Yekaterinburg lawyer Yuri Salimgareev appealed to the European Court of Human Rights with a demand to cancel the decision to declare January 7 a day off in Russia. Earlier, for more than a year, he unsuccessfully tried to achieve the abolition of the day off for Christmas through Russian courts. The lawyer applied to Strasbourg, but was refused by the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation. “The celebration of an Orthodox holiday offends other confessions,” Salimgareev believes.

On December 26, 2008, the Novosibirsk Regional Court began preliminary hearings on the case of four Nazi skinheads accused of killing Turkish citizen Eslen Fatih Mehmet and beating Shairbek Altynbaev, a native of Kyrgyzstan. Recall that two 16-year-olds, one 17-year-old, as well as 20-year-old Yegor Grachev are charged under paragraphs. "g" and "l" part 2 of Art.

The All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion (VTsIOM) published the results of a survey conducted on November 15-16, “Astrological forecasts and horoscopes: to believe or not?” According to researchers, 52% of respondents look at astrological forecasts and horoscopes (44% sometimes out of interest, 8% regularly and take it seriously). 54% of respondents watch television programs about psychics and astrologers (39% occasionally for entertainment, 15% take it seriously).

On the afternoon of December 26, 2008, an anti-Semitic incident took place at the Mendeleevskaya metro station in Moscow. The young man jumped off the platform towards "Savelovskaya" on the way and painted anti-Semitic inscriptions on the white marble wall with black spray paint. The actions of the young man were observed by the subway cleaners, but no one called the police. The young man got off the tracks and left by train in the direction of the Tsvetnoy Bulvar station.

On December 25, 2008, a criminal trial began in Omsk against Alexander Khinevich, who revived banned by the court. the "Slavic community of the Temple of the Veda of Perun of the Spiritual Administration of the Asgard Vesi of Belovodia of the Old Russian Inglistic Church of the Orthodox Old Believers-Ingliings" Recall that A. Khinevich is charged under Part 1 of Art.

The World Court in Moscow found Novy Knizhny LLC and its director guilty of selling the recognized extremist book “The Personality of a Muslim.” By court decision, the bookstore chain was fined 50 thousand rubles, and its director - 2 thousand. Let us recall that the inclusion of this book in the federal list of extremist literature caused protests from the Muslim community.

On December 19, a regular meeting of the Commission for Improving the Nomenclature of Specialties of Scientific Workers under the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation took place. The issue of inclusion in the register of the specialty “Philosophy of Religion and Religious Studies, Theology and Religious Philosophy” was considered. As Polit.ru reports with reference to a participant in the meeting, “the word “theology” was excluded from the discussion immediately.

The Office of the Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Supervision (Rosselkhoznadzor) for the Tomsk Region declared illegal construction near the village of Kandinka, where representatives of the Society for Krishna Consciousness settled.

On December 22, 2008, the Zamoskvoretsky District Court of Moscow recognized B. Nikash's article "Symbiosis. The KGB and the Jews", published in the Duel newspaper in No. 31 (529) dated July 31, 2007, as extremist material. Let us remind you that on November 26, 2008, the same Zamoskvoretsky court ruled to terminate the activities of the Duel newspaper and invalidate the mass media's registration certificate.