A man visits Jock Sturges' exhibition called No Embarrassment at the Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography. Andrei Makhonin / TASS The Moscow exhibition of controversialAmerican photographer Jock Sturges has been closed following protestsfrom conservative activists. Members of the nationalist group“Officers of Russia” blocked the entrance to Sturges's show,“Jock Sturges: Absence of Shame” at The Lumiere Brothers'Center for Photography on Sunday.

Station for Two (1982) Mosfilm While this rainy September can’t end soon enough for those who like autumn strolls and leaf-peeping in the Big Onion’s parks, Moscow TV can at least fill the month’s last week with warm and dry entertainment.

Former Crimean Prosecutor General,Natalya Poklonskaya, is to take a key anti-corruption position inRussia's State Duma, the RBC newspaper reported Monday. Poklonskaya, who gained widespread online fame in her previous role, is to head the parliamentarycommittee charged with ensuring that deputies have declared theirfull incomes to the Russian government, said SergeiNeverov, head ofUnited Russia's General Council.

The Kremlin has already begun work on plans tomonitor and decrypt Russia's online traffic in real-time, theKommersant newspaper has reported. Kommersant reported that Natalya Kaspersky, CEOof cyber-security firm InfoWatch anda member of the Kremlin's IT and Sovereignty working group, confirmed that talks on the project were already under way.

The Student (2016 Alex Yocu Kirill Serebrennikov was the first tostage Marius von Mayenburg’s darkly brilliant play “Martyr” outside of Germany.The Russian writer-director’s cinematic adaptation of the play, “The Student,”opens in Russia on Oct. 13, having already picked up the Francois Chalais Prizeand a nomination in the Un Certain Regard Award at the prestigious Cannes Filmfestival this year.

A criminal case has been opened against three polling station officials for vote rigging during this month’s State Duma elections, Russia’s Investigative Committee announced Monday via a statement on its website. Footage from the polling station, in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, showed a woman frantically stuffing papers into a ballot box as two colleagues shielded her from the view of potential onlookers.

MH17 flight recovery team members examine one of the areas of the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 plane crash in the village of Hrabove, Ukraine. Mstyslan Chernov / AP Just two days before the release of a new Dutch report on the 2014downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine, theRussian Defense Ministry once again suggested that Kiev forces wereresponsible. According to spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov, theUkrainian side is withholding crucial radar data.

Hunag He/Facebook A life-sized cutoutof Dmitry Nagiyev dressed in traditional Chinese clothing greets you on entryto this oriental eatery. The odd adornment — while questionable tastewise —makes more sense if you know that the star of the popular television comedy“Fizruk” (Gym Teacher), co-founded the restaurant together with the BulldozerGroup.

Andrei Makhonin / Vedomosti The head of Russia's biggest bank, Sberbank, has named online giants such as Google and Yandex as the''key threats'' to the company. Sberbank SEO German Gref warned that traditional banks are set to lose out as increasing amounts of money are being transferred online through services such as Facebook and Yandex Money.

Alexander Bastrykin, t he head of Russia’s powerful Investigative Committee and one of the country’s most senior figures in the federal security services, has submitted his letter resignation, the RBC news website reported Monday. The resignation letter was submitted on Sept. 20 to President Vladimir Putin Sep 20 and is currently being considered. Earlier this month, RBC reported that Bastrykin would step down after Russia's parliamentary elections on Sept. 18.

A prominent Duma deputy from the ruling United Russia party has called Crimea a “crippling financial burden” and claimed that other sectors are suffering spending cuts because of it, the Afisha news website reported Monday. Kobzon claimed that infrastructure in Crimea was being financed at the expense of other areas like health care, education and culture. “We have taken on a crippling burden,” he said.

A prominent Moscowart gallery has been slapped with a fine for its “obscene”advertising of an exhibition by the famously eccentric Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch. The Russian FederalAnti-Monopoly Service has handed the Artplay modern art gallery incentral Moscow a fine of 100,000 rubles ($1,570) for violatingadvertising rules, the agency said Monday in an online statement.

Educationand Science Minister Olga Vasilieva has called for the return ofcompulsory agricultural labor for Russian schoolchildren, the RIANovosti news agency reported Monday. Accordingto Vasilieva, pupils should be put into S oviet-style "agricultural brigades"for workon farm s “like we always used to do.” Inaddition, pupils should be made responsible for cleaning the schoolsin which they spend 11 years of their education, she said.

Andrei Makhonin / TASS It was a Wednesday in April 1990 when Jock Sturges came home from a morning swim to discover FBI agents and San Francisco police officers raiding his home, boxing up his cameras, studio equipment, business records, correspondence, and hundreds of thousands of negatives and photographs. The cops reportedly grabbed his copy of Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita,” too.

Some 82 percent of Russians can feel theeffects of the country's economic decline, the Kommersant newspaper reported Monday , citing a report by independentpollster the Levada Center. The number has risen from the 61percent who felt the pinch back in the fall of 2014. Almost one in five respondents (17percent) have had problems with delayed wage packets, while 16percent expected delays in the coming months.