Khimki Mayor Vladimir Strelchenko appears to be frightened by the prospect of a referendum. Residents of the city actively opposed his plans to place a toll expressway from Moscow to St. Petersburg, which was supposed to pass through the unique Khimki forest. They were going to hold a referendum on this.

“We consider you a worthy candidate for the primacy of the patriarchal throne and we assure that we will support your candidacy during the voting at the Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church. It is you who are capable of becoming the model that the believers of our Church are looking for today,” says the address of the Ukrainian hierarchs to Metropolitan Vladimir , Interfax-Religion reports. The appeal was announced at an extended meeting of the Holy Synod of the UOC, held last Saturday.

Probably, each person is naturally endowed with individual sizes of the area of ​​​​the soul responsible for forgiveness. And the ability to empathize. Every time I read Evgenia Ginzburg or Varlam Shalamov, Anna Nikolskaya, Lev Razgon and Alexander Solzhenitsyn, I ask myself: are supporters of the neo-canonization of Stalin today ready to forgive him for all his sacrifices in the name of the triumph of a system that - later - collapsed?

In fact, canceling the order means absolutely nothing, since the act of choosing the route took place. We submitted an application to hold a referendum in the city of Khimki on the repeal of the order - so the mayor made such a response, and it turns out that the need for a referendum disappears. Now we will have to re-file a lawsuit in the Tagansky court to cancel the act of choosing the route - only in this case the road will not be built.

The middle of December this year was extremely rich in events related to the phrase “human rights”. First, 60 years ago, on December 10, 1948, the UN General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the first universal document establishing the inalienable civil, political and social rights of man. Before this, all international agreements spoke only about the rights of states and peoples, ethnic and religious groups.

On December 20 and 21, Vladivostok again became the center of protests related to the Russian government's plan to increase customs duties on foreign cars. These days, local residents gathered in the central square of the city, outraged by the government’s decision - in Primorye, more than 90% of cars are foreign cars, mainly Japanese-made, and their sale, delivery and service are the main sources of income for the population.

The law is the law, and all that remains is to throw up your hands helplessly. Our justice system is inherently cruel. However, sometimes it suddenly turns out to be soft. And not because the court or some big boss decided so, or the jury didn’t understand it, but simply because the law itself is written that way, and it doesn’t work out any other way. The leaders of the Ryno-Skachevsky gang were given ten years each.