The White House officially nominated Mark Esper for the post of head of the Pentagon. Esper has been acting head of the Pentagon since mid-June. Now, after the nomination and before the confirmation of the candidacy by the Senate, he will formally return to his previous post - Secretary of the US Army. The US Department of Defense has been without a leader since December 2018, when James Mattis resigned over disagreement with Donald Trump's decision to withdraw troops from Syria.

Photo by Evgeny Feldman for Meduza On July 15, Moscow’s Trubnaya Square was filled with protesters demanding that the local election commission allow independent candidates to run for seats in the Moscow City Duma. Approximately 1500 people took part in the demonstration, including would-be City Duma candidates Lyubov Sobol and Ilya Yashin, both of whom already play prominent roles in local politics.

A friend remembers Natalya Estemirova, the legendary human rights advocate killed in Chechnya 10 years ago today Dylan Martinez / Reuters / Scanpix / LETA Natalya Estemirova. October 4, 2007 July 15, 2019, marks a decade since the day human rights advocate Natalya Estemirova was murdered. Estemirova was a history teacher in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, until she decided in 2000 to turn her passion for human rights into a full-time job.

The Boeing-737-800 passenger plane of the Pobeda airline, which flew from Kazan to St. Petersburg, was forced to return to the airport of departure due to a bird that got into the engine. As a result of the incident, no one was injured, landing in Kazan took place normally. According to preliminary data, the aircraft also received no damage.

Evgeny Feldman for "Medusa" In the center of Moscow on July 15, a second mass action was held in support of independent candidates for deputies of the Moscow City Duma. About one and a half thousand people gathered on Trubnaya Square. They demanded that the opposition to the election. The action lasted about two hours, after which its participants began to diverge. The police did not use force, none of the protesters was detained.

The former head of Memorial's branch in Grozny, Oyub Titiev, went to work in the Moscow branch of the organization's Human Rights Center. As specified in the Moscow "Memorial", Titiev was taken to the post of analyst.

Evgeny Feldman for "Medusa" on Trubnaya Square in the center of Moscow on July 15 took place with a demand to register independent candidates for deputies of the Moscow City Duma. About one and a half thousand people took part in it. Among the participants were FBK lawyer Lyubov Sobol and municipal deputy Ilya Yashin - he arrived at the square after a meeting of the Moscow City Writer, who refused to allow him to the election.

The EU Council approved the imposition of sanctions against Turkey due to offshore drilling in the exclusive economic zone of Cyprus. The EU will suspend negotiations on an air services agreement and cancel a number of high-level meetings within the framework of the EU-Turkey dialogue, as well as reduce the amount of assistance to the country in preparation for joining the union.

The human rights organization “Zone of Law” and the Kazan human rights center asked the head of the IC Department in Tatarstan to check the complaints of two people who said that they were held in slavery by a policeman from the city of Nurlat in Tatarstan. This was reported to Medusa in the "Law Zone". Both complaints concern the former head of the linear police station at the Nurlat Yakov Kolesnikov railway station.

The Moscow City Electoral Committee refused to register the municipal deputy Ilya Yashin as a candidate for the Moscow City Duma. As Yashin wrote on his Facebook, too many marriages were found in the signatures for his nomination. According to Yashin, the election commission refused to consider written applications from citizens who confirmed the authenticity of their signatures. The voters who came to the meeting of the electoral committee were not let through.

Luckily, we watched it for you. After the collapse of the USSR, Ukraine had every reason to become a prosperous country, but 25 years later all illusions have been dispelled. The events on Maidan were prepared by Washington ( Biden and Nuland openly supported the escalation of violence) in order to later introduce external control in Ukraine. From the American point of view, Ukraine is just a lever to anger the Russians and keep them on the hook.

Roskomnadzor demanded that the social network Facebook block the image, which the Prosecutor General's Office considered insulting state symbols of the Russian Federation. The picture in question contains an obscene interpretation of the name of Russia and a swastika against the background of the coat of arms of the Russian Federation, Roskomnadzor reports.

A new action has begun on Trubnaya Square in the center of Moscow, the participants of which demand the registration of independent candidates for deputies of the Moscow City Duma. A Meduza correspondent reports that about 1,000 people gathered on the square. A similar mass action took place in Moscow on July 14.

The Tverskoy District Court of Moscow authorized the arrest of the owner of the Novy Potok group of companies, Dmitry Mazurov. The arrest is authorized until September 12. The defense asked to release Mazurov on bail of 3 million rubles. Mazurov is accused of fraud on an especially large scale (Part 4 of Article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).

Sergey Meshcheryakov, 77, works for TsNIIMash, the Russian research center that handles many of the country’s missile and rocket construction demands. In 2018, his then-75-year-old colleague Viktor Kudryavtsev was arrested on treason charges. Now, Meshcheryakov has joined Kudryavtsev as a suspect in the case; he has been placed under house arrest.