A close associate of the incarcerated Kremlin critic, Alexei Navalny, said on Wednesday that Russian state prosecutors have urged a court to declare her guilty of violating COVID-19 safety standards and impose two years of limitations on her.

At the time the United States and European countries had banned or limited export of vaccines against the coronavirus to first deal with the pandemic at home, Russia was willing to share its Sputnik V with countries in need.

For over a decade, Ikea has reportedly sourced wood for some of its products from companies guilty of illegally logging millions of pine trees from Russia’s boreal forest – a protected region that is considered pivotal towards efforts to combat climate change – according to an investigation published on Thursday by Earthsight.

Exiled Kremlin critic and former tycoon Mikhail Kodorkovsky said he was ready “to relocate” his media projects out of Russia after Moscow declared several European civil society and educational groups, including his, “undesirable on Russian territory.”

Two more of Alexei Navalny’s key supporters ran afoul of Moscow authorities this week in actions they say are intended to further undermine Navalny’s political movement.

Police in Moscow on Tuesday raided employees of Proekt (Project), an independent media outlet, on the same day the media published its investigation about Russian Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev.

In Russia,  local news reports that a sophisticated black market for fake vaccine cards is thriving in secret Telegram forums even as COVID-19 runs rampant through the country.

Although the FBI is trying to discourage ransomware payments to hacking groups, global meat supplier JBS said it paid US$11 million in Bitcoin in response to the May 30 REvil cyberattack which shut down the company’s North American and Australian systems.

Russia’s Interior Ministry issued on Friday a warrant against the president of Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), two days after a court delivered a first-instance ruling that declared the Moscow-based non-profit an “extremist” organization.

Latvian state police confiscated last week real estate worth nearly US$280,000 believed to have been criminally acquired through a large international money laundering scheme that was revealed by late Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, according to a press release.

As the West is considering further sanctions in response to Belarus’ hijacking of a Ryanair flight and the subsequent arrest of a journalist last weekend, President Alexander Lukashenko met on Friday with Russian President Vladimir Putin in what appeared to be a further sign of Moscow’s support for Minsk. 

Russia is not behind the ransomware attack that left part of the U.S. East Coast without gas, but a criminal group based in Russia is, U.S. President Joe Biden said on Thursday, announcing that a new task force will from now on prosecute such hackers “to the full extent of the law.”

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) urged Russia to “repeal its draconian ‘foreign agents’ law,” stressing that labeling a media outlet in Russia as a “foreign agent” is a “serious violation of media pluralism.”

A court in Moscow suspended on Tuesday the activities of several organizations founded by the incarcerated top Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, until it decides on a request by prosecutors to declare these organizations “extremist.”

Russian police arrested nearly 2,000 people who hit the streets of multiple cities across the country on Wednesday to support the incarcerated top Kremlin critic, Alexei Navalny, an independent monitoring group reported.

After his supporters warned that he could die soon, Russian authorities transferred sick Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny to a prison hospital which some say is even worse than the cell he spent the past three months. Supporters plan mass protests over his treatment.

The U.S. Government imposed new sanctions on Russia for its interference in the 2020 U.S. election, cyberattacks and for its occupation and human rights violations in Crimea.

A spokesperson of incarcerated Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny said on Tuesday that police in Dagestan, Sankt Petersburg and Voronezh have detained several of his associates, members of the so-called Team Navalny, over the past two days.

Russian authorities questioned Roman Anin, the founder of independent media outlet IStories and an OCCRP partner, again on Monday about his work on a 2016 investigative story which alleged that the owner of a multi-million dollar yacht was the current head of the Russian state oil company Rosneft.

Sergei Korolev, who was appointed to a key FSB position earlier this year by President Vladimir Putin, is connected to leaders in the Russian criminal underworld accused of dozens of murders and kidnappings.