Plane crash
Investigators are looking into poor weather conditions and technical malfunctions as possible reasons behind Sunday’s crash of the An-148 Saratov Airliner plane outside Moscow in which all 71 people on board were killed.
Russia’s postal service has denied rumors that the plane crashed into one of its transport helicopters.
The Kommersant business daily cited sources as saying that ice on the wings of the plane or a malfunction of the speed dial could have caused the crash.
Day of Mourning
Orenburg Region authorities have declared Feb. 12 a day of mourning for the victims of the AN-148 plane crash.
They will bring relatives of the victims to Moscow on a special flight and provide up to one million rubles ($17,210) in compensation.
Russian athletes at the Olympic Games in South Korea have also created an area to express their support for the victims.
Olympic medals
Semyon Elistratov has become the first Olympic athlete from Russia to win a model at the Pyeongchang Olympics — a bronze in short track speed skating.
Russia’s figure-skating team later won a silver medal.
Soldiers’ return
Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said that 393 Chechens who served as Russian military police in Syria have returned home following service in Aleppo.
Bulldozed homes
The Memorial human rights organization reported that 37 private homes were demolished in Chechnya, including the home of their branch’s director, Oyub Titiyev, who was arrested last month on narcotics charges his colleagues say are fabricated.
The evicted families were told that housing may be found for them in the future but that none was currently available.
Navalny blocked
Oligarch Oleg Deripaska is taking opposition leader Alexei Navalny and other media to court for libel over the publication of a video expose of the billionaire's meeting aboard a yacht with Kremlin official Sergei Prikhodko.
Russia’s media watchdog Roskomnadzor has blocked Navalny’s blog post and YouTube page with the video on Deripaska and banned his entire site by placing it on the register of sites with prohibited information.
Leaflets seized
Moscow police have seized 6,000 leaflets from Andrei Volobuyev, the coordinator of opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s campaign in the city of Smolensk.
Prisoner beaten
Russian diplomats plan to visit Viktoriya Nasyrova, a Russian citizen currently in custody in a New York jail, who has said that she was beaten by fellow inmates.
Journalist released
A Moscow court has released a recommendation saying that gay Uzbek journalist Ali Feruz, detained as an illegal immigrant in Russia, is allowed to leave to a third country.
Feruz must now appeal to court bailiffs to permit him to leave Russia on the basis of his existing identification papers.
