Evening Medusa

Navalny was charged with new charges. Facebook banned a network of accounts that attacked Western vaccines and was coordinated from Russia. The Taliban captured two-thirds of the territory of Afghanistan

Good evening,

THIS MESSAGE (MATERIAL) IS CREATED AND (OR) DISTRIBUTED BY A FOREIGN MASS MEDIA PERFORMING THE FUNCTIONS OF A FOREIGN AGENT AND (OR) A RUSSIAN LEGAL ENTITY PERFORMING THE FUNCTIONS OF A FOREIGN AGENT

This is Meduza's daily newsletter about the important news of the day. For starters, some quality content. Literally. The head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, won the competition of mobile reporters organized by the ChGTRK Grozny. Now he will receive an award of 45 thousand rubles for "quality content, fruitful work and active assistance in covering events taking place in the region." Kadyrov's other accomplishments include "exclusive video footage" of a parrot that lives in his garden.

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Pulse

The main thing for the day - point by point

• Alexei Navalny was charged with another charge . This time - in the creation of an organization "encroaching on the personality and rights of citizens."
• An oil spill has occurred in the Black Sea near Novorossiysk. Today it became known that its area is not 200 square meters, as originally reported , but 80 square kilometers - that is, 400 thousand times more. A criminal case has been initiated on pollution of the marine environment.
• The Taliban * took control of 65% of the territory of Afghanistan , Reuters and AFP report, citing a source in the European Union.
• on Sakhalin A destroyed monument to Yuri Gagarin was found . A gas station will be built in its place. Dmitry Rogozin is outraged, and Governor Valery Limarenko demanded that the bas-relief be restored.
• Samsung has introduced two new phones - one clamshell and one clamshell (yes, they're different phones).
• Belarus refused to accept the first US ambassador in 12 years, in response to "impudent and openly hostile actions of the American side."
• World kickboxing champion Aleksey Kudin was sentenced to two and a half years in prison in Belarus. He was extradited from Moscow to Minsk in defiance of the ECtHR ban.

* The Taliban is included in the list of organizations recognized as terrorist in Russia, its activities are prohibited.

Texts of the day

In Libya, they found a tablet of a PMC fighter Wagner with a map of mined areas. As well as a document with an application for equipment that only the Russian army has

BBC journalists from the Arabic and Russian services of the publication released an investigation into the activities of the private military company (PMC) Wagner in Libya. The authors of the material obtained access to data on a tablet, which, presumably, belonged to one of the Russian mercenaries who fought in Libya. On the device were, in particular, military maps of combat zones with notes in Russian and instructions and diagrams of mines and artillery shells - also in Russian. In addition, the documents of PMC Wagner fell into the hands of journalists - with an order for the supply of military equipment, which is in service only with the Russian army.

RT interviewed Roman Protasevich. It is almost no different from the interviews Protasevich gave to the Belarusian state media.

The interview was conducted by RT special correspondent Konstantin Prydybaylo, who covered in detail the events in Belarus in 2020-2021. Of the really new, Protasevich mentioned plans to launch his own media in Belarus , which “will meet, firstly, the demands of society, and secondly, the demands of the time.” Otherwise, it's still the same discussion of the 2020 protests. Protasevich agreed to call himself the "organizer" of the actions, but not their "coordinator". He also answered in the affirmative to Prydybailo's question whether he considers himself a "co-author of an attempted coup" in Belarus.

The coronavirus

Facebook banned a whole network of accounts that spread memes against Western vaccines (in English and Hindi). It was coordinated from Russia, but who the customer is is still unclear

Back in 2020, the host of one of the highest-rated news programs on Russian state television, Vesti Nedeli, Dmitry Kiselev called AstraZeneca a “monkey vaccine” and showed cartoons in which a person turns into a chimpanzee from the Oxford vaccine. A network of fake accounts that Facebook just banned also tried to spread memes on the same topic. And here we already know for sure - this was also found out by Meduza - that the activities of these disinformers were coordinated from Moscow . True, who is the customer of this campaign is still unclear.

And one more small but suspicious news about the coronavirus: In Russia, the record of deaths from covid was repeated for the fourth time. According to the operational headquarters, over the past day, again 799 people. 800 deaths and more were never detected.

Podcast "What Happened"

We talked with the head of the Yabloko party in Pskov, Lev Shlosberg, about why he is sometimes removed from the elections, then again allowed to participate

On August 9, Shlosberg was not allowed to vote in the State Duma. He is running in the Khovrinsky single-mandate constituency in Moscow. The claim to the Moscow City Court was filed by his competitor in this district, the candidate from the Green party Andrei Pangaev. A week before this, the oppositionist had already been removed from the elections to the Pskov Regional Assembly of Deputies, but was reinstated again. Does Schlosberg think that the authorities are afraid of him? And what does he think of Navalny's supporters and their criticism? And also about the allegations that Yabloko is making compromises with the Kremlin?

Listen to What Happened on Meduza and YouTube , and subscribe to Apple Podcasts , Google Podcasts , Castbox , Yandex.Music and other podcast services.

And now - Roquefort!

Yes, not anyhow, but Stalinist

Director Andrei Konchalovsky wrote a nostalgic post about “good Roquefort, even those Stalinist times” on Facebook. Of course, in the USSR, this cheese was not available to anyone (although it was mentioned in the “Book of Tasty and Healthy Food” in 1952) - and therefore the post was met, let’s say, with caution. But the memes turned out to be good ... one might even say, high-quality ones.

Admit it, you wanted Roquefort? Your Medusa