A Russian blogger from the Republic of Tatarstan has been convicted of inciting hatred and enmity against the Russian Orthodox faith in his web journal, and sentenced to 1.5 years probation.  Rafis Kashapov, who is part of a pro-Tatar group called the Tatar Public Center, wrote a series of blog entries under a headline of “No to Christianization!,” the Interfax-Religion news agency reported on April 25th.

The Republic of Tatarstan, located in the center of Russia’s European territory, has a slight majority of ethnic Tatars, who practice Islam.  Around 40 percent of the region’s residents are ethnic Russians, most of whom practice Russian Orthodox Christianity.

“The investigation and court has established that Kashapov placed articles titled “No to Christianization!” in his blog on the Internet,” the Investigative Committee of the Public Prosecutor’s Office wrote on its website.  “According to the conclusions of a complex ...

The Ura.ru information portal is in danger of being closed after it was issued two warnings for “extremism” from Russia’s media monitoring agency, Roskomsvyaznadzor.  Ura.ru, which tried to have the warnings dismissed by a Moscow court, received them over user comments left in its online forum.  As the Kommersant newspaper reports, Russian media law now allows Roskomsvyaznadzor to push for the website’s closure in court.

Aksana Panova, owner and editor of the online news agency, said the first extremist text was left as a comment on the forum in 2008.  Responding to a news article titled “On April 20th, skinheads will mark Hitler’s birthday with mass attacks on foreigners,” an unknown user called for the death of government leaders and wrote a series of racist slurs.  Despite the fact that moderators quickly removed the comment, the local office of Roskomsvyaznadzor had ...

Authorities in Kirov are pressing to close a local independent publication, the Vyatskaya Osobaya Gazeta, after the paper published an article mentioning the banned National Bolshevik Party (NBP).  A member of the group is called a “nazbol.”

Nikolai Golikov, the newspaper’s editor-in-chief, said local prosecutors started administrative proceedings against the publication after it printed an article describing how activists from the party were distributing leaflets protesting the Government’s anti-crisis measures.

The Prosecutor’s office said that since the National Bolshevik Party is officially banned, any information about it or its members in the press was a violation of the law.  Golikov said that the article never described the group as a party, but that prosecutors found fault with the word “nazbol” and the phrase “supporter of Eduard Limonov.”  Limonov leads the NBP.

If a court sides with prosecutors, every mention of the NPB ...

On April 16th, Russia formally ceased counter-terrorism operations in Chechnya, putting an official end to a nearly ten-year campaign.  Stability in the troubled North Caucasus region, however, remains tenuous, as a small insurgency continues to simmer.  As the Interfax news agency reports, the move comes from an order by President Dmitri Medvedev.

“This step will continue to lead Chechnya out from Russia’s legal framework,” journalist and researcher Vladimir Voronin told the Kasparov.ru online newspaper.  Voronin said the order was at once a populist measure, and a step that will allow Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov to maintain a large deal of freedom and independence from the federal center for Chechnya.

The counter-terrorism operation in Chechnya was initiated in September 1999, after a series of apartment bombings left hundreds dead in Moscow.  The Kremlin linked the bombings to Chechen terrorist groups.  Military operations had started earlier, in ...