the most famous people in Russia, Yevgeny Prigozhin now faces criminal charges of organizing an armed rebellion.
Prigozhin was born in Leningrad on 1 June 1961. We know that his mother, Violetta, worked at a hospital, his father died early, and his stepfather Samuel Zharkoy raised the future “Kremlin chef.” Zharkoy also encouraged Prigozhin to ski: his stepson graduated from Athletics Boarding School No. 62, where the swimmer Vladimir Salnikov and the gymnast Alexander Dityatin were his classmates. Prigozhin then enrolled at the Leningrad Chemical and Pharmaceutical Institute, but, according to his own account, he did not finish his degree there.
In 1979, the entrepreneur was given a suspended sentence on robbery charges. According to media reports, in 1981 he was sentenced by the Zhdanov District Court to twelve years in prison for a number of crimes at once, but in 1988 he was pardoned, and in 1990 he was released from prison early.
Beginnings
As Prigozhin himself recounted in an interview, his first business, founded in 1990, was selling hot dogs at the Apraksin Dvor market, the first such outlet in the city. “The mustard was mixed in my apartment, in the kitchen. My mother also tallied the proceeds there. I earned $1,000 a month, and that amounted to piles of rubles,” the businessman said.
In the 1990s, Prigozhin managed Kontrast, a chain of private grocery stores. He launched his future restaurant business in 1995 by opening Wine Club, a bar and shop on Vasilyevsky Island. In late 1996, after meeting the Briton Tony Gere, Prigozhin opened the Old Customs House, which is considered one of the first elite restaurants in Petersburg. According to some reports, his partner in this business venture was Mikhail Mirilashvili, a well-known Petersburg entrepreneur who years later cofounded the VKontakte social media network.
Prigozhin later opened three more establishments: Seven Forty, Stroganov Yard, and Russian Kitsch. In 1998, he opened the restaurant New Island on the used passenger ship Moscow-177, purchased for fifty thousand dollars, which became a popular spot in Petersburg. When Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin and IMF managing director Michel Camdessus visited the city in June 1999, New Island was the only decent place to wine and dine the high-ranking guests.
In 2001, Vladimir Putin dined there with Jacques Chirac, and a year later with George Bush. In 2003, according to media reports, the Russian president celebrated his birthday there. Since the businessman personally served dishes to the president, he was dubbed “Putin’s chef” and “the Kremlin’s chef.”
By that time, Prigozhin had already moved into the catering business, founding Concord Catering in 1995. In 2002, he launched the Damn!Donalds chain of fast food restaurants: the businessman came up with the name himself. The chain was shuttered ten years later, however.
As the businessman recounted in an interview about the success of his catering business, by 2005 he owned “the largest catering company in Russia for ten years running.” “We did all the G8s and the summits,” Prigozhin recalled. From information available in open sources, it follows that the businessman actually did organize a number of banquets for high-ranking guests, including meals at the Russian Federal House of Government.
Buoyed by this success, Prigozhin decided to enter the school meals market. “I decided to try my hand at it and chose a couple of schools on Vasilyevsky Island — No. 10 and No. 18. Of course, it wasn’t a business. I began feeding the schoolchildren airtight-packaged box meals. I set up modern compact kitchens right in the schools — everything fit in a six-square-meter space. At the same time, I carefully researched the topic.”
In the 2000s, Prigozhin went into the construction business. In particular, he built Northern Versailles, a gated mansion community, in Petersburg’s Lakhta district. In 2016, a company belonging to the businessman built the Lahta Plaza[apartment and hotel] complex next to St. Petersburg Tricentennial Park.
In 2016, it transpired that a Prigozhin-affiliated company bought the premises of the Shop of Merchants Yeliseyev, which he had occupied on lease since 2010, after making expensive renovations. By 2015, Prigozhin’s companies had become the largest supplier of food to the Defense Ministry.
In 2018, Vladimir Putin said in an interview with western media, “He is not my friend. I know such a person, but he is not on my list of friends.”
Media Empire
In 2013, it was reported that the Internet Research Agency, which was informally dubbed the “troll factory,” was located on Savushkin Street in Petersburg. Hundreds of people worked on the media holding’s websites. Prigozhin’s connection with the growing media empire was denied by Concord’s press service.
2019 saw the emergence of the Patriot Media Group, which included the Federal News Agency (FAN), Economy Today, Politics Today, and Nation News. Yevgeny Prigozhin headed its board of trustees, but the businessman’s financial involvement in the project was denied.
Western sanctions against Prigozhin were imposed for the first time over the involvement of his media outlets in the information campaign [sic] for the US presidential election.
Wagner
The Wagner Group, a private military company, was founded in 2014. Subsequently, Wagner soldiers were involved in fighting in eastern Ukraine and, later, in Syria. In 2017, the company was placed on the US sanctions list. But [Prigozhin]admitted his involvement in founding Wagner only in 2022. Western countries have claimed that Wagner mercenaries have also operated in Libya, the Central African Republic, Sudan, Mozambique, and Mali.
SMO
Since 24 February 2022 and the beginning of the SMO, Prigozhin gained worldwide fame in connection with the Wagner Group’s actions in Ukraine. Wagner’s troops have been heavily involved in the fighting. Mercenaries recruited among convicts have been actively joining the ranks of Wagner PMC. In March, the businessman claimed that over 5,000 ex-convicts had returned to Russia after participating in combat.
The conflict between the Defense Ministry and Prigozhin rapidly deteriorated in 2022, although friction between the two parties had essentially begun several years earlier.
A year later, in February 2023, Prigozhin publicly voiced dissatisfaction with the lack of ammunition during the battles for Bakhmut (Artemovsk). A campaign entitled #GiveWagnerShells gained momentum on the internet.
On May 10, the businessman, amid rumors of a “shell famine,” publicly announced his willingness to transfer Wagner’s positions in Bakhmut to Chechnya’s Akhmat Regiment at the suggestion of Chechen ruler Ramzan Kadyrov. On May 20, the businessman said that Wagner had taken Bakhmut, and once again made highly critical remarks about the Defense Ministry. Five days later, Prigozhin announced that he was withdrawing his units from the city.
In June 2023, the businessman asked Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to release the Concord Group from its catering contract in the SMO zone after more than sixteen years of successful cooperation with the Russian military’s kitchens.
Moreover, Prigozhin said that an order that members of volunteer detachments must sign contracts with the Defense Ministry did not apply to the Wagner Group.
Then came June 23. Wagner’s founder made new public statements, triggering criminal charges against him. If convicted, Prigozhin faces up to twenty years in prison.
Goods bearing the emblems of the Wagner Group (including chevrons, flags, t-shirts, baseball caps, and sewn-on patches) have been brought back to the “counters” at Wildberries, as our correspondent verified on the evening of June 24.
In the first half of the day, a source at Wildberries told RIA Novosti that the online retailer had bearing removing goods bearing the [private military] company’s emblems and was going to remove them altogether. Later, such goods were hidden by Ozon, where they are still unavailable.
A search for the phrase “Wagner PMC” on the website of popular Russian online retailer Wildberries garnered 8,736 items, including the fetchingly reimagined Russian tricolor flag, below. This search was performed at 11 p.m. Moscow time on 24 June 2023.
Zenit FC midfielder Wendel has decided not to return to Petersburg due to the situation with the Wagner PMC, reportsSport Express, citing the player’s agent Cesare Barbieri.
“This is definitely a very delicate situation. Wendel will stay in Brazil until the situation improves. The club has already been notified of this. Zenit has reacted understandingly to the situation,” the agent said.
In the 2022–2023 season, 25-year-old Wendel has played twenty-five matches for Zenit in the Russian Premier League, scoring eight goals.
A statue of Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov was unveiled Monday in St. Petersburg, despite criticism from his widow who said today’s Russia has failed her husband.
The 10 1/2-foot bronze statue depicts the Nobel peace laureate, slightly stooped but with his head held high, standing with hands tied behind his back atop a stone pedestal on a square that was named after him in 1996.
The monument by sculptor Levon Lazarev’s was unveiled a few weeks after a city commission in Moscow gave the green light to a stalled plan for another statue of Sakharov in the capital.
Yelena Bonner was opposed to both statues, saying Russia has failed to live up to Sakharov’s ideals of freedom and democracy since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.
“It is out of place to erect a monument to Sakharov in today’s Russia,″ the Interfax news agency quoted Bonner as saying. She said she was not consulted.
“There’s no money to publish his works widely, so that people would finally read them, but they can put up a monument,″ Bonner told Russia’s TVS television by phone from Boston, where she lives.
The unveiling drew about 100 people, among them intellectuals and former dissidents who supported a transition to democracy at the time of the Soviet collapse.
A physicist who helped design the Soviet hydrogen bomb, Sakharov became a staunch promoter of human rights and world peace, and spent seven years in internal exile for speaking out. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975.
A Little Song about the Physicist Sakharov
The physicist Sakharov
Was one bad dude.
Oh, how he made us seethe!
Why do we suffer that fool?
It later suddenly transpired
That he was a real good cat.
We felt sorry for the poor man
And guiltily ate our hats.
Now it’s been ascertained
That he was bad news after all.
We’re seething once again.
Why did we suffer that fool?
If again it turns out
That he was, in fact, a good egg,
Ah, we'll regret it again,
And put on guilty mugs.
8 August 2022
Source: German Lukomnikov, “New Poems,” Volga 1 (2023). Thanks to ES for the suggestion. Translated by the Russian Reader
Russian prosecutors on Monday declared as “undesirable” the U.S.-based foundation that preserves the legacy of Nobel Peace Prize winner Andrei Sakharov as Moscow continues to crack down on dissent in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The activities of the Andrei Sakharov Foundation (ASF) “constitute a threat to the foundation of Russia’s constitutional order and security,” the Prosecutor General’s Office said in a statement.
Under Russian law, individuals believed to have cooperated with an “undesirable” international NGO face steep fines and jail terms.
ASF, based in Springfield, Virginia outside Washington, says its goal is to promote Sakharov’s works to “support peace efforts and anti-war events.”
The organization chaired by mathematician Alexei Semyonov has not yet commented on Russia’s latest designation.
Russian authorities have declared more than 70 organizations — including media outlets focused on exposing fraud and corruption in Russia — “undesirable” between mid-2015 and early 2023.
Sakharov, once feted as a hero of the Soviet defense industry for his role in developing the Soviet nuclear bomb, became one of the U.S.S.R.’s most prominent dissidents from the late 1960s.
He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975 for his work against the nuclear arms race he had helped precipitate, though he was not permitted to leave the Soviet Union to accept the award.
Sakharov became one of the most distinctive personalities of the perestroika era, rising to the status of a national moral authority.
Arrested in 1980 after denouncing the Soviet war in Afghanistan, Sakharov was sent into internal exile in the city of Nizhny Novgorod, then closed to foreigners.
After six years in exile, during which he undertook several hunger strikes, Sakharov was released over a telephone call by reformist Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
Ailama Cesé Montalvo. Photo courtesy of the Lokomotiv Volleyball Club’s press service
Andrei Voronkov, the coach of the volleyball club Lokomotiv Kaliningrad, called a player on the competing team a “monkey” during Lokomotiv’s championship final match against Uralochka-NTMK. His remark has sparked a scandal, with the sports community demanding that the winning club’s skipper at least apologize.
On May 12, during a timeout in the decisive match, Voronkov chastised his players for losing the initiative and getting behind in the score. He turned to blocker Valeria Zaitseva and shouted, “Why are you trying to catch that monkey again?” Viewers of the match’s broadcast thought that the coach had directed his remark at Uralochka’s Cuban striker Ailama Cesé Montalvo, who is an important part of the Sverdlovsk team’s offensive line.
A screenshot of a video of the scandalous conversation between Coach Voronkov and player Valeria Zaitseva, as posted on Uralochka’s VK page. You can listen to Voronkov’s “pep talk” there. He does indeed audibly say what he is accused of saying.
In conversation with E1.ru, Uralochka-NTMK CEO Valentina Ogiyenko stressed that the insult could not be put down to the emotionally charged atmosphere during the Super League’s decisive match. She is sure that public apologies and the volleyball federation’s reaction will help to remedy the situation.
“Emotions are no excuse. Nikolay Vasilyevich Karpol worked [as Uralochka’s coach] for many years, but he never did such a thing, although there were much more serious and emotional matches in his career. Even at the Olympics, I have never heard such a thing from any coach. But we have three coaches in our country who excel at this behavior. […] I think that Andrei Voronkov should make a public apology in the same format as the insult was inflicted. […] He should not call Ailama and whisper ‘Sorry, dear’ in her ear. [His apology] should be broadcast on a national TV channel,” Ogiyenko said.
Uralochka’s press service also stated that the club expects an apology from the Lokomotiv coach. And the disciplinary commission, which monitors unsportsmanlike behavior during the championship, should put the matter to rest, reports Sports.ru.
Sports commentator Dmitry Guberniev has been the most categorical of all. On his Telegram channel, he called Andrei Voronkov a “racist” and a “disgrace,” saying that the Lokomotiv coach should be demonstratively banned from the profession.
The general director of the Kaliningrad team, Alexander Kosyrkov, has not yet evaluated the incident in any way.
“This is the first time I’ve ever heard about it. I was sitting in the stands and didn’t hear the break. I didn’t see that moment at all. I’m not up to reviewing videos and anything else right now. I’m not going to review the match yet. I’m a little bit not up to it now,” he told the newspaper Sport Ekpress.
Uralochka missed winning the heavily fought five-set match only on the tie-break. For the first time in six years, the team took second place in the Russian Volleyball Championship. But the Cuban athlete Ailama Montalvo will leave the team: the Ural climate does not suit her. She will continue her career at another club.
Source: “Opposing coach called Uralochka volleyballer a ‘monkey’, sports community demands punishment,” Vse novosti, 13 May 2022. Translated by the Russian Reader
How a Russian Hacker Ended the White Sands Pupfish
8/23/2021 – Alamogordo Daily News Article – The White Sands Pupfish were known as Pecos League Team number one. On the Pecos League’s digital platform the original team numbers were White Sands #1, Las Cruces #2, Roswell #3, Alpine #4. The Pupfish played in Alamogordo, and Alamogordo was the first city to sign a lease to host a Pecos League Team. Matt McNeile’s efforts were remarkable and the Pupfish were born. Many people ask to this day why are the Pupfish no longer in the Pecos League?
The Pupfish have deep history playing the entire decade from 2011-2019. Despite never qualifying for the Pecos League playoffs after 2011 the Pupfish produced players that would go on to play in the Major Leagues. Chris Smith reached the MLB with the Toronto Blue Jays and Yermin Mercedes reached the MLB with the Chicago White Sox. Mercedes was the most popular player to ever play in the Pecos League with his huge early success with the White Sox.
Things changed for the City of Alamogordo during the 2018. An Alamogordo city employee received an email request to change banking information from someone who appeared to be a Cooperative Education Services (CES) representative. CES is a New Mexico purchasing cooperative. The email appeared to come from a person known to work for CES. The email contained an outdated version of the CES logo. The city accepted the change in banking information and paid all the CES invoices, only to discover that the email was fraudulent. The city paid the invoice in the amount of $250,000. The City believed they would recover the money.
The City was already facing budget cuts and coupled with this loss, things would change for organizations like the Pupfish. Alamogordo never recovered the money, so the City decided to restructure the terms of many of their programs including the Pupfish deal in Alamogordo. In the new deal the Pupfish would be responsible for paying a ballpark lease, making all improvements, maintenance and repairs to the ballparks while the City would keep all revenue from alcohol sales. This deal went into effect in the 2019 season.
Matt Chambers the 2019 Field Manager of the Pupfish stated “This is a real simple deal, The City of Alamogordo makes profit off of the Pupfish Beer Sales, while the Pupfish are liable for all repairs and expenses associated with the team. The Pupfish are left with whatever ticket sales and sponsorships are left. It is very tough to get sponsorship dollars in Alamogordo. I don’t see how this deal will work compared to other Pecos League Cities.”
In 2021 the Mountain Division South of the Pecos League saw the Santa Fe Fuego, Roswell Invaders, Alpine Cowboys and Tucson Saguaros. Without the Pupfish it made things tougher on travel. Moving Santa Fe into the South it broke up traditional rivals Santa Fe and Trinidad.
The musical on ice The Scarlet Flower is not only a colorful performance, but also a socially significant project. The show’s mission is to play a significant role in educating the younger generation and fostering a sense of patriotism through a combination of music and sports. “Of course, our musical on ice encourages young people to be more interested in their native literature. The Scarlet Flower and its Western European counterpart Beauty and the Beast have a lot in common and no less important differences. Our task is to make a show that no one else has done in terms of its scope and beauty, and to prove to the whole world that our work is much more colorful, more interesting, deeper, more romantic and brighter,” said Tatiana Navka.
Source: Bileter.ru. Translated by the Russian Reader
From 2014 to 2015, [Tatiana] Navka was the beneficiary of Carina Global Assets Ltd., an offshore company in the British Virgin Islands. In February 2019, questions were raised over Navka and her husband’s wealth following reports about their ownership of multiple properties in the Moscow region. An investigation by The Guardian suggested that Navka may have underreported income, claimed married status for several years after her divorce from Zhulin, and falsely told the IRS that she had sold a house.
In 2016, Navka caused controversy when she and her dancing partner, Andrei Burkovsky, appeared in the Russian version of Dancing on Ice dressed as Holocaust concentration camp prisoners.
In 2021, Tatiana Navka made and published homophobic comments to Spanish gymnast Cristofer Benítez. Through her social networks, she said that rhythmic gymnastics gymnastics was a “feminine sport,” and that she is glad that in her country men are not allowed to participate in rhythmic gymnastics “and hopefully never will.”
vera.afanasyeva
“A man depicting Alexander Nevsky, on a ship that [was built] 500 years after Nevsky, sings the Soviet song ‘It’s Fun to Walk Together’ at a Putinist festival in St. Petersburg at the height of the epidemic.
Russia: Chronicles of Mass Madness”
And also people in elven armor, people in 18th and 19th century European dress, one dude in a hockey uniform. Peter the Great and someone who looks like Lomonosov.
Only Lenin and Stalin are missing from this picture.
See Alexander Petrosyan’s photos of last night’s Crimson Sails festivities here. Translated by the Russian Reader
__________________
Saint Petersburg Posts Record Covid Toll Following Euro 2020 AFP (Moscow Times)
June 26, 2021
Sweden supporters cheer during the UEFA EURO 2020 Group E football match between Sweden and Poland at Saint Petersburg Stadium in Saint Petersburg on June 23, 2021. Maxim Shmetov/AFP
Russia’s Euro 2020 host Saint Petersburg on Saturday reported the country’s highest daily Covid-19 toll for a city since the start of the pandemic, data showed.
Official figures said the city, which has already hosted six Euro 2020 matches and is due to host a quarter-final on Friday, recorded 107 virus deaths over the last 24 hours.
Russian news agencies said this was the highest toll of any Russian city since the start of the pandemic.
Saint Petersburg was where dozens of Finland supporters caught coronavirus after they traveled to the city for their team’s defeat against Belgium.
Russia has seen an explosion of new coronavirus cases since mid-June driven by the highly infectious Delta variant first identified in India.
The nation as a whole reported 21,665 new infections on Saturday, the highest daily figure since January.
The dramatic rise in infections come as officials in Moscow are pushing vaccine-skeptical Russians to get inoculated, after lifting most anti-virus restrictions late last year.
“To stop the pandemic, one thing is needed: rapid, large-scale vaccinations. Nobody has invented any other solution,” Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin told state-run television on Saturday.
“To fundamentally solve this problem, you need to be vaccinated or go to a lockdown,” he was cited as saying by the RIA Novosti news agency.
Russia also reported 619 new coronavirus deaths on Saturday—the highest daily toll since December—bringing the total to 132,683 fatalities since the pandemic began.
But officials in the sixth-worst hit country the world—and the hardest in Europe—have been accused of downplaying the severity of the outbreak in the country.
Under a broader definition for deaths linked to coronavirus, statistics agency Rosstat at the end of April said that Russia has seen at least 270,000 fatalities since the pandemic began.
Just 21.2 million out of a population of about 146 million had received at least one dose of a vaccine as of Friday, according to the Gogov website, which tallies Covid figures from the regions and the media.
Krylya Sovetov Goalkeeper to Be Punished for Unauthorized Interview in Which He Criticized Regime OVD Info
April 27, 2020
According to MBKh Media and the club’s website, the Samara football club Krylya Sovetov will take disciplinary action against goalkeeper Yevgeny Frolov for giving an interview not authorized by the club.
In an interview with football columnist Sergei Yegorov on the YouTube channel Futbolnyi Bigi, Frolov called the Russian president’s televised addresses “empty talk.”
In particular, the footballer said, “Like it or not, we won’t be getting anything—the regime will just blow us off.”
Prompted by media coverage, the club’s management issued a statement that it and the coaching staff do not share Frolov’s opinion.
“Recently, the federal and regional authorities have done a great deal to grow football in Samara Region and Russia,” it says in the statement.
According to team management, the new Samara Arena stadium “would not have been possible without the support of the senior leadership not only of the region but also the country.”
“By giving an interview without prior agreement with the club, [Frolov] violated the terms of his contract, harming the team’s interests. The player will be punished according to the club’s regulations on disciplinary actions, ” the statement reads.
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Krylya Sovetov goalkeeper Yevgeny Frolov. Photo courtesy of Sport
On April 26, Yevgeny Frolov gave an interview to the YouTube channel Futbolnyi Bigi. In particular, he said that Russian authorities have not been helping ordinary citizens during the coronavirus pandemic and [and the ensuing economic] crisis.
“Like it or not, we won’t be getting anything—the regime will just blow us off. It will blow us off and say, ‘There’s no money, but hang in there.’ They have money for themselves, but they have nothing for people. Take America and Europe: in many countries, [the authorities] have been helping their citizens, helping business. There is none of that here in Russia. What the president says on TV is all empty talk. There is no real action at all,” said Frolov.
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Sweden supporters cheer during the UEFA EURO 2020 Group E football match between Sweden and Poland at Saint Petersburg Stadium in Saint Petersburg on June 23, 2021. Maxim Shmetov/AFP
Krylya Sovetov goalkeeper Yevgeny Frolov. Photo courtesy of 
The Russian Reader 