“Retarget Washington. RS-28 Sarmat. Sarmatmobile. For a sovereign Russia.” The Sarmatmobile is, apparently, the work of NOD, the National Liberation Movement, who were profiled in this recent VICE News video.
Maxim Dorofeyev, Jedi Techniques: How to Tame Your Monkey, Empty Your Inbox, and Save Thought Fuel
Why, even when he knows how to work the right way, does a person actually do everything the way he’s used to doing it—that is, the wrong way? Maxim Dorofeyev explains in simple and accessible language why this happens. When you read his book, you’ll learn how thinking and memory work; why you fritter away your brain’s resources; how to conserve them; and how to concentrate properly, articulate tasks, and reactive yourself for productive work. These practical, proven, and well-founded techniques will help you make your to-do list really work and guarantee that you achieve your goals.
Roof Place is a cultural space located on Vasilievsky Island in the building of a former tannery built in 1893. Since its opening in 2016, the site has attracted creative people and connoisseurs of the active lifestyle and comfortable outdoor recreation. Its powerful audio system and convenient location make it a perfect arena [sic] for parties, concerts, and summer festivals.
Rita Dakota (her real name is Margarita Gerasimovich, and she was born in Minsk in 1990 — not on the Pine Ridge Reservation) will be performing at Roof Place’s Roof Fest on July 19. Tickets run from 46 to 77 euros (per the official, not the actual, exchange rate). Screenshot of the concert’s page on Bileter.ru
The point? That Russia, especially its two capitals (Petersburg and Moscow), was never as slavishly “westernizing” as during Putinism’s full flowering. Even a “proxy war with the west” cannot stop this trend, apparently. Hence the mass exodus of many of the “westernizers” and “westernized” from the country after February 24. (You didn’t think all of them left because they’re wild-eyed dissidents opposed to the war, did you?) And often as not this “westernization” has been marked by needless, wholesale injections of English into Russian. By the way, this didn’t happen in the allegedly more slavishly westernizing nineties that have served as a Putinist stalking horse the last glorious twenty-three years.||| TRR
“Johnny Depp’s choice. You’re probably curious what kinds of books the Hollywood star reads. We’ll tell you in order, taking Lewis Carroll and Roald Dahl off the table.”
This is a screenshot of an email I received yesterday from LitRes, Russia’s top ebook distributor and seller. Aside from Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Grey (visible here), Johnny Depp’s alleged “choice” of books, available for purchase on LitRes, includes Joanne Harris’s Chocolat, James Joyce’s Ulysses, Arturo Pérez-Reverte’s The Flanders Panel, and Hunter Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
This is the second time since Russia’s brutal, unprovoked invasion of Ukraine began that LitRes has celebrated the alleged literary tastes of a violent Hollywood bully. In April, two weeks after Will Smith’s assault on comedian Chris Rock at the Oscars, LitRes treated its customers (including me: I’ve purchased 109 otherwise inaccessible Russian books from them over the last several years, my account profile tells me) to “Will Smith’s choice.”
It occurred to me at the time, sadly, that if it had not been for the war, Russia’s chattering classes, including many of the currently exiled “anti-war” liberals, would have happily spent the week following Smith’s violent outburst discussing, just as, before the war, they had been keen to discuss almost anything in the world (especially if it concerned the United States and “the West”) except the dismal political and social circumstances at home in the Motherland. In the recent past, for example, the Russian chatterati chewed over the January 6 coup attempt and the reaction to George Floyd’s murder with supreme relish and satisfaction, often coming to conclusions, however, that would make an observer like me wonder how “liberal” the “liberal” opposition to Putin really was. For example, an acquaintance of mine from Petersburg, a well-known grassroots human rights activist, was so convinced that the anti-police demonstrations in the US were, essentially, little better than the anti-semitic pogroms her ancestors had endured in the early twentieth century that she “unfriended” me for arguing that they were nothing of the sort.
Similarly, one of Russia’s leading opposition political scientists and sociologists, Greg Yudin, who has now risen to some prominence for his courageous public anti-war statements and actions, wrote a longish comment on Facebook on January 7, 2020, that includes the following hilarious assessment of the previous day’s events in Washington:
Michelle Goldberg argued in the New York Times yesterday that Johnny Depp’s lawsuit against Amber Heard and his legal team’s demolition of her character in the courtroom and online is emblematic of “a #MeToo backlash,” and part of “a broader misogynist frenzy at work, one characteristic of the deeply reactionary moment we’re living through.”
In Russia, the “misogynist frenzy” has deepened with every year that the Putin regime has remained in power (even to the point of decriminalizing domestic violence), and would-be opposition “liberals” have been involved in this backlash as well. You’d never know it nowadays (and, seemingly, there is no one who would dare to remember it anymore) but the Riga-based Russian liberal news website Meduza ended up on the wrong side of decency in 2018 when its editor-in-chief was accused of sexual harassment. What this otherwise comprehensive article on the scandal by BuzzFeed doesn’t tell you, for obvious reasons, is that the Ivan Kolpakov resigned from the top post at Meduza only to be quietly reappointed to it a short time later, after the dust had settled. He’s still in that post today, and is now an internationally celebrated champion of press freedom, whose website is hard up for cash.
I haven’t seen any discussion yet of Depp v. Heard on liberal Russian social media, but it is being covered in a predictably misogynist way by Russia’s online tabloids, as a quick Google search for the words “Johnny Depp trial” suggests:
Two of these “top stories” have salacious headlines claiming that “Johnny Depp’s attorney Camille Vasquez gets Amber Heard to come clean.”
It’s no wonder, then, that LitRes imagines that its customers will be delighted to show their solidarity with an “unjustly” accused, violently misogynistic bully, who also happens to a big Hollywood star whose movies they have enjoyed for years, thus making him “svoi” (“one of their own”), just like, paradoxically (given the prevalence of anti-Black racism in Russia), Will Smith. Nor is it any wonder that this celebration of anti-wokeness happens right as the big bad West (the anti-Johnny Depp and anti-Will Smith West) attempts to “cancel” Russia for its violent, unprovoked attack on its “weaker” neighbor.
As Dmitry Volchek argued yesterday in this feuilleton on Radio Svoboda, the threat of “cancellation” animates Russia’s “anti-war” liberals and lefty creatives much more than the silly war itself, much less the war’s victims in Ukraine. |||| TRR
The idol of millions! He went from being an insecure guy who had had a difficult childhood to being one of the highest paid actors in Hollywood. This year it was he who won the Oscar for his role in the biopic King Richard. His unique autobiography will tell you about his road to becoming a superstar, and our selection will give you a chance to look at Will Smith’s bookshelf!
Paolo Coelho, The Alchemist
It is this bestseller by Paulo Coelho that the actor often calls his favorite book. This philosophical novel about dreams that defy fate can change the life of any reader.
Source: screenshot of “What Will Smith reads (and recommends you read),” an email newsletter from LitRes, a popular Russian ebook service, 12 April 2022. Will Smith’s other alleged recommendations are Richard Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad Poor Dad, Malcolm Gladwell’s David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants, and Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend. Translated by the Russian Reader, who has purchased and downloaded a good number of ebooks from LitRes over the last several years.
Putin’s is a regional politics: it is aimed at defending a particular region and its alleged ethno-cultural identity. Iran and the Islamist movements in general have served as the model for those seeking to banish all things Western in the hope that when you remove them, your true cultural identity (for example, an Islamic identify) will shine forth with its natural light. The same thing is gradually happening now in China and India. Cultural identity is discovered by purging the “Western abominations” that have accumulated like a dense layer on its surface. Russia has repeatedly evinced the desire to purge itself of the West—of Facebook, McDonald’s, modern art, rock music, of everything that the Russian does not need and can do perfectly well without. The belief is that if this stuff is removed, the divine wisdom of the Russian spirit will shine with its own light.
The only problem is (and it is an old problem that has been around since the nineteenth century) that this process of stripping and purging Russia of everything Western can never end. There is a non-European cultural substrate in Iran, India, and China. So, when you purge everything European, something homegrown, something originally non-European, does emerge. I am not saying whether this exists in Russia or not. I can only say that all attempts to find it have proved futile and suicidal. That is, the movement back to origins and the Russian World have proved completely suicidal.
In this sense, Russia has reproduced a well-known trope of German culture. In the nineteenth century, Germans also argued that German culture was inherently different from Western civilization, that German culture should be purged of Western civilization to be manifested in all its might. Upon closer examination, however, it transpired that this power was purely negative. German thinkers reflected on this, even glorifying these suicidal, self-destructive tendencies to some extent. Russian culture did this to some extent, too. We can read about the suicidal search for one’s foundations in Dostoevsky’s works, for example. From a cultural perspective, the new paroxysm to purge things Western and get back to Russianness, which we are now witnessing, is a purely suicidal operation.
Source: Boris Groys (in conversation with Liza Lazerson), “Putin: Restoration of Destruction,” E-Flux Journal, no. 126 (April 2022). Translated by Thomas H. Campbell
Skimping on bags and paper, problems with electric cars, and the rise in price of coffee beans
Skimping on little things. Retailers and catering are reducing the use of certain types of packaging, containers, and consumables. Some things you have to give up against your will.
Tired of waiting for guests. The travel industry wants to get a tax exemption from Petersburg city hall, an extension of cashback, and a new version of Booking.com.
Russians charge slowly but drive fast. Sanctions have blocked the way to Russia for foreign electric cars, but import substitution is already being readied.
Pecking like a bird. Petersburg coffee roasters have faced logistical problems. Green coffee beans have risen in price by 15-50%, which has already affected retail prices.
They keep well. In the current situation, warehouses remain the most stable segment of the commercial real estate market, experts argue.
Have a good day!
Source: Delovoi Peterburg, daily email newsletter to subscribers, 7 April 2022. Photo by Sergei Yermokhin for Delovoi Petersburg. Translated by the Russian Reader
Queen’s hits as played by a symphony orchestra
Show must go on? [sic in English] We agree! Great news for everyone who has dreamed of going to a concert by the legendary Queen. On April 21, the group’s international hits will be performed at Tinkoff Arena by the IP Orchestra under the direction of the brilliant Igor Ponomarenko.
Queen is one of the greatest bands in history: their cultural legacy has changed the world of music forever.
The supremely rich acoustic palette of a symphony orchestra, new arrangements of classic Queen compositions, the wild drive of the musicians on stage, and the charming voice of the soloists — all this is part of the patented “Queen Show. Show Must go on” [sic in English].
The IP Orchestra performing Queen Show. Show Must go on. Tickets for their April 21 performance cost between 1,500 and 2,500 rubles [approx. 17-28 euros]. Subscribers to Bileter.ru’s newsletter get a 10% discount
The IP Orchestra has long established itself as a brand not only in Russia, but also in the countries of the near and far abroad. The band has toured on five continents, performed at the world’s best venues, and has thousands of admiring viewers and loyal listeners.
To attend this event, you will need a QR code showing that you have been fully vaccinated or have had the disease, or a certificate showing that you have had a full course of a vaccine, or a document confirming that you have been granted a medical exemption from vaccination along with a negative PCR test for participants and guests over eighteen years of age.
Source: Bileter.ru. Translated by the Russian Reader
Unfortunately, for reasons beyond our control, all parts of J. K. Rowling’s famous saga about the boy wizard will be unavailable on LitRes in three days. Only now can you buy them in time with a 25% discount! It is important that every book remains in your personal library forever.
“Unfortunately, the Harry Potter series will disappear from the LitRes shelves at 23:59 p.m. on 8 April 2022. Buy the books in time and they will remain with you forever.”
To activate the discount, follow this link or enter ACCIO on the promo code page. The offer is valid until April 8.
Source: LitRes email newsletter for customers, 6 April 2022. Image, above, captured on this page on their website. Translated by the Russian Reader
Yulia Yakovleva is the author of the popular series of novels Leningrad Fairy Tales, in which the story of Stalin’s terror and the pre-war years is told with frightening and disarming naivety, because it is told by children for children.
Karina Dobrotvorskaya blew up the internet and reader communities thanks to the release of the novel Has Anyone seen my Girl? The film based on the novel, starring Anna Chipovskaya, Victoria Isakova and Alexander Gorchilin, was a hit.
The new novel, written by Yulia and Karina in collaboration, has everything that makes a work striking and memorable:
* an interesting, offbeat story about the distant future
* a love affair
* a detective story
* a uniquely designed world, described in detail
* a European feel that makes the novel look like a translation
The novel is about our near future, but it reads like a novel about the present.
In the new world, wokeness and the ecological revolution have triumphed. All emotions, except positive and non-confrontational ones, are prohibited. There are fines for violations. If you ate more than the norm, and an inspector finds you’re overweight, there’s also a fine. You can’t offend anyone, not even an ant.
How long can a person live amid such horror?
Yakovleva and Dobrotvorskaya write both ironically and seriously about the new ethics [political correctness], the cult of Greta Thunberg, people carried away with moral norms — and the fact that natural human nature will triumph anyway.
The novel combines the best of the authors’ talents: a fascinating plot from Yulia Yakovleva and Dobrotvorskaya’s subtle, profound psychological insight.
The novel is a niche leader.
Source: LitRes. Image courtesy of Ozon. Translated by the Russian Reader
Who is the culprit of Russia’s troubles in the last three hundred years? Why do we show benevolence and generosity to those who betray us? Leading historian and opinion journalist Nikolai Starikov explores the history of Russia’s relations with the leading countries of the world and answers these questions. This book is a collection of shocking facts about the treachery and cynicism of most countries in Europe and the United States, which will not leave even those who are remote from history and politics unmoved.
__________
A leading public historian of Russia, writer, economist and politician explores the history of Russia’s relations with the leading countries of the world.
This wonderful book gives a comprehensive answer to the question: why today, as a hundred years ago, as two hundred years ago, does Russia have only two allies, its army and navy?
Are we the problem? Is it our naivety? Our almost complete lack of rancor? Our generosity and benevolence?
Yes, partly.
But mostly the problem is the guile and cynicism of most countries in Europe and the United States.
Starikov’s book calmly, step by step, argument by argument, reveals the damning truth about Russia’s relations with so-called allies, partners and brothers.
The reader will discover a lot of unusual, shocking facts in this book. Consequently, it will open everyone’s eyes and reveal the main secret of the ages: who is the culprit of our troubles over the past three hundred years?
Source: Litres email newsletter, 7 October 2021 + website
Were you surprised when you found out about all the offshore companies that Ernst, Chemezov and others own? We weren’t particularly surprised. It has long been clear why Putin and his friends need power: to steal. They don’t do anything useful, but all of them are billionaires. Their children are billionaires, and even their mistresses are billionaires. They made themselves rich at the expense of the federal budget.
The owners of offshore companies are very unhappy when they are not allowed to steal quietly, when they are prevented from disposing of the country as if it were their property. Therefore, they brand all dissatisfied people as “foreign agents” and “extremists” and declare them enemies of Russia.
But they are not Russia. We are Russia. While they are crooks and enemies of our country.
Support Team Navalny, and we promise to spend every ruble to fight Putin and his offshore friends. As always.
Attention! Do not use PayPal if you have a Russian account. We advise everyone who lives in Russia to donate in cryptocurrency: it is the safest way right now. And we also advise you to install a VPN if you cannot open our links: then no blocking will be able to prevent you from opening them.
Thank you for being on our side!
Team Navalny
“Navalny has been in prison for 261 days.”
Source: Anti-Corruption Foundation/Team Navalny email newsletter, 7 October 2021
Central image courtesy of Ozon.ru email newsletter. Translated by the Russian Reader, who received these images and texts via email this morning.
Natalya Pavlishcheva, Forbidden Rus’, 9th Edition: 10,000 Years of Our History from the Flood to Rurik
THE NINTH EDITION of the super-bestseller that has sold record numbers of copies! A sensational book that has overturned over all the usual ideas about the history of Russia, which is not 1,200 to 1,500 years old, as the textbooks lie, but ten times longer!
This “prehistoric” Russia is actually under a complete ban in “scholarly circles.” “Professional historians” do not believe in it. Its existence is denied by “serious academics.” Its traces are diligently ignored by Ph.D.’s and academicians who are accustomed to hush up inconvenient facts that do not fit into the Procrustean bed of scholarly officialdom, although there are more and more such facts with every passing year.
Flying in the teeth of implicit censorship and “professional” taboos, and based not on the retelling of hoary “scholarly” myths, but on the latest data from archaeology, climatology and even genetics, this book offers a new, revolutionary look at the origins of Ancient Rus’ and the deepest roots of the Russian people. It unravels the principal secrets of our past, breaks through the conspiracy of silence and exposes the poverty of historical officialdom!
The book was previously published under the title 10,000 Years of Russian History: From the Flood to the Christianization of Rus’.
The FSB is in despair: religious fanaticism has afflicted people in high society. To prevent a series of terrorist attacks, the authorities have resorted to unconventional methods. They hire former investigator Oleg Ruzhin—now a journalist—and a professional murderer named Chubchik. Find out in Dmitry Krasko’s book whether the heroes are able to prevent a tragedy!
Religious fanaticism sometimes takes on monstrous guises. And anyone can be inveigled into the ranks of the fanatics. Even a high position in society is no guarantee against it. This means that the possibilities of extremist religious groups are sometimes off the scale. So much so that even the almighty FSB is forced to resort to unconventional methods to fight this evil. Thus, in order to combat fanatics who have planned a series of brutal terrorist attacks, the FSB contracts utter outsiders: the former private detective and now journalist Oleg Ruzhin and … the professional hired killer Chubchik. It is they who are tasked with foiling the designs of the fanatics. But will they be able to do it? And how will Chubchik, himself a product of the criminal world, behave when he has to confront evil face to face?
I carefully put the stock to my shoulder, settling more comfortably on the hard tar-covered roof, and fell silent, studying through the telescopic sight’s eyepiece the area in which the client was supposed to appear. The rifle lay comfortably in my hand, the sun was shining in the sky: although it was not yet hot, it was pleasantly warm. The morning air was fresh, not fouled by the exhaust of tens of thousands of cars, so, in the absence of smog, it was easy to breathe. The new day, born a couple of hours earlier, had already got its bearings in this world and persistently laid claim to it. The city was waking up and getting ready for the hustle and bustle.
People also began to gather in the Square of Fallen Heroes. To what extent the label “people” could be applied to these citizens was a matter of serious and lengthy discussion, however, because the square was a meeting place for yesterday’s goodfellas and various gangsters. The former, who had managed to scale to the very heights of life from the gloomy gateways or prison bunks where they had ruled ten or twenty years ago, met with the latter, who had been transported to these heights by cronyism, careerism and a willingness to lick any ass, provided it was above them. Both the former and the latter had achieved their goals, and now they soared majestically over the heads of mere mortals, occasionally defecating on them, and licking the cream from the snow-capped peaks of destiny. On the square, they proudly shared their impressions of what the latest peak, licked to shreds, had tasted like, and haggled over what new peaks to conquer.
My mark was also a part of this world, a blindingly bright specimen. He was the director of a security firm and, at the same time, a deputy in the regional legislative assembly. In the mid-nineties, his current guards, under their chief’s strict guidance, shook down the traders in the markets, then began running a protection racket on firms big and small. But everything changes, and he had gone legit. So much so that he had managed to finagle his way into the corridors of power. For me, such nimbleness remained a mystery that I did not even try to solve. It was none of my business: I had been hired take out the deputy-slash-director, and apart from that, nothing worried me. Half of the one hundred thousand greenbacks I would get for the job were already in my bank account.
Everything happening now around Navalny (and what is happening is a special op), including not letting his doctor see him, not letting his wife see him, the huge number of security forces [at the hospital in Omsk], the refusal to transport him [to another country for treatment] is aimed at one goal and one goal alone. And it’s not treating the patient, of course.
The goal is concealing traces of the crime, making it impossible to detect the toxin, making sure no one gets access to the biomaterials, so that there is no convincing evidence of what substance was used to poison him and how it was used. So what if this is wreaks havoc with choosing the optimal medical treatment.
But it will allow the Kremlin to play their favorite game, like with the Boeing [shot down over Ukraine by Russian forces in July 2014]: to put forward 300 different hypotheses of any degree of absurdity (except the obvious and true explanation), and to shout “What is your evidence?” in response to the obvious explanation. In fact, they have already started doing it.
Translated by the Russian Reader
NKVD Captain Yermolai Remizov fights ruthlessly against the Motherland’s enemies. His task force has cracked dozens of cases, eliminating the remnants of the White Guard, and capturing foreign spies and Trotskyist henchmen. From reliable sources, Remizov gets a signal about an upcoming act of sabotage at the Proletarian Diesel plant. The plant is the flagship of its industry, and any accident there would be a serious political statement. Remizov needs to identify the saboteurs urgently. But how? Suddenly, among the plant’s staff, the captain notices a new engineer, who bears a striking resemblance to an acquaintance from the Civil War…
This novel, Chekists, was published yesterday (August 19, 2020) by the major Russian publisher Eksmo, a fact made known to me byLitRes, Russia’s leading e-book service. The burgeoning genre of neo-Stalinist revisionist pulp fiction and the equally flourishing genre of neo-Stalinist revisionist “historiography” that nourishes it are two big parts of the relentless culture war waged by the “Chekists” in the Kremlin to make their flagrant, brutal misrule of the world’s largest country seem natural, inevitable, and historically predetermined. As part of their overall campaign to hold on to power in perpetuity, while bleeding the country dry, it only makes sense that they would turn governance into an endless, gigantic “special op,” in which poisoning “the Motherland’s enemies,” like Alexei Navalny, is all in a day’s work. // TRR
Doctors ‘fighting for life’ of Russia’s opposition leader Navalny after alleged poisoning Yuliya Talmazan NBC News August 20, 2020
Fierce Krmlin critic and opposition leader Alexei Navalny is inh a coma as doctors fight for his life after he was poisoned Thursday mo rning, his spokespersoin said.
The 44-year-old foe of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin felt unwell on a flight back to Moscow from tTomsk, a city in Siberia, Kira Yarmysh said on iTwitter.
“The plane made an emergency landing in Omsk. Alexei has a toxic poisoning,” Yarmysh tweeted.
Navalny is said to be unconscious and was placed on a ventilator in an intensive care unit. Yarmysh did not say who she believed may have poisoned Navalny, but said police had been called to the hospital.
The politician is in a grave but stable condition, hospital representative Anatoly Kalinichenko, deputy chief physician at the Omsk Emergency Hospital No. 1., said in a video shared by Yarmysh on Twitter.
Kalinichenko said all possible reasons for Navalny’s sudden illness were being looked at, including poisoning. “Doctors are really dealing with saving his life right now,” Kalinichenko added at a later briefing with reporters.
The spokeswoman said that doctors were preventing Navalny’s wife, Yulia, from seeing her husband. Yarmysh quoted the doctors as saying her passport was insufficient evidence of her identity, instead asking for their marriage certificate which she wasn’t carrying.
Yarmysh told Russian radio station Echo of Moscow there are tests being conducted to determine the nature of the toxin used. She said Navalny only had a black tea at an airport coffee shop before getting on the plane in the morning, and they believe that’s how he could have been poisoned.
She said she was sure it was “an intentional poisoning.”
“A year ago, he was poisoned in a prison, and I am sure the same thing happened here,” she told the station. “It’s different symptoms, obviously a different toxin, but obviously this was done to him intentionally.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said an investigation would be launched if it turned out Navalny was indeed poisoned. Asked if this was a special case because of Navalny’s outspoken criticism of the Russian government, Peskov added, “the current government has many critics,” according to the state-run TASS news agency.
Meanwhile, elements of Russia’s tightly-controlled state media have been exploring the narrative that Navalny may have had a lot to drink the previous night and took some kind of hangover pill today.
An anonymous law enforcement source told TASS that authorities are not yet considering this a poisoning.
“For the moment this version is not being considered,” the official said. “It is possible that he drank or took something himself yesterday.”
Last year, Navalny was rushed to a hospital from prison where he was serving a sentence following an administrative arrest, with what his team said was suspected poisoning.
Doctors then said he had a severe allergic attack and discharged him back to prison the following day.
In 2017, he was attacked by several men who threw antiseptic in his face, damaging one eye.
Pavel Lebedev was on the same plane as Navalny and posted an image of the politician drinking something out of a cup before the flight on his Instagram Stories. NBC News could not confirm that the photo shows the beverage that his spokeswoman believes may have poisoned him.
In a series of videos uploaded to his Instagram, Lebedev said he saw Navalny go to the bathroom after lift-off, and he did not return for a while.
“I heard a commotion and took my headphones off,” he added. “It turned out that there was an emergency landing in Omsk, so I thought someone was feeling ill. Then I turned my head and I saw Alexei lying down.”
Navalny rose to prominence in 2009 with investigations into official corruption and became a protest leader when hundreds of thousands took to the streets across Russia in 2011 to protest electoral fraud.
A few years later, and after several short-term spells in jail, Navalny faced two separate sets of fraud charges, which were viewed as political retribution aimed at stopping him from running for office.
In his only official campaign before his first conviction took effect, Navalny garnered 30 percent of the vote in the race for Moscow mayor in 2013.
Navalny also campaigned to challenge Putin in the 2018 presidential election, but was barred from running.
Navalny’s anti-corruption foundation has conducted in-depth investigations into the highest ranks of Russian political elite, including his most famous investigation into former prime minister and president Dmitry Medvedev.
Alexei Navalny’s brilliant March 2017 exposé of then-prime minister Dmitry Medvedev’s corruption, viewed almost 36 million times
Last month, he had to shut down the foundation after a financially devastating lawsuit from Yevgeny Prigozhin, a businessman with close ties to the Kremlin.
Russia holds regional elections next month and Navalny and his allies have been preparing for them, trying to increase support for candidates which they back.
The FSB is in despair: religious fanaticism has afflicted people in high society. To prevent a series of terrorist attacks, the authorities have resorted to unconventional methods. They hire former investigator Oleg Ruzhin—now a journalist—and a professional murderer named Chubchik. Find out in Dmitry Krasko’s book whether the heroes are able to prevent a tragedy!
The Russian Reader 