Tortured Jehovah’s Witnesses, half of Russia's woman-billionaire population, and a lousy proposal to crack down on election monitoring Thursday, February 21, 2019 This day in history: 24 years ago, on February 21, 1995, Russian President Boris Yeltsin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko (still a brunette) signed a cooperation agreement that became the foundation for the Union State of Russia and Belarus, which some believe Vladimir Putin might command in the future, in order to remain

The St. Petersburg prosecutor's office began an inspection of the private Pascal Lyceum, where a tenth-grader was suspended from classes because he dyed his hair blond. The department reported this to TASS. The lawyer for the schoolboy’s family, Anna Radovanovic, told Rosbalt that the young man was suspended from classes on February 19.

Moscow's Kuzminsky District Court has remanded Chechen native Lors Khamiyev, suspected of murdering a taxi driver, in custody for two months. This was reported to TASS by the court's press secretary Karina Kalenova. The murder took place on Samarkand Boulevard in Moscow on the night of February 15. The man, who worked as a taxi driver, died from gunshot wounds. In addition to Khamiyev, four more people have been detained in connection with the case.

On February 21, a resident of the Samara region placed an open coffin with the body of her ex-husband in front of the regional government building in Samara after she was not allowed to bury the deceased at the Rubezhnoye city cemetery, Azat Tuimasov, a member of the assembly of representatives of the Krasnoyarsk district of the Samara region, told Komsomolskaya Pravda. According to him, the deceased's name was Valery Maleev. He died presumably from tuberculosis.

Zenit defeated Turkish Fenerbahce in the second leg of the 1/16 finals of the Europa League. Zenit won 3-1 and advanced to the next round on aggregate. The first game ended with the score 1:0 in favor of Fenerbahce. Magomed Ozdoev scored the first goal in the fourth minute for Zenit. Then the brace was scored by Serdar Azmun, who made his debut in the starting lineup of the St. Petersburg club on February 21. Updated .

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced the closure of the land border with Brazil from February 22. This is due to the plans of the Venezuelan opposition to deliver humanitarian aid to the country, partly received from the United States. Deliveries are due to begin on February 23rd. Humanitarian aid is stored in reception centers in Brazil, Colombia and the island of Curacao. Maduro does not want to accept humanitarian aid. He called the opposition's actions a "provocation".

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin commented for the first time on the outbreak of dysentery in kindergartens in Moscow. “Today, a meeting of the Public Chamber of Moscow was held regarding food poisoning in kindergartens. I have been in control of this situation since day one. They provided treatment and individual medical supervision of the affected children, ”Sobyanin wrote on his official page on VKontakte.

A handful of powerful families control virtually all the resources allocated to Russia’s Karachay-Cherkess Republic, according to a report from Alexey Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK). The organization’s new research focuses on the Kaitov family, who Navalny says wield the same level of influence as the Arashukovs. (In late January, Senator Rauf Arashukov was arrested for his alleged role in two homicides.

Ali Mir / Youtube Alibek Mirzekhanov Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has accused the blogger Alibek Mirzekhanov of participating in terrorism after Mirzekhanov was arrested following an enormous fight in the Moscow café Neolit. The FSB claims Mirzekhanov recruited fighters for the ongoing war in Syria.

An 18-year-old resident of Syktyvkar, accused of illegal entry and theft of 92 kilograms of potatoes, was found by the imprint of a license plate in the snow. Leaving the crime scene in his GAZ-31029, the kidnapper crashed into a snowdrift - and did not notice that there was a trace of the car number there. Before the arrest, the Syktyvkar resident managed to sell most of the stolen potatoes. The police seized the remaining 23 kilograms and returned them to the victim.

Vyacheslav Marakin / YouTube screenshot from a documentary film about the battle for a height Otvlin ear The Bellingcat group and The Insider published a third part of the investigation about Sergey Fedotov, the alleged employee of the GRU, who, together with Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov, could be a participant in an assassination attempt on Sergey and Julia Skripalev. In the last part of the investigation, the real name of the agent was named - Denis Sergeev.

Meet Tatyana Bakalchuk, half of Russia's woman-billionaire population Anton Novoderezhkin / TASS Tatyana and Vyacheslav Bakalchuk got into online trading to earn money for their infant son. Within three years, they were industry leaders. In the spring of 2004, school teacher Tatyana Bakalchuk and her husband Vyacheslav, a radiophysicist, realized they weren’t earning enough money to provide for their infant son. So they decided to launch an online clothing store.

In the Syrian city of Raqqa, which for some time was considered the "capital" of the Islamic State, a mass grave of victims of terrorists was discovered. AFP calls it the largest found to date, with at least 3,500 people buried in mass and individual graves. The bodies of 120 dead have already been exhumed. Raqqa has been under the control of Islamic State terrorists for almost four years. US-backed Syrian militias recaptured the city in October 2017.

On February 21, 2014, former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich left Kyiv for Kharkiv and fled from there to Russia. At the time, Ukraine was in the throes of the largest social crisis in the country’s modern history. Anti-government protests had been ongoing in Kyiv since the previous November, and at the Maidan, or Independence Square, more than one hundred people were killed during clashes with the police.

Laura Lean / AFP / Scanpix / Leta Photo of the Shamim of Begum in the hand of her older sister. 2015 In the UK, a scandal broke out due to the decision of the Ministry of Internal Affairs to deprive the 19-year-old Shamim Begum citizenship. Four years ago, she left for the Middle East to join the Islamic State.