On Monday, March 24, the Moscow City Court upheld a lower court’s decision to place anti-corruption crusader and opposition activist Alexey Navalny under house arrest.

The playwright Victor Slavkin, aged 79, has died in Moscow.

On Tuesday, March 11, US astronaut Michael Hopkins and Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazansky landed safely in Kazakhstan after spending nearly six months in orbit aboard the International Space Station.

The famous actor Anatoly Kuznetsov, aged 84, died on Friday, but it became known no sooner than on Sunday.

Russian writer, translator, author and singer-songwriter Mark Freidkin, aged 60, died on Tuesday after a long illness.