Russia's latest sex scandal, «Rybkagate,» is impossible not to comment on because it is like a drop of water that reflects several meaningful social and political trends. I will not give you a detailed overview of Navalny's film, as you can watch it on YouTube . A most compelling creation, if you ask me. Why talk about the scandal at all? What other insights does it offer, apart from a brief glance at the wondrous, enigmatic world of escort services?

Russia's latest sex scandal, «Rybkagate,» is impossible not to comment on because it is like a drop of water that reflects several meaningful social and political trends. I will not give you a detailed overview of Navalny's film, as you can watch it on YouTube . A most compelling creation, if you ask me. Why talk about the scandal at all? What other insights does it offer, apart from a brief glance at the wondrous, enigmatic world of escort services?

The leadership of the Russian Guard will create a special commission that will select candidates for service on the principles of honesty, decency and readiness. The corresponding order of the head of the Federal Service Viktor Zolotov was published on the official placement portal.

The authorities of St. Petersburg rejected a repeated application for the march of Nemtsov’s memory in the center of St. Petersburg on February 25. This was announced by Rosbalt was announced by the deputy of the Zaks Boris Vishnevsky. “The negotiations were unsuccessful. According to our data, “there is an opinion” of nothing political in the city center before the elections cannot be coordinated in principle, ”Vishnevsky said.

33-year-old Alex van der Tswan became the fourth who pleaded guilty as part of an investigation of Russia's intervention in the American elections. About this writes Associated Press. Tswan admitted that he lied to the FBI agents about his contacts with Rick Gates. Gates is a partner of the former head of the headquarters of Donald Trump Paul Manafort, they are now charged with money laundering and lobbying for the interests of the Ukrainian “Party of Regions”.

In the NTV news program, a plot appeared , entitled "The performance is over." It says: “The FSB revealed the theft of 45 million rubles in the Small Drama Theater in St. Petersburg, the fraud case was opened. It is reported that several defendants were detained. They are suspected of embezzlement of funds on an especially large scale allocated from the budget for designing a new scene of the Academic Small Drama Theater - the Theater of Europe.

The Simonovsky District Court of Moscow arrested the director of the FBK Roman Rubanov for 10 days, Mediazona reports . Rubanova was found guilty of organizing an unauthorized action on January 28 by a retweet of a message from Twitter Alexei Navalny, which indicated the time and place of the event. Rubanova’s defense emphasized that the police did not establish when the retweet was made - before or after the action. Rubanova was detained at Sheremetyevo Airport on February 20.

Interpol refused to put on the international wanted list the informant Vad Grigory Rodchenkov, seeing a political background in his case. About this writes "Interfax" with reference to a source familiar with the situation. “Having examined the request of the Russian side, the General Secretariat of Interpol decided not to enter Rodchenkov’s dossier to his database, considering that his criminal prosecution is political in nature,” he said.

Russia scored 29 points and took 135th place out of 180 in the index of corruption perception for 2017, which was the international movement to combat corruption Transparency International. Russia gains such a number of points for the third year in a row, but every year it takes different places. In 2015 it was 119th, in 2016-131st. This is due to changes in other countries and their place in the ranking.

Director Kirill Serebrennikov was released to his mother’s funeral from under house arrest. He himself announced this at a court hearing in the Seventh Studio case, Interfax reports . “I have not seen my parents much time, and a few days ago my mother died. Yesterday I was in cremation and returned tonight, ”said Serebrennikov. On February 19, it became known that the mother of Serebrennikova Irina Litvin died after a serious illness in Rostov-on-Don.

The Wagner group, whose mercenaries are fighting in Syria and Ukraine, has at least 3602 people and costs up to 17.4 billion rubles. This was reported by Republic with reference to several "Wagnerians" and officers of the Ministry of Defense and the FSB. On February 19, the Russian BBC Service published a photograph of the token of one of the mercenaries of Evgeny Alikov, who died in Syria in September 2017. The number of the token is 3601.

The Chairman of the Central Election Commission of Russia Ella Pamfilova demanded not to involve schoolchildren in election events. According to TASS, she promised to send the appropriate appeal to the Ministry of Education and Science. “Now it has matured, our service is preparing a letter in the name of the Minister of Education of the Russian Federation. We have collected cases when, in our opinion, some promotions are held in schools.

The Russian skater, the current European champion Alina Zagitova broke the record of her compatriot Evgenia Medvedeva and took first place in the short program at the 2018 Olympics. It is reported by Interfax. The result of Zagitova is 82.92 points. Earlier, at the games in Pyeongchang, the new world record was set by the two -time world and European champion Yevgeny Medvedev, which scored 81.61 points. Medvedeva became the second, third place was taken by Canadian Kaitlin Osmond (78.87).

The court sentenced the defendants in the case of theft of about 1.3 billion rubles. During the construction of the Vostochny cosmodrome for terms of four and a half to eight years, the colony. The press secretary of the Simonovsky court of Moscow Viktor Vasiliev informed RBC about this. The actual owner of the Volga-Vyatka construction company Sergey Degtyarev, his daughter and general director of the company Evgeny Degtyarev, top managers Alexander Bazankov and Murat Matuev appeared.

Russian scientists sent another open letter to Vladimir Putin criticizing the Reform of the Russian Academy of Sciences. According to TASS, the letter was signed by more than 400 people. At the end of last year, scientists have already addressed an open letter to Putin, in which they complained about problems at the Academy due to the reform. Then 397 people signed under the document, including Linguist Andrei Zaliznyak, who died on December 24.