Referring to Rossiyskaya Gazeta, the news service said that the law will go into effect immediately on July 30. Earlier reports put that date at November 1.

Officially, the law creates a blacklist of web sites with content that the government deems to be dangerous for children. This refers first of all to child pornography, information on how to prepare or use narcotics, and information on ways to commit suicide or calls to do so.

Sites seen as containing this content will be banned without having to be subject to a court process.

Sites with other unlawful content, such as “war propaganda” and “inciting interethnic hatred” can also be blacklisted if a court deems necessary.

Roskomnadzor, Russia’s federal media and technology supervisory body, will be responsible for monitoring compliance with the new law, and a special non-commercial organization will be in charge of tracking the internet for offending websites. The organization will then notify Roskomnadzor about a certain site, and Roskomnadzor will then notify the domain owner that their site contains illegal content. If that content isn’t deleted within 24 hours, the hosting company will be required to take it down. If it refuses, the site will be entered into the government’s blacklist.

Critics of the new law fear that its actual purpose is to begin to censor the Russian internet.

Wikipedia’s Russian page went dark for all of July 10 to protest the measure. Other internet companies that have spoken out against the law include Yandex and the Russian branches of Google and LiveJournal.

Members of the Presidential Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights have also called for the law to be struck down.

From Gazeta.ru:

A new piece of legislation is in the works in the Russian State Duma to return the statute against “libel” to the Federal Criminal Code. The bill was initiated by former Justice Minister Pavel Krasheninnikov, who is generally considered to be one of the more liberal members of the ruling United Russia party, and introduced to the Duma by his party colleague, journalist Aleksandr Khinshtein. According to Gazeta.ru, the bill is targeted towards “certain individuals,” guessed by some to include human rights advocate Oleg Orlov and blogger Aleksei Navalny. As far as the advocate is concerned, it’s time to start worrying about the return of Stalin’s notorious Article 58, under which many political prisoners were convicted during Soviet times.

Krasheninnikov, who heads the Duma committee on civil, criminal, arbitration and procedural legislation, called for deputies to examine one of the legislative regulations introduced as part of former President Dmitri Medvedev’s modernization initiatives. The deputy’s bill would return the article on libel into the Criminal Code, and the fines currently associated with the article on “insult,” which is only an administrative offense, will be stiffly increased.

“We believe that nothing good has come from the decriminalization of the article on libel and therefore we’re introducing a bill that will criminalize this element,” Interfax quoted Krasheninnikov as saying.

Khinshtein then wrote on his Twitter account that the project had been introduced into the Duma. “Together with a group of colleagues I’m introducing an amendment to establish cr(iminal) liability for libel: Ar. 129 CC RF. Believed and believe it’s annulment to have been a mistake,” he wrote. Khinshtein also told Gazeta.ru that aside from himself, Krasheninnikov, and United Russia deputy Irina Yarovaya, no other parliamentarians have signed onto the bill yet.

Gazeta.ru was not able to get in touch with Krasheninnikov on Friday, but he justified the bill to Interfax:

“The decriminalization of the article on libel that was carried out as part of the liberalization of criminal policy and instituted an administrative fine of up to three thousand rubles for various libelistic falsifications, or to put it differently, for spreading false information about a person, has led to a situation where certain citizens are accusing people with impunity of the most terrible of sins, calling them bandits, terrorists, and corruptioners.”

Krasheninnikov did not specify who he was concretely referring to, but Gazeta.ru speculates that his description implies at least two well-known figures: head of the Memorial human rights society Oleg Orlov, and oppositionist blogger Aleksei Navalny. In a highly publicized case, Orlov was charged with libeling Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, who the former accused of bearing responsibility for the murder of human rights worker Natalya Estemirova. Orlov’s remarks came long before the libel article was removed from the Criminal Code, but after it was decriminalized, the case against Orlov was closed.

For his part, Navalny is credited with authoring a popular moniker for United Russia – “the Party of Swindlers and Thieves.” Political analysts have been unanimous in assigning this nickname with significant responsibility for the party’s marked fall during the December 2011 election. Party members were unsuccessful in their attempts to bring the blogger to court over the matter. Recently, Navalny revealed a document showing a parallel between rising housing and utilities costs in certain regions and United Russia’s election results. The document, which includes the party’s logo, shows a higher growth in those costs in the regions where United Russia had poorer results. Regional party members are currently working on filing complaints to law enforcement in response, according to United Russia’s Saratov regional press service. Indeed, Navalny has found himself the target of an all-out manhunt in recent times: earlier this week, Investigative Committee head Aleksander Bastrykin publicly castigated a subordinate for closing a case against the blogger involving the company Kirovles.

Before it was decriminalized, the libel article was seen as the “journalism” article – civil servants and party functionaries often used it to settle scores with the press. Indeed, in 2009 Russia took first place for the number of criminal suits against members of the media. At the time, the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations recorded 60 cases per year (for libel as well as other criminal statutes often used against journalists) and the number was growing. In 95% of cases against journalists, the plaintiffs were civil servants or parliamentary deputies.

Judging by Krasheninnikov’s statement, the new libel statute will be tougher than the first. Those found guilty will face up to five years in jail, as opposed to three years under the old one.

Moreover, the bill covers a gradation of types of libel based on their level of “public danger.” The harshest sentence will be given to those convicted of making false accusations that someone has committed particularly gruesome crimes, particularly ones sexual in nature.

Fines for the administrative statute on insults will also be significantly increased, but the statute itself will not be moved into the criminal code, Krasheninnikov added. Whereas the crime was previously punishable by a fine of 1-3 thousand rubles, the new bill would put it at 30-50 thousand rubles.

The libel and insult articles were both decriminalized in December 2011, and went into effect on January 1, 2012. The legislative project involved the liberalization of a whole range of criminal offenses, at the behest of then-President Medvedev and with the help of Justice Minister Aleksandr Konovalov.

Krasheninnikov – one of Konovalov’s predecessors in the post of justice minister – at the time welcomed the liberalization effort, calling it “without a doubt, timely and relevant to today’s demands.”

Khinshtein, who before his election to the State Duma was a scandalously notorious journalist, told Gazeta.ru that he always saw the decriminalizations as a mistake. “There is criminal liability for libel in the laws of every country in the world,” he explained. “There is a distinction between libel and insult. Libel involves intent, which is to say that the person knows that what he’s saying is a lie. The past six months have shown that court practice is not improving.” When asked about the court statistics on the number of people convicted of libel within the Administrative Code over the past six months, Khinshtein unexpectedly responded: “But we don’t have an administrative statute for libel.”

That is not the case: Article 5.60 of the Administrative Code is for “libel,” punishable by a fine of up to 100 thousand rubles.

Human rights advocate Pavel Chikov of the Agora association took a more ironic stance on the bill. “I’d like to remind Krasheninnikov that nothing good came from decriminalizing the article on anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda. Down with libel, let’s have Article 58! [almost four million people were convicted under this article during the Stalin era throughout the Soviet Union – Gazeta.ru] It would be nice to have time to get it back during the spring session,” he quipped.

According to the advocate, Krasheninnikov’s argument that “nothing good has come” from having the libel article in the Administrative Code for the past six months is wholly untenable. “It would be interesting to know about the practice of bringing charges for libel under the frame of the Administrative Code. But I’m guessing that there isn’t any practice,” Chikov said.

The decriminalization of the libel article is not the only Medvedev initiative that has come under reexamination following Vladimir Putin’s return to the presidential chair. In particular, before he was even elected, Putin himself publicly promised to re-institute daylight savings time, which Medvedev had gotten rid of [and which some joked was Medvedev’s only real achievement – theotherrussia.org], and on Friday the State Duma passed the first reading of a bill that would label NGOs that accept international funding as “foreign agents” – under Medvedev, on the other hand, this legislation was in the process of being liberalized.

Khinshtein, however, denies that “Medvedev’s legacy” is being reexamined.

“There is absolutely no need to speak of any revision. We’re talking about concrete, specific things. What kind of revision can we talk about if the legislation is being introduced by leading United Russia deputies?” the deputy insisted.

“The effect is that we’re looking at the practice: admitting that here we were hasty, there we rushed,” he concluded.

Translation by theotherrussia.org

Posner said he was astounded to see that the party congress, which drew 670 delegates from Russia’s regions, elected Medvedev as its leader on May 26 without a single dissenting vote.

“In fact, it strongly brought to mind, at least for me, the Communist Party congress that was held during stagnation,” said the host.

He also noted that while voting was secret during Communist Party congresses, “here there wasn’t even that.”

“And not a single vote against him; not one person abstained. You understand that this doesn’t actually happen, right? That whenever there’s a gathering of several hundred people, or even a hundred, one person without fail will be against; one person without fail will abstain,” said Posner.

He asked Medvedev to appear on his show to provide an account of why the voting happened as it did.

“Tell me, Dmitri Anatolevich – you’re the representative of the party; perhaps you could come on my program and explain this to me and to others? It would be terribly interesting and, of course, helpful. It would be fantastic,” he said.

Posner made waves in February when he publically threatened to cancel his show if it continued to be subjected to state censorship.

Internal Affairs Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev said on Friday that the new centers would track both text and audio-visual materials.

According to Nurgaliyev, the decision was made by an interagency commission and will be implemented throughout the country by regional presidential plenipotentiaries.

Nurgaliyev noted that similar centers already exist in the St. Petersburg State University system and the state-owned Center for Information Analysis Technology in Moscow. Plans for one to be set up in Southern Federal University are pending.

Elaborating on the number of anti-extremism cases that the agency has undertaken, the minister said: “Two hundred and nineteen cases of investigation and analysis were initiated in 2011. Investigative agencies filed 67 charges and issued 130 cautions, warnings and advisories. In 47 cases, access to particular internet resources was blocked and their activities were halted.”

While Russia’s hostile environment towards journalists is nothing new – it hovers down in 142nd place on Reporters Without Border’s free press index – online newspapers have generally enjoyed a relative amount of freedom. Meanwhile, police have used accusations of “extremism” to crack down on opposition figures, ecological activists, and other entities deemed undesirable to the ruling authorities. With the expansion of such investigative work into the online realm, news websites and bloggers who criticize state or local governments will likely be subjected to an increasing amount of pressure and censorship.

As the Telegraph reports:

Chulpan Khamatova, an actress who is also the head of the country’s most famous children’s charity, Podari Zhizn, or “Gift of Life,” appears in a video titled “Why I will Vote for Putin” that was released Tuesday.

“In our life there is nothing more important than children’s health. Vladimir Putin has never once remained indifferent to the requests of Gift of Life and the doctors it supports,” she says in the short clip.

The video caused immediate consternation amongst opposition figures who found it impossible to believe that the respected actress and philanthropist would back the prime minister of her own free will.

A Russian news website, reported Wednesday that Khamatova, best known in the West for her role in the 2003 film Good Bye Lenin!, had been blackmailed into making the video.

“Yes, she was forced, she was threatened,” an anonymous source working at the charity told Gazeta.ru. “Not her personally, but children were threatened. They threatened to cut off oxygen to the fund, to cut off financing.”

Sergei Parkhomenko, an anti-Putin activist, told the BBC Russian service that he had information that Khamatova was given an ultimatum.

Pro-government commentators claimed the actress was simply exercising her right to free speech.

Khamatova, who joined Putin on campaign-stop tour of a children’s hospital this week, refused to comment on the furore Thursday.

Spokesmen for Putin, who is hoping to win reelection to the Kremlin in presidential elections on March 4, have called the allegations “nonsense.”

“It’s insanity… it’s not true,” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the Izvestia newspaper.

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: