Monday, July 22, 2019

This day in history: 78 years ago, on July 22, 1941, the German Luftwaffe started bombing Moscow during the Second World War.

After Meduza’s reporting on his family's ties to Moscow's corrupt funeral industry, teenage owner of nightclub empire suddenly sells off all his assets

Here’s what speakers told more than 22,000 Muscovites who gathered on Saturday to demand fair elections in September

Two groups of St. Petersburg law enforcement officers caught planting drugs on civilians in two days

Moscow Fridays for Future movement holds largest climate picket yet, plans further strikes

Eight injured after plane abruptly cancels takeoff at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport

News briefs: Moscow same-sex foster parents feel safer abroad, heads roll in flooded Irkutsk, the FSB could get some new airplane powers, a nationwide minute of silence for WWII, and cash for memes

Egor Mazaraki leads a #blessed life. By the age of 19, he owned a whole slew of ritzy nightclubs and bars in downtown Moscow, and his parents just happen to be Lev and Anastasia Mazaraki, and his uncle is Valerian Mazaraki — all central figures in Meduza’s June 1, 2019, investigative report by Ivan Golunov about the capital’s corrupt funeral industry. Meduza has now learned that Egor completely divested from his Moscow properties, shortly after the publication of Golunov’s article.

Read here about all the businesses Egor Mazaraki just ditched.

Evgeny Feldman for Meduza

On July 20, activists from the Libertarian Party staged a permitted rally on Sakharov Prospect in Moscow to advocate the registration of rejected independent candidates in the upcoming City Duma elections. According to the “Belyi Shchetik” (White Counter) organization, roughly 22,500 people attended the event. The crowd could have been even bigger: law enforcement restricted the number of demonstrators allowed into the public square, stopping protesters at metal detectors (though the police deny these allegations). In his speech during the rally, anti-corruption activist Alexey Navalny announced that another protest will take place next Saturday, July 27, outside City Hall, if “all candidates” aren’t registered within the week. Representatives of Moscow’s Election Commission later said Navalny is trying to bully the city’s officials. During the demonstration, police arrested a few protesters, while the event’s organizers handed out whistles, to help amplify the crowd’s anti-Kremlin chants. This rally wasn’t the first this week. Beginning on July 14, candidates rejected by city election officials have joined their supporters for evening protests at Trubnaya Square. Meduza special correspondent Irina Kravtsova attended the July 20 demonstration and recorded some of the most memorable moments.

Read Meduza's summary here.

On July 18, a St. Petersburg court jailed two Russian National Guard officers, Nikita Lavrentyev and Alexander Boikov, to await trial for extortion and taking bribes. The pair may face fines of up to four million rubles ($63,480) or up to 12 years in prison. Fontanka, a local St. Petersburg news outlet, reported that the incident in question took place on July 16 on Metallurgists Prospect. The two officers stopped a 16-year-old, put a packet containing an unspecified narcotic substance on his person, and proceeded to “seize” it. They demanded a bribe of 300,000 rubles ($4,764) to allow the young man to avoid prosecution.

Read Meduza's report here.

Photo courtesy of Arshak Makichyan

On July 19, a group of about 35 Moscow students gathered to demand that the Russian government take action on the climate crisis, which threatens to cause widespread societal collapse within their lifetimes. While the group's counterparts in the global Fridays for Future movement have held hundreds of mass marches in the past several months, the Moscow climate strikers have faced a government unwilling to grant them protest permits in populated areas. The July 19 strike represented a significant victory for the group: after repeated negotiations with local officials, the students received a permit for up to 50 people to picket together. However, the permit was only granted for a quiet square on the edge of central Moscow. The group’s coordinator, Arshak Makichyan, said the students plan to begin escalating their actions by turning down permits issued for locations with little pedestrian traffic.

On Friday, July 19, eight people were injured during the emergency landing and evacuation of a Nordwind flight from Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport. A Boeing 737 jet with 173 passengers and six crew members on board was about to begin flight N4-477 from Moscow to Yerevan, Armenia, on the night before July 19, when the incident occurred. While the airplane was accelerating on the runway, a warning light for the plane’s smoke detectors turned on in the cockpit, and the flight’s pilots decided not to take off.

Read Meduza's report here.

News briefs

Yours, Meduza