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In February 2013, Sergei Udaltsov, coordinator of the "Left Front", was placed under house arrest by Moscow’s Basmanny Court on charges on the preparation of mass riots. He petitioned to serve his house arrest in a 13-room apartment, arguing that he had such a need. The court rejected the request, assigning his regular place of residence instead. In his appeal, Udaltsov cited the precedent of Yevgenia Vasilyeva, a defendant in the Oboronservis case, who was already under house arrest in a 13-room apartment on Molochny Lane. After the verdict was announced, the courtroom erupted in chants of “Freedom for Udaltsov!” The politician’s preventive measure of restraint was changed from a travel ban to house arrest on the grounds that he allegedly posed a threat to his wife: “He threatened his wife, so he’ll stay home. With his wife!” — his wife said, laughing.

Activists from the Youth Anti-Drug Special Forces carried out a punitive raid against dealers of spice—a synthetic smoking blend. The Youth Anti-Drug Special Forces (YADSF) project was created on the initiative of the pro-Kremlin youth movement Young Russia. A group of YADSF members, looking like ordinary teenagers, attacks a suspected stash courier, who insists that he is merely a buyer and “just smoked a little.” They beat him, including with a hammer, and then go to ride the metal carousel on a children’s playground.

Kirill Serebrennikov, head of the Gogol Center, shows the head of the capital's Department of Culture his new theater. Sergey Kapkov inspects the venue, talks to audience members and theater professionals. The play “00:00” is performed in four parts — Night, Morning, Day, and Evening. Among the guests are Mikhail Yefremov, Oleg Tabakov, Mikhail Shvydkoy, Oksana Fandera, and Philipp Yankovsky.

At the memorial service for Aleksandr Dolmatov, an opposition activist who died abroad, a fight broke out between National Bolsheviks and Sergey Udaltsov. Udaltsov was leaving the Sakharov Center and speaking to journalists when one of the National Bolsheviks struck him, shouting, “Stop using this for PR!” The police immediately detained two members of “The Other Russia,” one of whom may have been the attacker. Udaltsov said he did not intend to press charges, calling the inicdent "an act beyond good and evil". This event was yet another episode of tension within the opposition movement following Dolmatov’s death, after he took his own life in a deportation center in the Netherlands.

NTV journalists attempted to film a search being conducted in the apartment of Vladimir Ashurkov, the director of Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation. According to the Investigative Committee, the search was part of an inquiry into the possible embezzlement of funds from the Union of Right Forces party. The film crew knew only the building number and had a photograph of Ashurkov, but they did not know the exact apartment address. In the end, the journalists were unable to verify where the search was actually taking place and limited themselves to filming the entrance and questioning neighbors.

The birth of a “true United Russia member.” Andrei Razin, producer of the band Laskovyi Mai, joins the United Russia party and tells orphans about his “victory” over The Beatles: “Every fifth person, including elderly people, has been to a Laskovyi Mai concert… This is a result that no one has beaten to this day — not Michael Jackson (may he rest in peace), not The Beatles, not any artist in the world.”

American citizen Kendra Scaggs and her husband adopted a five-year-old girl, Polina Joy Scaggs, through a Russian court on December 24. Under Russian law, a one-month “quiet period” followed the adoption, during which the court’s decision could still be reversed. Soon afterward, however, a new law was passed that, in the view of many, could annul adoption rulings that had not yet been fully finalized. Under this law, adopted children in some cases were to remain in Russia, even if a court had already issued a favorable decision. Polina Joy Scaggs, however, was able to leave for the United States, as her case had been approved before the legal changes came into effect. The law interfered in personal destinies, creating uncertainty and distress for parents and children alike.

Olga Romanova, Boris Nemtsov, and other supporters attend a hearing at the Ivanovsky District Court concerning the parole request of Romanova’s husband, businessman Alexei Kozlov. Nemtsov criticizes the case against the entrepreneur, calling it an example of “a corporate raid carried out with the support of the security services,” and links the prosecution to a business dispute over the Iskozh enterprise and the interests of former senator Vladimir Slutsker. He emphasizes that the investigation appeared biased and was conducted with numerous procedural violations. Nemtsov also draws attention to a conflict of interest, noting that Andrei Babushkin, a member of Moscow’s Public Monitoring Commission (ONK) who had visited Kozlov in pretrial detention, should not have any ties to commercial entities potentially involved in the case: “It’s a textbook conflict of interest — being the chairman of the board of a fund factory and at the same time a member of the ONK. He’s essentially overseeing himself. That’s corruption.”Nemtsov’s point was that a person connected to a business structure (Fondzavod / Fondservis) while simultaneously serving on the ONK creates a situation of potential corruption through conflicting interests — a claim used by Kozlov’s defense as evidence of systemic bias.

“Ready for Operation.” Airborne forces study the structure of a mobile church. “Paratrooper priest” Mikhail Vasilyev explains to the officers: “Honor comes from the word honesty.”

In February 2013, about thirty activists from the Moscow Dormitories Movement and an initiative group of large families on the waiting list came to the Department of Housing Policy, dissatisfied with the fact that they had been removed from the housing waiting list on dubious grounds. They claimed that they had been excluded by having the living space of relatives or long-dead parents “attached” to them, and that they had been deprived of subsidies. Among the activists was Yekaterina Maldon, who lived with her four children in a dilapidated 14-square-meter communal apartment.

When officials refused to let the group proceed beyond the lobby, two protesters handcuffed themselves to the railings inside the building. The police called in a lock smith to remove the chains, after which the activists were detained and taken away in a police van, as they refused to leave voluntarily. Several more people were detained on the building’s front steps on charges of “petty hooliganism.” The protest ended without resolving the activists’ housing problems, but it did draw public attention to the issue and generated significant media coverage.

Newlyweds end up in a police van on Mayakovsky Square, not having had time to sign the marriage certificate.

Director Aleksei Yuryevich German interacts on set during the filming of "Hard to be a God", interacting with actors, attempting to capture God on camera, and discussing whether the penultimate shot is necessary when the last one has already been filmed.