Russian President Vladimir Putin believes that the number of banks in Russia is too large for the scale of the country's economy, and they need to be consolidated and increased in stability, the Prime agency reports . Putin announced this on Wednesday, January 22, at a meeting with students of the National Research Nuclear University MEPhI. “Now we have about a thousand banks, a little smaller. For our economy, of course, this is a large number of financial institutions,” the president noted.

Photo by Yuri Chichkov for Forbes Ilya Sachkov and his partners have created the largest private player in the cybercrime investigation market. Well-known companies and intelligence agencies use Group-IB services In April 2009, the founder of Group-IB, Ilya Sachkov, found himself in the Lesnye Dali boarding house near Moscow, where the annual IT conference “RIF+KIB” was taking place. Walking around the hall, he looked out for new clients.

The head of the British investment fund Hermitage Capital, William Browder, who was put on the international wanted list by the Russian authorities, in an interview with CNBC on the sidelines of the forum in Davos, announced his desire to meet with the former head of YUKOS Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was pardoned by President Vladimir Putin and released at the end of 2012.

News Corp. controlled by Rupert Murdoch, fired Dow Jones CEO Lex Fenwick due to the low popularity of the DJX service for top managers, which he actively promoted, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday, citing an informed source. Fenwick served as head of Dow Jones for less than two years (he was appointed to this post in February 2012). Before that, he worked at Bloomberg, serving as head of Bloomberg Ventures. William Lewis became his interim responsibilities at Dow Jones.

photo Reuters The basis for a compromise could be an agreement on early presidential elections On January 19, the political crisis in Ukraine entered a new phase. After the day before the Verkhovna Rada, despite the resistance of the opposition, adopted a package of laws aimed at sharply increasing responsibility for participants in mass protests, there was a new surge in “Maidan” activity.

In Kyiv, where mass unrest has been ongoing since Sunday, more than 50 people were kidnapped on the night of Wednesday, January 22, the Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine said. The corresponding statement is posted on the website of the supervisory agency.

The Moscow City Duma on Wednesday adopted in final reading the law on elections to the capital’s parliament using a majoritarian system, according to which all 45 deputies will now be elected only in single-mandate constituencies, RIA Novosti reported . Deputies approved the bill in the first reading also on Wednesday.

Employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs on Grushevsky Street in the center of Kiev on Wednesday morning began to push protesters away from the barricades they had erected, and completely dismantled the barricades, ITAR-TASS reports . For their part, the protesters pelted the security forces with stones and Molotov cocktails, which forced the fighters to retreat slightly. The protesters are trying to restore the barricades and build new ones.

Operation of the runway at Moscow's Domodedovo airport, which was temporarily limited on Wednesday due to an incident with an An-24 aircraft that rolled out of it, has been fully restored, the Prime agency reports, citing an airport representative. According to an airport spokesman, due to the incident, the operation of one of the two runways was suspended, and the second runway was used for takeoff and landing of aircraft.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych called on the opposition to sit down at the negotiating table and stop the confrontation. This is stated in the appeal published on the website of the head of the Ukrainian state. “Once again I ask people not to succumb to the calls of political radicals. It is not too late to stop and resolve the conflict peacefully. Once again I urge the opposition to sit down at the negotiating table and stop the confrontation,” Yanukovych said.

President Vladimir Putin, during a meeting with students of the National Research Nuclear University MEPhI on Wednesday, played “Moscow Windows” on the piano, accompanying the student choir, Interfax reports . Putin voiced the proposal to speak together at the end of his visit to MEPhI, dedicated to Student’s Day. After this, the head of state sat down at the piano and played a melody with one hand, to which the MEPhI student choir sang.

The state prosecution, during the debate in the Zamoskvoretsky Court of Moscow on Wednesday, asked that each of the eight defendants in the “Bolotnaya case”, accused of mass riots and violence against government officials on Bolotnaya Square on May 6, 2012, be given actual imprisonment for terms of five to six years. reports ITAR-TASS .

The Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine confirmed information about a second person who died from gunshot wounds in the center of Kyiv. A message published on Wednesday, January 22, on the department’s website also mentions the first death. “At 6:25, an unknown person called number 102 and said that there was a corpse of a man in the library of the National Academy of Sciences.

Prime Minister of Ukraine Mykola Azarov signed a series of orders expanding the list of special equipment allowed for use by law enforcement agencies to protect law and order, including the use of water cannons in cold weather, according to documents published on Wednesday on the Ukrainian government website. Document No. 14 establishes the procedure for using water cannons.

The chief of police at Moscow's Domodedovo airport, Maxim Titov, was detained by investigators on the evening of Tuesday, January 21, on suspicion of committing a crime, Interfax reports, citing Titov's lawyer Vadim Lyalin. He said that Titov was detained in accordance with Art. 91 of the Code of Criminal Procedure for 48 hours as a suspect of committing a crime under the article “Excess of Judicial Power”.