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    Trial for acclaimed director opens in Russia

    By SHOOTUpdated:No Comments2155 Views
    Russian theatre and film director Kirill Serebrennikov waits for a start of court hearing in Moscow, Russia, Wednesday, Nov. 7, 2018. (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin)
    MOSCOW (AP) --

    Russia's arguably best-known contemporary theater and film director pleaded not guilty Wednesday as his fraud trial opened in Moscow.

    Kirill Serebrennikov's midnight arrest during a movie shoot in August last year sent shockwaves through Russia's art circles and was seen by some as a chilling omen of a return to Soviet-style censorship.

    Serebrennikov's work both on stage and on the screen challenged the establishment, its values and lifestyle. But despite that, his productions have enjoyed lavish state funding and his plays are still frequented by top Russian officials.

    A Moscow court on Wednesday opened the trial against Serebrennikov, three of his associates and an accountant who has pleaded guilty in the case and testified against him.

    Serebrennikov, 49, is accused of embezzling 133 million rubles (about $2 million) of state funding. Investigators initially claimed that the director and his associates stole the funds allocated for staging several productions, claiming that one of these plays never saw the light of day — when in fact it was staged to critical acclaim. The investigators later withdrew that claim, and have not clarified where they believe money was stolen from.

    Serebrennikov and the three people who worked for his projects pleaded not guilty on Wednesday, all of them saying that the indictment is too vague and does not explain how the money was embezzled.

    Speaking at the start of the trial Serebrennikov said he has "never stolen anything from anyone."

    He called on the Culture Ministry which is the injured party in the case to explain why it believes that he swindled them.

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    Tags:Kirill Serebrennikov



    Amazon scraps partnership with surveillance company after Super Bowl ad backlash

    Friday, February 13, 2026
    A person pushes the doorbell on their Ring doorbell camera, July 16, 2019, in Wolcott, Conn. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill, File)

    Amazon's smart doorbell maker Ring has terminated a partnership with police surveillance tech company Flock Safety.

    The announcement follows a backlash that erupted after 30-second Ring ad that aired during the Super Bowl featuring a lost dog that is found through a network of cameras, sparking fears of a dystopian surveillance society.

    But that feature, called Search Party, was not related to Flock. And Ring's announcement doesn't cite the ad as a reason for the "joint decision" for the cancellation.

    Ring and Flock said last year they were planning on working together to give Ring camera owners the option to share their video footage in response to law enforcement requests made through a Ring feature known as Community Requests.

    "Following a comprehensive review, we determined the planned Flock Safety integration would require significantly more time and resources than anticipated," Ring's statement said.

    "The integration never launched, so no Ring customer videos were ever sent to Flock Safety."

    Flock reiterated that it never received Ring customer videos — and that ending the planned integration was a mutual decision that allows both companies to "best serve their respective customers." In a statement, Flock added that it "remains dedicated to supporting law enforcement agencies with tools that are fully configurable to local laws and policies."

    Flock is one of the nation's biggest operators of automated license-plate reading systems. Its cameras are mounted in thousands of communities across the U.S., capturing and billions of photos of license plates each month. The company has faced public outcry amid the Trump administration's aggressive immigration enforcement crackdown. But Flock maintains that it does... Read More

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