The wife of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died on Friday at the remote prison colony where he was serving a 19-year sentence, has said Vladimir Putin and the Russian regime should be “punished”.

Her comments, made as she fought back tears, came as cavalcade of western leaders have blamed Russia for Mr Navalny’s death, who was just 47.

US president Joe Biden said he was “both not surprised and outraged” by his passing.

“Make no mistake: Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death.”

Putin’s spokesnam Dimitry Peskov denied the Kremlin had any role in the death and said the West was being “hysterical”.

Mr Navalny had long been considered the chief political opponent of Putin who could have posed a threat to the Russian leader’s rule were he allowed to freely run in an election.

Mr Navalny had been seen in a video link on Thursday from the Siberian jail he was being held in, about 65km north of the Arctic Circle, seemingly in adequate health.

But on Friday, prison authorities said he died after “feeling bad”.

Russian state media has said he died from a blood clot – but suspicions are high that either foul play occurred or Mr Navalny did not receive proper medical attention in prison....

Another 1 bites the dust. :-(

PooTin’s chief political opponent, Alexei Navalny, dead in prison.

• In 1991, all the disillusioned central power crumbled from decades of contradictions and lies; only a brief flare-up resisted the inevital outcome.
  
• Another 1917 would be scary. Peasants and educated citoyens against the nobility in 1917 are today's 'serfs' confronting Putin's warmongers & oligarchy. The Empire was torn apart and torched for years back then. Reason and human rights weren't considered when the most brutal faction, the Bolshevik's, finally won. What triggered 1917 was a long, desastrous war (WWI), then hunger & hardships, followed by a humilating military defeat which led to a loss of vast lands (Finland, Belarus, Baltics, Poland, Ukraine). A déjà-vu?
  
• The third option is another 1939, made possible by the West's disunity, disinterest, isolationism, idiocracy (in the U.S. as well as in Europe) and continued appeasement to totalitarian madness. In Germany we press to negotiate another '1938' "Peace For Our Time" which due to our incredible weakness must result in '1939'. Well, ceeding all of Ukraine to Putin gives us eternal peace... or the route '1945 to hell...
  
• A fourth option would be a "1984" as described by George Orwell: permanent, limited wars at the periphery of three remaining world powers Oceania, Eurasia and East Asia which all degenerated over the eternal conflicts into totalitarian autocracies. Peace means war. Black means white. Doublethink.
  

I have this book since more than twenty years (banned in Communist East). Back then it was a dystopic novel. I'm not sure anymore witnessing phenomena like Trumpism, populism, social media, preachers for a 'good cause' dressed as journalists, all the green... the woke... the [fill in...] ideologues... , continuously lying Russian leaders. I think there's much to recognize today that George Orwell foresaw back then.

I think there's much to recognize today that George Orwell foresaw back then.

Russian news media reported on Thursday the sudden death of Vitaly Robertus, Vice President of the country’s oil and gas giant Lukoil, writing that the manager died from suicide in his office this week.

Just before his death, local media wrote that Robertus had complained of suffering headaches and asking for medications before going to his office.

He was later found hanged in the room.

• ISIS
  
• Russia's FSB
  

The West is convinced it was ISIS. Really?

"So far, the forecast is not favourable. The water level continues to rise," Mr Peskov said, adding that a "large amount" of floodwater would soon also reach the nearby regions of Kurgan and Tyumen.

He said President Vladimir Putin was not intending to visit the flood zone and said the Russian leader was instead "getting information and co-ordinated the work of all branches of authorities".

Earlier this week in Orsk, angry flood victims shouted '"Shame on you!" at local officials, in response to low compensation offers and officials' perceived failure to prevent the dam from bursting.

They also chanted, "Putin help us" - a reminder that in Russia, in times of trouble, very often the president is the last person people blame for their problems. On the contrary, they look to the Kremlin for help.

Flooding often happens in Russia when winter transitions to spring. But there has been nothing on this scale in living memory.

Floods in the Russian city of Orenburg have raised water levels to two metres above critical, leaving just the roofs of some houses showing.

The flooding is being described as the worst to hit the region in 80 years.

Remember the Ural Airlines A320 which „landed“ in a field in Siberia due to fuel exhaustion on Sep 12th 2023?

... Airline managers have been fired too.

https://avherald.com/h?article=50e4701a&opt=1

Russia’s worst flooding in decades has submerged Soviet-era uranium mines in the Kurgan region, the investigative news outlet Agentstvo reported Monday, sparking fears that radioactive and chemical pollution could seep into the Tobol River.

Local ecologists said that the mines have been accumulating "radioactive sludge" for years, while authorities have ignored numerous public protests against continued uranium mining in this area, which is prone to spring flooding from the Tobol River.

Given that uranium is both radioactive and toxic, similar to other heavy metals, its presence in a river used for drinking purposes would pose a threat even in small concentrations.

“This is undoubtedly dangerous because some people will drink this water, and uranium will enter their bodies. And internal radiation exposure is much more dangerous than external exposure," he said.

Floodwaters in Tomsk region threatens to submerge the river banks in Seversk where highly radioactive liquid waste from the Soviet Union's nuclear weapons program for decades were injected into two unprotected underground reservoirs.

“There ain’t one single public message that Rosatom is monitoring the situation, that they have the situation under control,” says Aleksandr Nikitin, an exile nuclear safety expert [...]

According to the World Nuclear Association, the Siberian Chemical Combine in Seversk had five plutonium production reactors, an uranium enrichment plant and a processing plant for plutonium warheads. Although shut down, enormous amount of nuclear waste is still on site.

Most challenging are the liquid radioactive waste, both on the surface and pumped down in deep-well injections. The nuclear dump is likely Russia’s largest, by IAEA estimated to be 70 million cubic meters.

“Putin doesn’t give a fuck about these floods and other shitty lives of people in Russia.., he has a war and geopolitical goals of fighting the damned West,” Nikitin says.

A major concern [...] no one can exclude that leakages from a possible overflowed radioactive waste site could reach the Arctic Ocean.

“Everything is now possible,” says Aleksandr Nikitin when seeing the photos of the flooded riverbanks of the Tom River.

“I’m sure the Siberian Chemical Combine sit quietly and wait. Hoping for it all to go over,” Nikitin says to the Barents Observer.

A Russian court on Tuesday sentenced a 77-year-old scientist to 14 years in prison on treason charges after he was accused of sharing top secret information related to Russia's hypersonic missile program with Germany.

The St. Petersburg City Court found Anatoly Maslov guilty of state treason and ordered him to serve 14 years in a maximum-security prison, according to the court’s press service. Maslov denied his guilt.

Prosecutors had requested a 17-year prison sentence for the scientist, whose defense attorneys argued that such a lengthy term would amount to a life sentence due to his age and health issues. Maslov suffered a heart attack while in pre-trial detention in February.

An open letter signed by members of Russia’s Academy of Sciences last year accused the authorities of arresting Maslov and two other hypersonic missile scientists for speaking at conferences abroad and participating in international projects.

If Russia declares war on Ukraine, the country will be "fully mobilized," which precludes any deferral of Russians from military service, said Lt. Gen. Viktor Sobolev, a member of the State Duma Defense Committee.

[...] as part of a possible "full mobilization", the authorities plan to send to the frontlines primarily new Russian citizens from Central Asian countries, who usually have more than three children. [...] State Duma Defense Committee recently [...] rejecting a bill providing for a deferment for fathers of three or more children.

It began last month with the arrest of a Russian deputy defense minister. Then the head of the ministry’s personnel directorate was hauled into court. This week, two more senior military officials were detained. All face charges of corruption, which they have denied.

The arrests began after President Vladimir Putin began his fifth term and shuffled his ally, longtime Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, into a new post.

It immediately raised questions about whether Putin was reasserting control over the Defense Ministry amid the war in Ukraine, whether a turf battle had broken out between the military and the security services, or whether some other scenario was playing out behind the Kremlin’s walls......

Natalia Larina, 50, was found dead outside her apartment block in the southeast of Moscow at 8 a.m. Wednesday morning, [...] a suspected suicide as a cause and said she had left a note.

Larina had retired six months ago after working at Moscow's Tagansky Court for more than 15 years [...]

[...] in the middle of May, Larina had been the victim of a telephone scam. Someone claiming to be her former boss contacted her, saying that attempts were being made to steal money from her account to send to Ukraine to fund its armed forces. [...] she was told she would be contacted by Russian special services and Russia's Central Bank.

She was persuaded to transfer one million rubles ($11,200) to a "safe account" and borrow another one million rubles from the bank to be transferred. She notified the police when she realized she had been scammed [...]

She was known for her role in high-profile cases, including one in 2006, which restrained the activities of the National Bolshevik Party in what was called the "Tagansky Case," [...]

She was also the judge in the trial of the performance artist and opposition activist Pyotr Pavlensky, who, in 2015, set fire to the entrance of the headquarters of Russia's main intelligence agency, for which he was convicted of vandalism and fined 500,000 rubles ($5,600).

In 2011, she was the judge in the trial of a Russian Transport Ministry official who was convicted of raping his daughter, and in 2019, she sentenced Murat Sabanov, who had carried out a series of poisonings in central Moscow.