At the Pre-Conciliar meeting of delegates to the Local Council from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, held on January 17 at the Holy Dormition Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, Metropolitan Vladimir of Kiev and All Ukraine made it clear that he considered it undesirable to nominate him for the upcoming patriarchal elections.

The gas pipe has been a familiar component of Russian-Ukrainian stories for many years. For some time now, these stories have acquired a Yuletide connection: the real conflict occurs on New Year’s Eve, the denouement comes at the end of the Yuletide week and is always expected as a miracle.

Lawyers have long been a risk group. Practicing the legal profession in our criminal country has become unsafe. The chaos lies, among other things, in the fact that the age-old norms about the inadmissibility of raising a hand against representatives of two professions, doctors and lawyers, do not work. The answer to the question of who committed the murder and what its motives should be given by an impartial and qualified investigation.

The agreements reached by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Yulia Tymoshenko as a result of ten hours of negotiations were reinforced on January 19 by contracts between Gazprom and Naftogaz for the supply of Russian gas to Ukraine and for the transit of gas through Ukraine to Europe for ten years. Gazprom has been instructed to resume transit in all directions and in full. And even no monitoring is required.

On January 20, the 44th President of the United States will be sworn in on the steps of the West Front of the Capitol. Thousands of guests and millions of television viewers will witness the great mystery of democracy: the transfer of government power from one freely elected leader to another.

On January 19, Stanislav Markelov, the lawyer for the family of Elsa Kungaeva, who was killed by Yuri Budanov, was shot dead in Moscow. Shortly before this, he filed a complaint against the decision to release Budanov on parole. Markelov received a letter from Judge Alexander Dubov from the Dimitrovgrad court explaining the reasons for Budanov’s release on January 15, after the former colonel was released.

I will make a reservation right away - I will not polemize with the respected Elena Sannikova. Moreover, in many ways I agree with her. For example, the case she described by her Arab girl, whom the parents of Jewish children did not want to let her into the kindergarten where their children go, I appreciate, perhaps, even tougher than she. The behavior of these people is not only disgusting, how disgusting any nationalism is, it is much worse.

The Russian government and the president are silent, embarrassed. The heads of the world's churches remain ambiguously silent. American political strategists and masters of ceremonies remain angrily silent. Nobody sees the obvious - the newly elected US President does not know how to conduct an inauguration. Thank God, in snow-covered Russia, far from the stupid Western civilization, there was a person who can teach the American president some sense.

December 30, 2008 in the soul of the President of Russia D.A. Medvedev suddenly died a lawyer. The funeral was accompanied by the signing by the President of the Law of the Russian Federation on the exclusion from the jurisdiction of the court of jurors of the so -called crimes against the state. These include accusations of terrorism, spying, treason, and even in a number of crimes, including the “Organization of Massion Riots” - only 9 articles of the Criminal Code.