Hello! This week our top story is on the Kremlin’s apparent backing for Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov in his extra-judicial pursuit of an opposition blogger . We also look at why inflation continues to rise despite predictions by officials and analysts, and the reaction to HBO’s documentary on opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Putin hosts Kadyrov amid criticism over ‘blood feud’ Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of the North Caucasus republic of Chechnya, has long been allowed to flout Russian law.

Despite the rapid growth in the number of daily cases of coronavirus in Russia, there is a tendency to stabilize the situation in the country, Rospotrebnadzor said. In the morning, the operational headquarters reported a drop in the number of hospitalizations per day.

The amount of taxes that can be collected from the Russian crypto market is estimated by the government at up to 1 trillion rubles, The Bell found out. Right now, the authorities are arguing how exactly the circulation of cryptocurrencies and mining will be regulated in Russia. This week, Bloomberg reported on the Kremlin’s estimate of the Russian crypto market at $214 billion (16.5 trillion rubles) as the authorities develop an industry regulation plan.

The number of artificial satellites in near-Earth orbit is steadily growing - this prevents astronomers not only from taking high-quality images, but also from studying potentially dangerous asteroids. This conclusion was based on a study published January 14 in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. Scientists assessed the impact of SpaceX's Starlink satellites by examining approximately 300,000 images from the Palomar Observatory in Southern California.

The topic of release is what we learned about the price of the Russian crypto This week, the battle for the regulation of cryptocurrencies has acquired more specific outlines. We already know the positions of all participants in the process: the Central Bank wants to ban all cryptocurrency in Russia, the government and security forces - not to ban, but regulate (we talked about this in detail here ).