Hello and welcome to Regions Calling, your guide to news beyond the Russian capital from The Moscow Times.
This week, we are unpacking the recent police raid on a Tibetan Buddhist festival in Moscow and what Russia’s southern republic of Kalmykia has to do with it.
But first — the latest news:
A court in the Siberian republic of Buryatia on Tuesday sentenced a local man who survived 66 days adrift at sea on a small boat to three years of correctional labor for document forgery and causing deat by negligence.
Mikhail Pichugin was rescued by a fishing vessel off the Kamchatka coast in October last year, more than two months after he set off on a trip from Sakhalin Island to the Shantar Islands in the Sea of Okhotsk with his brother and 15-year-old nephew.
