The Presidium of the Creative Union of Museum Workers of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region opposed the transfer of St. Isaac's Cathedral to the Russian Orthodox Church, according to the website of the Union of Museums of Russia. The report says that the museum-monument "Isaac's Cathedral" has "enduring sacred significance" for museum workers in St. Petersburg. During the Great Patriotic War, more than 120 thousand items of museum significance were stored there.

A petition to pardon former American intelligence officer Edward Snowden, which was signed by more than 1 million people, was transferred to the White House administration. This was reported by the international human rights organization Amnesty International. The American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Demand Progress and CREDO Action participated in the collection of signatures. In total, the activists managed to collect 1,101,252 signatures.

Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov, during his speech at the Gaidar Forum in Moscow, said that the Ministry of Agriculture and other ministries need to proceed from the fact that anti-Russian sanctions will soon cease to operate, Interfax reports. “The time has come to understand that sanctions will soon cease to operate, or counter-sanctions.

The funeral of the head of the Fair Aid Foundation, Elizaveta Glinka, who died at the end of last year in the crash of a Tu-154 aircraft of the Ministry of Defense flying to Syria, will be held on Monday, January 16, at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow, Interfax reports with reference to the presidential Human Rights Council.

on the website of the Tomsk media group TV-2 appeared An interactive chess game "How TV-2 was shut down" According to the head of TV-2, Viktor Muchnik, with whom NT spoke, “How TV-2 was shut down” was created in order to give an idea of ​​​​how the mechanism for the destruction of the media by the state works. “The closure of the company was the result of the coordinated actions of several government agencies,” the project’s website says.

An uncoordinated protest rally against the transfer of St. Isaac's Cathedral to the Russian Orthodox Church took place on St. Isaac's Square in St. Petersburg. According to Rosbalt, about 500 people gathered for the rally. The action was held in the format of a meeting of protesters with members of the legislative assembly - Maxim Reznik, Boris Vishnevsky and Alexei Kovalev, as well as PARNAS co-chairman in St. Petersburg Andrei Pivovarov.

The defense has appealed the extension of house arrest to former Minister of Economic Development Alexei Ulyukaev, who is accused of corruption, Interfax reports, citing his lawyer Larisa Kashtanova. “We filed a complaint against the decision of the Basmanny Court,” Kashtanova said. On January 10, the Basmanny Court of Moscow extended Ulyukaev's house arrest until April 15. The term for the investigation of the case against the ex-minister has been extended until May 15.

The scams in the 2016 State Duma elections were the largest since 2000. Kirill Kalinin and Walter Mebane of the University of Michigan came to this conclusion in an article published in The Washington Post . Thus, they referred to the work of Arturas Rosenas of New York University, who found that United Russia votes exceeding 50% were often multiples of 5: 55%, 65%, 70%, 75%, 95%, and even 100%. Scientists have found similar patterns in electoral fraud from 2000 to 2016.

The exodus of writers from the Russian PEN Center continues, whose executive committee recently expelled journalist Sergei Parkhomenko for life "for provocative activities incompatible with the goals and objectives" of the organization (an unprecedented scandal in its history). Russian PEN has already left Lev Rubinstein, Olga Sedakova, Svetlana Aleksievich, Boris Akunin and many other people of their word.

At the Gaidar Forum, Aleksey Alekseenko, an assistant to the head of the Rosselkhoznadzor, said that, according to random checks, about 25% of food products are consistently falsified, TASS reports. “According to our selective checks, a quarter of all food products, of all types, are steadily falsified, with the exception of one - food eggs are falsified only in China, we don’t,” Alekseenko said. According to the assistant to the head of the Rosselkhoznadzor, this problem causes enormous damage.