The Wall Street Journal claims that the Kremlin is funding protests in the United States against the actions of Chechen separatists - almost half a million dollars have been spent on these goals in just two years. Moreover, all this anti-Maskhadov activity was supervised by “Nashi”. In total, more than ten protests were organized, including in front of the UN headquarters in New York and near Ground Zero.

Al-Qaeda in Iraq posted a message online on Sunday about the execution of four Russian embassy employees taken hostage in Iraq. The site also contains a video of the execution scene. The Russian Foreign Ministry is checking the authenticity of the film. It's time for our authorities to understand a simple thing: there are no good bandits. Therefore, Mr. Lavrov’s reasoning on the topic “Russia is a friend of Iraq” in this situation resembles black humor.

In South Butovo, two lawsuits are being prepared. ((http://www.ej.ru/vision/entry/4095/ Yulia Prokofieva)) intends to file a lawsuit for the protection of honor and dignity against Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov. She demands to refute the information that she asked to pay her and her son 100 thousand dollars each. Another lawsuit is also “about the protection of honor...”: for some reason, the Butovites didn’t like the fact that Luzhkov called them “rednecks” several times.

About 20 people came to the picket dedicated to the birthday of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and organized by the public group “Conscience” on Lubyanskaya Square near the Solovetsky Stone. People came “to support the political prisoner,” and most importantly, to convince everyone to stop being inactive and “not wait?

To be honest, it seemed to me that we had defeated fascism - if not on May 9, then at least on March 25. If anyone has forgotten, on this day D.O. Rogozin was removed (more precisely, he “left himself”) from the post of chairman of the Rodina party and was replaced by A.M. Babakov.

Something unexpectedly inspired regional leaders to fight political extremism. On the day of remembrance and mourning, a group of the most vigilant made a public appeal to parliamentary parties and called for active countermeasures to be taken. For me, as a deeply Soviet person, it’s just a breath of fresh air. You young people will not appreciate the stylistic charm of the document: “To such “figures” as Rogozin and Limonov...” Moreover, “figures” are certainly in quotation marks.

The program of the gathering includes a discussion of issues of interaction between the Church and law enforcement agencies, the exchange of experience of clergy and officers of the Baltic Fleet (even a training trip to sea on a warship is planned), and the distribution of methodological developments on the pastoral care of military personnel. The event was to be attended by 110 clergy from 60 dioceses of the Russian Orthodox Church.

One of the events that was actively commented on last week was the death of Abdul-Khalim Saidulaev in the Chechen city of Argun last Saturday, June 17, 2006. For a year, three months and nine days he served as the head of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, which continued its underground, partisan existence. Back in the summer of 2002, Saidulaev was named the successor of Aslan Maskhadov, and during his lifetime he himself named his successor - Doku Umarov.

The Prosecutor General's Office of Russia again refused the request of human rights activists to hand over the body of Aslan Maskhadov, who was killed in March 2005, to relatives for burial. Human rights activists are fighting for the release of the body to relatives for understandable humanistic reasons. The Prosecutor General's Office has a simple answer - according to the law, the bodies of terrorists are not given to relatives.

A delegation of the ROCOR, headed by Archbishop Mark of Berlin and Germany, arrived in Moscow. The commissions will again consider the draft Act on Canonical Communion and study the proposals that were made at the ROCOR Council of Bishops in San Francisco.

I don’t remember who said it: “when the Lord wants to punish a person, he gives him what he asks for.” That’s how we are: we were languishing from the heat, we complained, we asked for rain - here you have “rain.” Heavy downpours and thunderstorms seriously complicated the road situation in Moscow. ((http://ziza.ru/2006/06/26/sehodnya-moskva-baumanskaya.html Cars practically float along the streets)), it is impossible to cross from one side of the street to the other.

“It is important for us that a significant part of the community considered it their duty to declare their allegiance to the Moscow Patriarchate,” an employee said in ((http://www.interfax-religion.ru/?act=interview&div=88 interview)) Interfax DECR priest Mikhail Dudko, one of the members of the commission to investigate the causes of the crisis in Surozh. The work of the commission continues, dozens of evidence have been collected.