Respondents had a variety of choices to define their opinion about the president’s achievements, but the most popular among those turned out to be “hard to answer” (47%) and “there were no achievements” (23%). The number of people in the latter category has fallen by 7% in the past three years.

Additionally, the number of people who don’t see any failures in Medvedev’s presidency has fallen – from 90% in 2009 to 73% now.

As for the positives, 7% of respondents said that the president’s social policies have been successful and another 6% said as much about his international policies. The rest of Medvedev’s cornerstone turned out to be considered less fruitful – 3% each of respondents named the battle against corruption or reforms of the security services, and only 1% each mentioned the battles against crime and corruption or the firing of Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov.

As the newspaper Kommersant notes, only one out of every ten people polled by VTsIOM feels that Dmitri Medvedev, during his time in office, has “cared for the people” and asserted the idea of the revival of Russia as a global authority.

The poll was conducted from September 3-4 among 1600 people in 46 regions of Russia, with a margin of error no larger than 3.4%.

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.

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.

“The Communists, for example, gather many people at their demonstrations, and we will close streets and squares for them. But if it’s a few dozen debauchers who gather for the sake of their own scandalous behavior, then it would be illogical to close a prospect for them,” Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin told a roundtable of journalists on June 4.

“Many event organizers act on the logic of ‘we want to hold an event only where we’re not allowed to, and the Constitution does not give you the right to ban it,” he added.

Sobyanin’s words echoed those of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who in December 2010 commented on protests by “dissenters,” saying that “they don’t want to hold events – they want a conflict with the authorities.”

Human rights advocates called on Mayor Sobyanin to not make arbitrary decisions and simply to obey the law. “It wouldn’t be bad for the mayor of Moscow to know that the constitution has no concept of ‘scandalous behavior’ or ‘debaucher,'” said Moscow Helsinki Group head Lyudmila Alexeyeva.

According to Kommersant, this is the first time that Sobyanin has expressed his attitude towards large-scale demonstrations since becoming mayor in October 2010. He has previously mostly mentioned two opposition campaigns – the Day of Wrath and Strategy 31 – the organizers of which are consistently embattled by the city.

Strategy 31 demonstrations are held on the 31st date of each month in dozens of cities across Russia in defense of the 31st article of the constitution, guaranteeing freedom of assembly. For a year and a half, up until October 2010, Moscow city authorities refused to sanction the demonstrations on the centrally-located Triumfalnaya Square, and protesters were routinely beaten by police and arrested en masse. While city authorities sometimes say that the demonstrations would always have been sanctioned if organizers moved them to other locations, oppositionists insist that the alternatives proposed by the city would have rendered the protests invisible to the public.

Previously, Day of Wrath protests were held on the 12th day of each month across from the Moscow mayor’s office on Tverskaya Ulitsa, intended as a venue for people to express their collective grievances against the authorities. The city never sanctioned the protests and their participants were regularly arrested by police. In February 2011, organizers decided to relocate to Teatralnaya Ulitsa, and the rally was sanctioned for the first time ever.

Artemev’s lawyer, Ilnur Sharapov, told Kommersant that federal investigator Maxim Pryashka called him on May 11 to say he was denying his motion to file charges in connection with the case. “He didn’t explain why,” the lawyer added.

The attack on Aleksandr Artemev became one of the largest scandals involving the police in Russia in 2010. On May 31 of that year, Artemev went to a rally held under the Strategy 31 campaign on Moscow’s Triumfalnaya Square – not as a journalist, but as an activist with the movement Solidarity. He was detained almost immediately and a police officer broke his arm while dragging him out of a police bus. The Public Council on the Moscow City Police demanded an investigation of the incident, after which the police issued Artemev an official apology.

However, even after studying three volumes of the collected case materials, investigators from the Investigative Committee still could not establish the identity of the law enforcement officer who broke the journalist’s arm and refused to file criminal charges as Artemev demanded. The journalist appealed this decision in the Zamoskvoretsky Court at the end of last August, which was denied. He later appealed to the Moscow City Court, which in March 2011 ordered the case to be reexamined on the basis that the lower court “did not analyze the materials.” But the Zamoskvoretsky Court never began the reexamination, as the Investigative Committee annulled its own decision to refuse to file charges and sent the materials to be newly investigated the day before court proceedings were scheduled, April 29.

As Sharapov told Kommersant, the new investigation lasted only a few days – investigators did not provide a specific date that a decision would be made. “In the meantime, we cannot examine the materials of the investigation, because, officially, it is still ongoing,” he said. “The decision still has to be verified by investigators in the Main Investigative Branch of the Moscow Branch of the Federal Investigative Committee (GSUSKRFpM). One way or another, we’re going to file another appeal with the Zamoskvoretsky Court and examine the investigator’s case during the proceedings.” The newspaper was not able to reach Artemev for comment, as the journalist was on vacation.

According to Kommersant, nobody from GSUSKRFpM answered the phone on Wednesday. Investigator Pryashka refused to speak to the newspaper and the Moscow City Police press service had no comment.

“The reason they don’t want to start the case is banal – the internal affairs agencies don’t like to wash their dirty laundry in public,” says Aleksei Simonov, head of the Foundation for the Defense of Openness. “Any development can only come from pressure from public opinion or the media.”

According to Dmitri Agranovsky, a lawyer who has worked with oppositionists, it was under this kind of pressure that the Moscow City Court ruled to have the case reexamined. “The court was forced to pretend that it was making a compromise with the journalist,” he explained. “But what’s going to happen next is not his concern. Now the investigator has every opportunity to ‘wear out’ the case and force the lawyers to run around in circles. I know many cases where such rewriting ended in nothing. And after some time it will be simpler for them to refuse Aleksandr Artemev’s request to file criminal charges – the statute of limitations will be up.” In Agranovsky’s opinion, the journalist is now better off appealing to the European Court of Human Rights. Sharapov confirmed that they intend to.

As Slavic Power leader Dmitry Demushkin told Kommersant, this unification of nationalist organizations became possible after the Movement Against Illegal Immigration (DPNI) was banned. “After that we decided to unite all of Russia’s nationalist forces into a new movement, The Russians. At its core are the largest nationalist organizations – the DPNI and the Slavic Union,” explained Demushkin. At the very least, the new organization’s goal is to further general ethno-political Russian solidarity, and at the most – to establish a nationalist government heading a nationalist Russian state.

The DPNI was ruled extremist and subsequently banned by a Moscow court in April 2011. The Slavic Union was banned a year earlier, after which it changed its name to Slavic Power.

The structure of The Russians can be found on the DPNI’s website. In particular, it lists the names of the agencies of its administration, including: the Council of Nations (an all-Russian meeting to define strategies for the existence and activities of the organization), the High National Council (to correct strategy and ongoing activities and to confirm annual plans) and the National Observatory Council (to represent the interests of the organization and develop strategy). The first council will be chaired in turn by Aleksandr Belov, Aleksandr Turik, and Stanislav Vorobyov. The second council will be led by Demushkin, and the third by Belov.

The movement also named a number of other structures: the National Committee for Action, the National Committee for Control, and the High Court of Honor. This last one, Demushkin told Interfax, “is the movement’s highest judicial authority, led by Georgy Borovikov.”

As Demushkin explained to Kommersant, he and Belov will play a substantial role as authoritative figures for The Russians. “There’s no guarantee that the new movement won’t repeat the fate of the nationalist organizations that are already banned right now. But for this we purposely gave ourselves this awkward name. So the courts and law enforcement agencies would be banning not nationalists, but ‘Russians,'” Demushkin explained.

Human rights activist and head of the SOVA Center for Information and Analysis Aleksandr Verkhovsky told Kommersant that the emergence of a more radical sentiment among neo-Nazi organizations presents a blatant, prospectiveless dead-end for its followers. “The same thing’s going to happen as did to the DPNI,” Verkhovsky said. Svetlana Gannushkina, head of the committee Civil Assistance, sees the emergence of The Russians as a call for a change in constitutional order. “Actually, this is a disgrace for Russia,” she told Interfax.

Compiled from reports by Natalya Bashlykova and Dmitry Kozlov at Kommersant, and Interfax.

“The calendar is made up of 11 male students and Elmo – the famous puppet from the children’s program Sesame Street – photographed to represent the student who came up with this idea,” said Kommersant reporter Konstantin Andrianov. “In the captions, the creative students played with problematic topics in the city or tried to make fun of the governor.”

“You have a good roof, but ours leaks,” says first year journalism student Gosha on the page for February. “I can give you my laser for the battle against icicles,” says another, referring to the plight of falling icicles that kill multiple pedestrians every winter.

As “Elmo” told Kommersant, the students originally wanted to print hard copies of the calendar and deliver them to Smolny – St. Petersburg’s city hall – but “not a single print shop wanted to do this.” Instead, they posted it on LiveJournal.

SPbGU Journalism Department Dean Anatoly Puyu confirmed that the students in the calendar are indeed from the department. So far no reaction has been heard from either Smolny or Matviyenko herself, he said.

The Petersburg students follow in the footsteps of Moscow State University journalism students who caused a ruckus last November after shooting a provocative calendar for Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s birthday. The next day, different students from the same department came out with an alternative calendar. As opposed to the original, these girls were fully clothed and posed questions such as “who killed Anna Politkovskaya?” and “how does inflation affect bribes?”

The newest calendar was timed to come out on April 1st, and while clearly driven by humor, the captions touch on seriously questionable actions by the governor. One page, which asks “can I play on the Aurora, too?” refers to a recent scandal in which the governor was caught partying aboard a decommissioned naval cruiser that had been turned into a museum. The museum director says he has no idea who sanctioned the event and state prosecutors are investigating the incident. Another that says “I, a homeless student, am prepared to shovel snow” refers to controversial statements by the governor this past winter that students and homeless people should be recruited to make up for the lack of municipal workers to clear the city’s sidewalks.

January. "Valentina Ivanovna, you're the governor with a capital G." Kolya, SPbGU Journalism Dept., 4th year

February. "Valentina Ivanovna, you have a good roof, but ours leaks." Gosha, SPbGU Journalism Dept., 1st year

March. "Valentina Ivanovna, I can give you my laser for the battle against icicles." Roma, SPbGU Journalism Dept., 3rd year

April. "Valentina Ivanovna, the second term is a lesson for us." Elmo, idea author

May. "Valentina Ivanovna, can I play on the Aurora, too?" Gosha, SPbGU Journalism Dept., 3rd year

June. "Valentina Ivanovna, I, a homeless student, am prepared to shovel snow." Yevgeny, SPbGU Journalism Dept., 3rd year

July. "Valentina Ivanovna, I want a dialogue with the city!" Yura, SPbGU Journalism Dept., 3rd year

August. "Valentina Ivanovna, Gazprom's dreams come true, but what about me?" Nikita, SPbGU Journalism Dept., 1st year

September. "Valentina Ivanovna, I put a grade on your Petersburg report card." Tima, SPbGU Journalism Dept., 4th year

October. "Valentina Ivanovna, they're reconstructing Aprashka. Will you answer for the bazaar?" Danil, SPbGU Journalism Dept., 4th year

November. "Valentina Ivanovna, you have UGG booties!" Anatol, SPbGU Journalism Dept., 4th year

December. "Valentina Ivanovna, an optimist thinks that the glass is half full; the pessimist - that it's half empty. I just like the glass." Vitalik, SPbGU Journalism Dept., 4th year

The website cites the newspaper Kommersant, which Ponomarenko spoke to about the sale. The businessman said his holding company had obtained two companies – Lazurnaya Yagoda and Idokopas – that control the incomplete palatial complex.

A source knowledgeable about the deal said it was worth 350 million USD.

Kommersant was unable to reach Shamalov, a personal friend of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and the owner Ponomarenko said agreed to sell him the property.

Businessman Sergei Kolesnikov, who first alleged the palace was being built with public money for Putin’s personal use, said the transfer of ownership is only a disguise and the intended purpose of the complex hasn’t changed.

Putin’s press secretary Dmitri Peskov told Kommersant the prime minister had nothing to do with the construction – not while he was president and not in his current position.

“It’s possible that the sellers were influenced by all of this press, I don’t know,” said Ponomarenko. “In general, there’s a rule – buy when there’s a scandal and sell when the news is good.”

For his part, Ponomarenko said he was simply investing money obtained from his $2 billion sale of the Novorossiysk Commercial Sea Port last year.

The article did not elaborate on what exactly was meant by the fact that the complex had been sold as a hotel.

Whatever hang-changing the Black Sea palace may go through, strong evidence remains that Putin is somehow involved. Besides the evidence laid out in Kolesnikov’s open letter to President Dmitri Medvedev at the end of last year, documents have emerged showing that Chief Vladimir Kozhin of the Office of Presidential Affairs actually signed the documents authorizing the construction in 2005, when Putin was still president.

In an interview with television personality Leonid Parfenov, Kashin said he has no idea who ordered his beating, that his assailants said nothing during the attack, and that a variety of the topics of his articles could have been motivating factors. But which one it was – the Khimki Forest, Kremlin-sponsored youth groups, or insulted Russian governors – Kashin couldn’t say. An investigation under the supervision of prosecutor general is still ongoing.

In his first article since the attack, Oleg Kashin reveals that, far from embodying the glorified image of a fearless crusader that developed while he lay unconscious, the Kommersant journalist wishes most of all to simply go on with his work as usual. That, and to get rid of the feeding tube stuck up his nose.

About Gagarin and About Myself
By Oleg Kashin
November 29, 2010
Kommersant/Vlast

An unfamiliar man in a white coat took an instinctive step to the side, and my hand, stretching towards his chest pocket, grasping only air, falls back again to the mattress.

“What does he want?” asks the man, feeling his pocket.

“The pen, probably,” posed a woman’s voice; and that woman, who I didn’t see, was right: the pen, of course, I needed the pen. The blue gel pen from the chest pocket of the white coat of that man.

“A writer,” the man with the pen said respectfully – but he did not give me the pen. Discussing the amusing incident, the entire delegation took off, leaving me alone with the artificial ventilation lung that went through a special hole made in my throat. The hole was made lower than the vocal chords; therefore, even after regaining consciousness, I couldn’t speak. Seeing the pen in the doctor’s pocket, I would have been thrilled to take the pen and, at least on my own bandaged hand, write: “It itches under the cast!!!!!!” – they would read it and help, scratch it with something. And instead of that – the backs recede in their white coats, and there’s no help at all. At that point I still didn’t know that one of the backs belonged to a paid agent of the LifeNews publication – the resident resuscitation expert (I exposed him a week later), and who, several hours later and under the heading “Braveheart,” told how I demanded a pen and paper in order to begin, even while still attached to an artificial breathing machine, to write the horrible truth about the people behind the attack on me.

In the resuscitation ward, wrapped in tubes and wires, I could sleep (and slept) as much as necessary in any form, whether artificially medicated or healthily and naturally. I could keep quiet, I could (from the ninth day onwards) speak and, even while I couldn’t talk, still resolved the communication problem: a childrens chalkboard, left behind by someone, was found, and by drawing a rectangle with my hands in the air – a conventional gesture that everyone immediately understood for some reason – I could write what I was concerned about and what I wanted on this board. Only, I didn’t need to write about the itchy cast; they removed it faster than the board turned up. Therefore, the main topics of my notes were complaints about the probe in my nose – they fed me through the nose with some kind of special food – and flirting with the nurses. My life in those days, any way you look at it, was interesting and fascinating.

But aside from me personally – yes and the doctors and nurses as well – who knew about this life? Nobody knew. My real life was happening, maybe, a half-hour drive from the hospital. Outside of the police office at Petrovka, switching places with one another, my friends and former enemies stood in solitary pickets with posters of my name, having suddenly become friends (I say this without irony; enemies may sometimes seriously become friends). A newspaper called “Kashin,” completely devoted to me, was printed. On Pushkin Square, and afterwards on Chistie Prudy, rallies were held in my defense. “Do you want the classic Kashin or the one with his signature?” girls politely asked a line of pensioners waiting for my portrait, which they could attach to their chests.

The term “Journalist Kashin” appeared in President Medvedev’s lexicon. When a group of students in the journalism department at Moscow State University, locked in a classroom with windows facing the Kremlin, hung a poster out the window reading “Who beat Kashin?” a joke started going around: Dmitri Medvedev barricaded himself in his office, with windows facing the journalism department, and hung a poster out the window: “It wasn’t me!” – the joke is from Twitter, but who could guarantee that it didn’t really happen? The events in the week after my beating proved it: anything is possible, anything in general. The universal childhood dream, not to die but to be at one’s own funeral and hear who says what and how, came true for me alone. “Oleg, you’re going to wake up and be stunned!” – a phrase from the book of honorable recordings from a routine Kashin rally. And it’s true, I woke up and was stunned.

Journalist Kashin – that is to say, I – quietly came to in the resuscitation ward. A half-hour drive away from me, somebody was going on a rampage, somebody who even people who knew me personally were ready to take for Journalist Kashin, brave and uncompromising, personally presenting a threat to the Kremlin, as well as hope for freedom and happiness. “Kashin, get up! Kashin, write!” cried the square. The square didn’t know that I was already up in bed and was writing on the board: “I want to go to the bathroom.” The tabloids quoted Journalist Kashin (but not me): “They will not silence me!” – unfortunately, without indicating what topic Journalist Kashin wanted to have his say on. There was only one thing that interested me at the end of the second week after the attack. There was once a handsome young pilot named Gagarin. He was somehow chosen to be astronaut number one, and at the age of 27, or something, he flew into space for a bit more than an hour. He came back – and that was it, there was no more life, just presidiums, banquets, presentations that stamped the impending doom onto his handsome young face. This went on for seven years before he died for good. I lay in the resuscitation ward, flipped through the “Kashin” newspaper, and thought about Gagarin and how we are alike.

But I have one important advantage over Gagarin. The New Year’s recess – a terrific, as I understand now, invention. December is now beginning, I’ll likely be ill the whole time, and then the country will start to drink. We’ll return to work together, the country after the holidays and myself after rehab. Nobody will remember. Nobody will notice. And it will be normal, like before, to work. After all, they will not silence me.

Translation by theotherrussia.org

Update 11/11/10: Fuller context added to Pleshcheyeva’s remarks.

Members of Russian law enforcement, mass media, government agencies, advocacy groups, and pro-Kremlin youth organizations spoke yesterday during a Public Chamber session dedicated to the ghastly beating of Kommersant journalist Oleg Kashin. While most presentations denounced the attack and focused on the need to step up efforts to prosecute assailants of Russian journalists, one speaker accused the journalists of bringing these attacks on themselves.

According to the newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta, passions ran high during the two-hour session, with journalists, lawyers, and activists decrying Russia’s chronic failure to solve cases of attacks on journalists. Editor-in-Chief Yevgeniya Albats of the New Times magazine spoke directly to representatives of law enforcement present in the auditorium, saying that the government has provided vast amounts of support to large organizations that have long been hounding Kashin and numerous other journalists.

The editor was referring to government-sponsored pro-Kremlin youth movements that routinely harass journalists whose views contradict their own, some of whose representatives were present at the session. Nashi Commissar Irina Pleshcheyeva turned out to be an actual member of the Public Chamber, and issued a sharp rebuke against those who she felt practice “political terrorism.” Noting that she did not consider Kashin to be a talented journalist, the commissar argued that the journalists themselves are responsible for such attacks:

When a journalist is attacked or murdered per order, when he’s dealing with some case, then journalists take it, come together, and continue the case. They don’t need to provide reasons to murder them. Not everyone is going to be killed. If a person – the people who commit crimes – they don’t think they’re going to be caught. None of the criminals think they’re going to be caught. But if their goal is to change the situation – so that a person doesn’t write, doesn’t investigate – he should know that, in the future, the journalists are going to take the case and continue it. The editorial staff will take it. All the journalists will take it. I don’t know. But that investigation will continue. Then there won’t be any necessity to explain to people that fists don’t solve anything.

Pleshcheyeva went on to say that she herself feared being attacked for what she wrote on blogs and other Internet media, and that this is a problem shared by Russian society on the whole. Moreover, she argued, lots of people get killed in Russia while fulfilling their professional duties – soldiers, businessmen, teachers, doctors – so journalists are no exception. While the commissar briefly touched upon the importance of investigating such attacks, she stressed that society has to focus on the fact that “they don’t let us speak,” and not “that somebody got crippled.”

The speech was disturbingly reminiscent of remarks by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in August that opposition protesters intentionally provoke the police into “bludgeoning them upside the head.”

Also present at the session was Andrei Tatarinov, a leading member of the pro-Kremlin youth group Young Guard and member of the Public Chamber. He supported Pleshcheyeva and added that while his organization has not always been on great terms with Kashin, its website has posted condolences and denounced the attack. He did not explain, however, why this page was accompanied by what Nezavisimaya Gazeta described as “staged photographs mocking people expressing sympathy.”

A presentation by Moscow’s chief investigator, Vadim Yakovenko, provided an abrupt summary of Kashin’s case: the work is ongoing; 30 witnesses have been questioned; there is a wealth of information.

Vladimir Vasiliev, head of the State Duma Committee on Safety, told Nezavisimaya Gazeta that the auditorium was clearly unsatisfied with Yakovenko’s laconic speech. Therefore, Vasiliev spoke about the lack of sufficient budgetary funds for the needs of Russia’s law enforcement system, which results in complex cases being doled out to “boys” to solve. According to the newspaper, Vasiliev’s remarks were taken as evidence that we shouldn’t count on seeing any results from the investigation in the foreseeable future.

After undergoing two operations on his skull and a partial amputation of one of his pinky fingers, Oleg Kashin awoke from a coma Wednesday morning in a Moscow hospital. Doctors say his condition is critical but stable, and that he should be able to talk in the coming days. Colleagues and supporters continued calling for his perpetrators to be found and brought to justice for the fifth day in a row.