Sergei Gogin is a correspondent for RFE/RL's Tatar-Bashkir Service.
Across Russia, the increasingly unpopular ruling United Russia party faces voter hostility in local elections set for September 13. In Ulyanovsk, the party has dug deep into its bag of dirty tricks to counter a surging Communist Party challenge.
In some Volga River reservoirs, the water has receded hundreds of meters from the normal shoreline and many tributaries have been reduced to muddy puddles, raising questions about how one of Russia's most vital river systems is being managed.
At least 25 cadets in Ulyanovsk have been diagnosed with potentially fatal infections of dog tapeworm. The military academy says they got it from petting a stray dog, but worried parents and others think there's more to the story.
A journalist claims Dimitrovgrad's mayor publicly called him a "traitor" and struck him twice after he failed to stand during the national anthem. The mayor admits calling the journalist a traitor but says if he'd struck him "even at half-strength," the reporter wouldn't have been able "to get up and go off to write about it."
An online outreach program to schoolchildren by the Orthodox Church in Ulyanovsk is once again provoking discussion about the appropriate relationship between church and state in modern Russia.
Teen suicide is a serious issue in Russia. But critics say a law banning websites from publishing information "about ways of committing suicide" is being abused because it is both too general and enforcement seems to be automated.
As children across the world prepare to head back to school, those displaced by the fighting in eastern Ukraine are bracing for their first day of school -- far away from home.
