Speaking at a press conference in Moscow on Wednesday, Poser said that he would not tolerate further censorship of his program. The most recent instance occurred when management at Channel One decided to nix a part of a February 6 interview that discussed Alexei Navalny – a leading opposition figure and one of the organizers of a massive opposition protest over the weekend.

“It might be that at the end of the day it’s not as a result of [the incident concerning] Navalny, but if anything else like this happens, I might just tell them – that’s enough!” Posner said.

At the same time, the host expressed hope that it wouldn’t come to such an extreme measure.

He also promised that if the show is cancelled, a press conference would be held to explain the specific reasons why.

“I’m very glad that, thanks to the Internet, anyone who’s interested can see: here is the program and here is what they cut out of it. It’s becoming meaningless to cut things out,” Posner said.

The host admitted that February 6 was not the first time he’d agreed to air a censored episode. While it happens “relatively rarely, this is one of the compromises that I sometimes make,” he acknowledged.

The interview in question was with fellow television host Tina Kandelaki, during which Posner asked whether or not she thought that he would be allowed to interview Aleksei Navalny on his own show: “I could call up Aleksei Navalny, but what do you think, would they let me?” According to Gazeta.ru, this fragment was cut out of the episode that aired in most of Russia, with the full version only broadcasted in the Far East, where it is regularly airs live.

In accordance with the document, films could be banned from theaters if they “contain scenes containing public calls to carry out terrorist activities or that publically justify terrorism or other extremist activity, or scenes that propagandize pornography or a cult of violence and cruelty.”

The ministry will also reserve the right to ban screenings of films found to include “information on ways or methods of developing, producing, or using narcotics, psychotropic substances, or their precursors, or about places where they can be purchased, as well as scenes propagandizing any sort of advantages of using particular narcotic substances, psychotropic substances, or their precursors.”

The draft is posted on the Culture Ministry’s website for public discussion from November 25 to December 8.

The vague wording of Russia’s law against extremism is often abused by government authorities to ban materials or persecute groups or individuals that it deems undesirable to the regime. Democratic oppositionists often find themselves victimized by the law, whereas ultranationalist groups that publically promote xenophobia are given sanction by the authorities to hold mass rallies.

Ekho Moskvy journalist Vladimir Varfolomeyev featured the bill on his blog, noting that it could prevent any movie with “incisive social or political content” from making its way into Russian theaters. “There won’t be any more films like Russia 88, Trainspotting, or even Kill Bill or Shattered,” he said.

Russia 88, a 2009 award-winning docudrama about neo-Nazis in St. Petersburg, has suffered both from lawsuits and self-censorship on the part of theaters that refuse to screen the film.

Commenting on the Culture Ministry bill, Russia 88 director Pavel Bardin said: “We already have effective mechanisms for film censorship. The federal law against extremism allows any movie to be banned (true, along with the effect of an unnecessary scandal). The theaters wait for telephone calls signaling if they can or cannot show a certain film and basically never show any incisive movies. This order is simply the final accord.”

As Studio 360 writes:

This week, Russian president Dmitry Medvedev announced that Vladimir Putin would be United Russia’s candidate next year, all but assuring him the presidency — possibly until 2024. Many in Russia saw this coming, and the country’s artists have been pioneering new forms of risky, highly public dissent.

Anna Nemtsova, Moscow correspondent for Newsweek and the Daily Beast, has been following the growing movement of street artists. Voina (”War”), a collective from St. Petersburg, is responsible for some of the most daring art actions. “They declared a war,” Nemtsova tells Kurt Andersen, “to state corruption, injustice, and the political regime.”

It’s not high art. Voina’s actions (and the videos of them posted online) are designed only to mock and humiliate the Russian political class as humorously as possible, much like the illegal billboards of the collective Monolog. Last year Voina painted a 210-foot phallus on a drawbridge facing the Federal Security Bureau, the former KGB. Because of this and other actions (some of them truly Not Safe for Work), they remain underground to avoid arrest. But at the same time, the ministry of culture awarded Voina an art prize for their rude graffiti. “It’s a very interesting phenomenon we have in Russia,” Nemtsova says. “One hand is giving the prize, the other hand is punishing.”

Listen to the full piece here:

Featuring a lone protester from the Putin Must Go campaign (seen holding a sign reading “Путин должен уйти”), the clip does not split hairs in regards to the sham democratic process currently being played out in Russia.

The video very much speaks for itself:

In a full confession that will shorten his own future prison sentence, Dmitri Pavlyuchenkov admitted that he was guilty of aiding in the organization of the murder but was not the main organizer himself. Pavlyuchenkov had originally been maintaining his innocence since his arrest late August.

Now, with new evidence from the ex-lieutenant colonel, investigators say that the main suspect in the primary organizing role is Chechen businessman Lom-Ali Gaitukayev, currently sitting out a 15-year prison sentence in Ukraine for organizing the attempted murder of businessman Gennady Korban in March 2006.

According to Kommersant, investigators believe that Gaitukayev received an order in July 2006 from an “unidentified figure” to murder Politkovskaya. He then organized a hit team made up of his two nephews, Ibragim and Rustam Makhmudov, as well as Pavlyuchenkov. However, Gaitukayev was arrested the next month in Moscow on an arrest warrant from Ukraine, where he was later convicted of organizing the Korban murder attempt.

Without their primary organizer, the hit team spent some time lying in wait before being taken over by Sergei Khadzhikurbanov, a former Moscow police officer. At the time, Khadzhikurbanov had just been released from prison, where he served a term for abuse of authority. Investigators say that he and the other members of the group were given orders by cell phone from Gaitukayev in his detention facility.

Pavlyuchenkov admits that he ordered his subordinate officers to spy on the Politkovskaya and determine the pattern of her daily movements around the city. He then gave this information – along with the murder weapon – to the Makhmudov brothers. On October 7, 2006, Rustam Makhmudov shot and killed the journalist in her apartment building’s elevator.

Notably, Gaitukayev had previously stated that Anna Politkovskaya’s murder could have been no less than a $2 million job, although he denied having any involvement in it himself. Federal prosecutors say that they no charges are currently being filed against Gaitukayev and his lawyer declined to comment.

Kommersant added that it has information that Pavlyuchenkov has provided investigators with the name of the possible “client” in the case – said to be currently abroad – who paid Gaitukayev and the hit team. Federal investigators and the ex-lieutenant colonel declined to discuss the issue.

Khadzhikurbanov’s lawyer, Aleksei Mikhalchik, told Kommersant that Pavlyuchenkov was simply providing false evidence to ease his own fate. “I hope the investigation doesn’t rely on his words alone,” he said.

Novaya Gazeta Editor-in-Chief Sergei Sokolov commented that Lom-Ali Gaitukayev is not the sort of person who “talks with investigators” and therefore is unlikely to confirm Pavlyuchenkov’s testimony about the alleged client.

Politkovskaya’s death catapulted Russia into the spotlight as one of the world’s deadliest countries for reporters. Over the past five years, blame has been cast at Chechen militants, Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, Russian then-President Vladimir Putin, and Russian police officers, among others. But today, Russia’s Investigative Committee announced that ex-Lieutenant Colonel Dmitri Pavlyuchenkov had been arrested as the suspected organizer of the journalist’s murder.

Investigators say that Pavlyuchenkov, who was at one point a main witness in the Politkovskaya case, was paid to organize the hit and even provided the criminal group in question with the murder weapon.

An answer to the larger question of who paid Pavlyuchenkov also may be close at hand, as the Investigative Committee additionally announced that it had information regarding the murder’s “client.” According to RIA Novosti, the name of the suspect is under wraps for now in order to prevent complications with the investigation.

Editors at Novaya Gazeta, the newspaper where Politkovskaya worked, said the news matched up with the results of their own independent investigation.

“In regards to the client, I do know of a few versions that federal investigators have developed at various levels of detail. They partially overlap with our own,” Novaya Gazeta Editor-in-Chief Sergei Sokolov told Gazeta.ru. “But to name any specific names right now would be irresponsible.”

At the very least, Novaya Gazeta’s investigation found that Pavlyuchenkov definitely played a key role in organizing the murder, said Sokolov. “I can’t say if he was the only organizer; there could have been two. But that this man was one of the main organizers and used his position [to ensure the murder was carried out] can already be confirmed,” he explained.

According to Gazeta.ru, the journalist’s children came to the conclusion that Pavlyuchenkov was involved in the murder “long ago.”

“We and Novaya Gazeta, as victims, carried out our own research, collected evidence in the case and more and more came to the conclusion that he was involved in the crime and should not take the stand as a witness,” said Anna Stavitskaya, lawyer for Ilya and Vera Politkovskaya.

For more information about the developments and background in the Politkovskaya case, see Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

Kommersant learned that the magazine has virtually disappeared from newsstands only after receiving reports from its readers. Representatives of the publication then went around to several dozen retailers and were consistently told that copies of Vlast had either been sold or were returned to distributors as unsold, despite the fact that a new copy of the magazine is not due to come out for another several days.

The issue in question, dated July 4, is largely dedicated to the upcoming resignation of largely unpopular St. Petersburg Mayor and United Russia member Valentina Matvienko, who was controversially chosen by President Dmitri Medvedev last month to become Speaker of the Federation Council. The soon-to-be-former mayor is pictured on the cover blowing a small horn with a quote that plays on the Soviet-era award “For Service to the Fatherland” – only here the word “service” is replaced by a term made up by city authorities for the gargantuan icicles that killed a record number of residents this past winter. Matvienko was widely criticized for failing to keep streets clear of snow and ensure that icicles be removed from buildings before they could harm pedestrians. The article itself discusses her successes and failures in office, her strained relationship with the president, and the possibility that her new position may simply be an honorable discharge from Russian politics.

According to Ekho Moskvy, the newspaper is not ruling out the possibility that the issue angered the city administration. On condition of anonymity, a representative of one of two companies that distribute 90 percent of all the copies of Vlast throughout St. Petersburg told Kommersant that the order to cut off distribution came directly from the St. Petersburg City Printing Committee; the company made no official statement. A representative of the second company did make an official statement that no copies had been confiscated from retail outlets.

Printing Committee head Aleksandr Korennikov told Kommersant that he was unaware of any confiscations.

On Tuesday, a user of the website HabraHabr living in Ulyanovsk complained that he was unable to access the LiveJournal blog of noted whistleblower Aleksei Navalny. When the user asked his internet provider, Telekom.ru, for an explanation, he received a letter in response: “Access to the resource navalny.livejournal.com has been temporarily suspended by order of the FSB.”

Upon further inquiry to Telekom.ru, Gazeta.ru discovered that the company had blocked access not only to Navalny’s blog, but to LiveJournal entirely.

“The company has limited access to LiveJournal by order of the FSB,” a technology support specialist from the company told Gazeta.ru. However, he could not explain on the basis of what sanction the FSB asked the company to block access to the website.

This is not the first time Russian authorities have blocked access to social media websites. In July 2010, an ISP in Komsomolsk-on-Amur received a court order to block access to YouTube; in the same month, a court in Ingushetia ordered providers to block access to all of LiveJournal.

Prominent blogger Aleksei Navalny has been involved in an ongoing row with government authorities in connection with his status as Russia’s chief whistleblower. Most notably, Navalny used his shareholder earnings in the state-owned oil pipeline company Transneft to reveal an alleged $4 billion of embezzlement. Last week, federal investigators filed criminal charges against the blogger for having allegedly defrauded a state-owned timber company. On Wednesday, investigators announced that an “unspecified culture studies institute” had determined that his website’s logo was a desecration of Russia’s coat of arms.

According to the Moscow Times, Telekom.ru is now blaming technical difficulties for the lack of access to LiveJournal, despite previously admitting that the FSB issued an order to block it. The FSB denies issuing a complaint about Navalny’s blog, but it is unclear whether or not they deny complaining about LiveJournal itself.

“Do you like when people disagree with you? When they argue, object, or contradict you?” reads the website’s opening page. “Of course you don’t like it. Those who disagree with anyone and have a different, opposing opinion are called ‘the opposition.’”

In a colorful interactive slideshow, the website explains such concepts as “the strange word ‘opposition’” and “what if it’s repugnant to listen to them?”

A section titled “At first glance” reads: “It might appear that those who disagree with the state government are of perfectly no use. They just get in the way and prevent work from getting done. Can the government really not order them all to be silent?” The next section is titled “It turns out: it can’t.”

“The fundamental law of our state – the constitution – says: in the Russian Federation, everyone is guaranteed freedom of thought and speech and that no ideology can be established as state-mandated or required. This means that the government doesn’t have the right to force those with whom it disagrees to be silent,” says the site.

Moreover, it says, “the guarantor of the constitution is the president. That is to say, it is precisely he who guarantees and ensures the implementation of the constitution in our country.”

The site goes on to discuss how freedom of speech is preserved through media that is independent “even from the president himself” and that a democratic government is structured so that “even its opponents are useful.”

There is also a section dedicated to the fact that slander and libel are strictly punished according to federal Russian law.

“Of course, the state government most of all needs helpers who agree with it…But it turns out that it needs opponents as well,” the page stipulates.

In a country routinely accused of hosting fraudulent elections, critics will likely be angered at the website’s insistence that the president in Russia is chosen by the majority of voters: “Indeed, the majority of people voted for the president during the election. If it were the other way around – they would have chosen a different president. There would be a different government.”

A presentation of the new category is planned at the Kremlin on Tuesday. Children’s author Grigory Oster, who wrote the existing content from the Kremlin’s kids page, was also chosen to write about the opposition.

“We are trying to explain to children that in a normal democratic state the opposition not only does not hinder, but also helps the government,” Oster told Gazeta.ru.

In the writer’s words, the page will show children that “in the history of humanity, there have been cases when the opinion of the minority turned out to be right.” “We are explaining that if somebody disagrees with you it doesn’t mean they’re wrong,” he said.

The website will steer away from more difficult concepts such as the difference between the “systemic” and “non-systemic” opposition or parliamentary and non-parliamentary opposition parties and movements. “This is a site for children!” Oster explained. While the idea of making a section for the opposition came up long ago, the page itself took a long time to develop, he said.

The children’s version of the Kremlin’s website was launched six years ago and has made do without discussing the opposition for all that time. Currently, it includes several sections on the role of the president, what elections are for, and what democracy is. The latter explains in the form of a test that when grown people freely express their opinions and different people who get the majority of votes in fair elections become president – that’s democracy.

There are also some less-than-standard concepts. For example, “the president’s tolerance”: “For those who risk violating the rights and freedoms of citizens of the Russian Federation, it is not worth waiting for when the president’s cup of tolerance overflows. It will not end well for them,” explains a young citizen.

Compiled in part from material by Gazeta.ru.

On May 12, Kasparov.ru correspondent Viktor Shamaev was covering a protest in Penza held under the Day of Wrath campaign. Organizers say these protests are meant to provide a day for Russians to voice their collective grievances against federal and local officials, and participants routinely include human rights activists, political oppositionists, environmental activists, and others. Local authorities often refuse to grant permission for Day of Wrath rallies, which are subsequently cracked down on by police. Yesterday’s Day of Wrath participants in Penza held solitary pickets, the only legal form of non-government-approved protest in Russia.

Immediately after Shamaev photographed local Left Front coordinator Yevgeny Makeyenko picketing outside the mayor’s office, a deputy chief from Penza Police Station #1 sent a lieutenant to ask the journalist to follow him to his car. When the officer smelled an empty can of beer, he took Shamaev to a detox center, and then to a police station where the journalist was held for three hours.

It is not clear what exactly Shamaev was charged with, but according to Kasparov.ru, he had to sign all papers presented to him by police, ostensibly admitting his guilt, since he needed to take his infant child home.

Additionally, the website reports that the lieutenant who detained Shamaev told him in a private discussion that he was “ordered to take Shamaev.”

Shamaev worked for the police before becoming a correspondent for Kasparov.ru in 2006. Law enforcement agents have repeatedly interrogated him in connection with various incidents and have attempted to arrest him several times. For example, Shamaev was questioned in November 2009 about the arson of the Penza United Russia office on the basis that he was among the first journalists to arrive at the scene. Human rights activists expressed concern at the treatment of oppositionists during the investigation.