The Real Russia. Today. American and European extremists migrate en masse to Russian social media; Navalny pulls a fast one on a top pro-Kremlin tabloid; and Julian Assange reportedly declined the chance to go after Russia

Story of the day

“There’s less censorship in Russia,” say American far-right extremists. Giants of U.S. Internet technology launched an unprecedented campaign against domestic hate groups this week, following violence between far-right demonstrators and counterprotesters at a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which included a vehicular terrorist attack on the latter group, killing 32-year-old woman Heather Heyer. Two Internet giants, Google and the domain registrar and web hosting company GoDaddy, subsequently refused to offer service to The Daily Stormer, a fascist website, after which the site’s creators decided to re-register on Russia’s .RU domain, where it was soon de-registered again. Meduza reviews how American far-right groups are suddenly flocking to Russian social networks in search of a safe haven. Story in English

Russian politics

Another deep dive into the suspicious wealth of the Russian elite’s offspring. Alexey Navalny, an anti-corruption campaigner who wants to stand against Putin in Russia’s presidential elections next year, released alleged details about the lift of Nikolay Choles, the son of President Vladimir Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, in a blog post on Thursday — “his latest salvo against the high lives of the Russian elite,” writes Shaun Walker. Story by The Guardian

Be honest: you tortured them, didn’t you? Together with the Committee for the Prevention of Torture, the news website MediaZona has compiled a list of the top-eight most “unconvincing excuses” Russian police officers have offered in recent years, when trying to explain injuries sustained by prisoners in their custody. Meduza summarizes the list here. Story in English

An unexpected campaign contribution. In late July, opposition politician Alexey Navalny traveled to France to celebrate his wife’s birthday. In early August, the pro-Kremlin tabloid Life reported Navalny’s trip, publishing security camera footage as proof of his visit to Western Europe. Life says it received the video from a “citizen journalist” through its special app “LifeCorr,” which it created to receive photos and videos from eyewitnesses to news events. Life had promised 50,000 rubles ($840) to anyone who supplied the tabloid with footage of Navalny on vacation. It turns out that the citizen journalist was none other than Yulia Navalnaya, Navalny’s own wife. He says they’re investing the prize money in his presidential campaign. Story in English

The new Moscow. “Smart city apps, historically accurate trees, a working subway. While Washington obsesses over sanctions and hacks, Russia is rebranding its capital as a model of urban planning,” writes Valerie Stivers. “The change in Moscow reflects many things — a truly post-Soviet youth generation, Russia’s relative stability — but the dramatically different look and feel of the city streets is also an urban planning story as giant in scale and ambition as those social realist monuments.” Story by Bloomberg

Russia’s real duumvirate. “There is a growing public awareness of the enormous potential for conflict over Chechnya and that the [Putin-Kadyrov] alliance between the two strongmen is very contingent and highly personalized. But their very interdependence makes the Putin-Kadyrov bond very powerful. If the civil unrest that’s forecast for Russia materializes, that bond is likely to be reinforced,” writes North Caucasus region expert Ekaterina Sokirianskaia. Op-ed in The New York Times

Russia and the world

Assange reportedly turned down a big leak related to Moscow’s misdeeds. In the summer of 2016, as WikiLeaks was publishing documents from Democratic operatives allegedly obtained by Kremlin-directed hackers, Julian Assange turned down a large cache of documents related to the Russian government, according to chat messages and a source who provided the records. Story by Foreign Policy

Don’t blame Putin. “The resurgence of murderous, hateful ideologies in the United States is a home-grown issue,” argues Russian media expert Alexey Kovalev. “Young men with identical haircuts and matching, uniform-like attires chanting ‘Blood and soil!’ in the streets of American cities are inspired and influenced by many things, but a bearded Russian mystic is hardly one of them. Attempting to explain internal strife in your country by ‘Russian influences,’ hastily put together disjointed and exaggerated phenomena, is intellectually lazy. It distracts from getting to the root of the problem by offering quick, easy answers to complicated questions.” Op-ed in Open Democracy