DoS, Nashi, More Illegal Confiscations

  • More hacker DoS (denial of service) attacks took place against Russian political opposition sites. This time the entire LiveJournal.ru, the most popular blogging site in Russian, was brought down by attacks against the National Bolshevik Party site that is hosted there. Namarsh.ru was also hit again.
  • In our internal review and discussion of the Voronezh March of Dissent, several of Eduard Limonov’s people said they had recognized some of the Nashi members who were there. Two of them were recognized as the Nashi leaders who organized the brutal attacks on National Bolshevik and Vanguard of Red Youth members in 2006. Their presence coincided with increased level of aggression displayed by the Nashi storm trooper hooligans against Other Russia marchers in Voronezh.
  • Two days ago, 120,000 copies of the Other Russia newspaper was confiscated by authorities. So far, 25 printers have refused to print it, even if we offer to pay above market prices. The Kremlin campaign of fear and intimidation has reached broadly and deeply.
  • In the best Russian tradition, some have succeeded in finding humor in our national tragedy. A current joke making the rounds says that the Central Election Committee has decided to simplify things for the 2008 presidential election. At each polling station there will be two boxes. One “Vova” and the other “Shredder”…