RA’s Daily Russia News Blast – August 20, 2013
TODAY: Krymsk officials found guilty of negligence over 2012 floods; anti-gay lawmaker’s church attacked; runners deny podium kiss was political; RusAl prepares for cuts; Navalny uncovers more evidence of Sobyanin’s assets; class action lawsuits law moving forward; Putin says leniency will boost business; Naftogaz imports down.
Four municipal and district officials from Krymsk have been found guilty of negligence for failing to prevent the 171 casualties caused during last year’s floods in Krasnodar, whilst current floods in the far east have forced 20,000 people to be evacuated from their homes in the Amur and Khabarovsk regions. A church in St. Petersburg, ‘where the lawmaker who kick-started Russia’s anti-“gay propaganda” trend helps out as an altar server’ has been served with a Molotov cocktail, causing officials to lambast the ‘sickly spirit’ of society. Russian runners Ksenia Ryzhova and Tatyana Firova deny that their kiss at the medalists’ podium of the World Athletics Championship was meant to protest anti-gay laws, but Bloomberg nonetheless calls it ‘an international embarrassment for their country’. Masha Gessen discusses the Russian tradition of dreading August: ‘some of the most traumatic events have occurred in this accursed month’. After reporting a $438 million net loss this week, RusAl is gearing up for large-scale capacity cuts and a possible delay to the start of production at its largest project, in a bid to cope with falling prices and a market glut.