On Sunday, August 31, 2008, the Vesti channel aired Dmitry Kiselyov's report "Russophobia External and Internal". Leaving aside the ethical assessment of the position expressed in the report, we note that this example clearly shows how state propaganda blurs concepts in the minds of the consumer. In this case, the boundaries between the ethnic and political perception of the term "Russophobia" are blurred. Although, perhaps, the author of the text himself does not understand the difference.

On May 19, 2008, the Kurultai of the Republic of Bashkortostan submitted for consideration to the State Duma a draft law on amending the Federal Law "On Counteracting Extremist Activities" (on the issue of liability for the dissemination of extremist materials on the international computer network "Internet").

The Kaluga District Court sentenced a clergyman to imprisonment for selling opium, Interfax reports . “The priest made the potion in an artisanal way, then sold it to his accomplice. The latter, in turn, without suspecting anything, offered drugs to a criminal police officer who was conducting operational search activities, that is, a test purchase,” said Yulia Vatolina, senior assistant to the Kaluga transport prosecutor . "Both convicts were also drug users.

Since the 2008 academic year, the subject "History of Russian Religions" has been introduced in schools in the Nizhny Novgorod region, the Pravoslavie.ru website reports . The regional Ministry of Education and Science emphasized that schools themselves decide whether to introduce this discipline or not, and about a third of the region's schools intend to add this subject to the schedule by September 1.

In August 2008, not less than 25 people, including 5 dead, became victims of racially and neo-Nazi motivated violence (in August 2007, 6 people died and not less than 66 were injured). Apart from Moscow and St. Petersburg, such attacks were registered in Perm, Tula, Uljyanovsk and Chelyabinsk. This abrupt decrease of the number of victims, on the one hand, can be explained by the lack of information.

On August 29, 2008, the city court of Yoshkar-Ola did not satisfy another claim of the city prosecutor's office to recognize Vitaly Tanakov's brochure "The Priest Speaks" as extremist material. A comprehensive forensic-linguistic examination, carried out by employees of the Mari State University on the order of the prosecutor's office, did not find any signs of extremist activity in the brochure.

On August 29, 2008, the Tagansky Court of Moscow suspended indefinitely the trial of the organizers of the exhibition "Forbidden Art - 2006", accused of inciting hatred. The meeting was postponed due to the fact that Erofeev is in the hospital with a spinal injury. On August 19, Yuri Samodurov voluntarily left the post of director of the museum and public center named after Sakharov. Sources The Samodurov case has been suspended indefinitely // Grani.ru. 2008. August 29.

The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation point to the positive results of the presence of the clergy in the army, Interfax reports . "We noted that in the units and formations that were accompanied by Orthodox and Muslim clergymen, the microclimate has significantly improved, the number of domestic conflicts has been reduced to a minimum," Colonel Ivan Timofeev, assistant commander of the Second Guards Army of the Volga-Urals Military District for information support, said.

On September 1, 2008, a sentence was passed in Nizhny Novgorod against Evgeniy Aleshin, accused of xenophobically motivated cemetery vandalism. The court found the 18-year-old man guilty under Part 2 of Art. 244 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“destruction and damage to burial sites committed on the grounds of national and religious hatred and enmity”) and sentenced him to 2.5 years of suspended imprisonment. The rest of the defendants, detained together with E.

In August 2008, at least 25 people were injured as a result of racist and neo-Nazi attacks, 5 of them died (in August 2007, 6 people died and at least 66 people were injured). In addition to Moscow and St. Petersburg, attacks were recorded in Perm, Tula, Ulyanovsk and Chelyabinsk.