Stanislav Govorukhin, an actor, celebrated film director, screenwriter and political figure, died on Thursday after a long illness, as reported in Russian media. He was 82 years old. At the time of his death he was a deputy in the State Duma from the United Russia Party. Born in the Urals, he began work in television in Kazan, but then moved to Moscow to study filmmaking. He was one of the most popular directors of films for movie theaters and television in the late Soviet period, most renowned for the television series starring Vladimir Vysotsky, “The Meeting Place Can’t Be Changed (1979) and “Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn” (1981).

The Russian government proposed an increase in the retirement age on Thursday, as the world’s attention was trained on the opening of the football World Cup. Russian officials have long talked about raising the pension age, but have been reluctant in part because the measure risks stirring up popular discontent and damaging politicians’ popularity.

With Moscow suffering yet another cold and wet spell to start off the summer, Russia’s Meteorological Service has announced a new monitoring system to help visitors track the weather during the World Cup. “Our site will update the weather forecast for all host cities every hour,” the head of the weather agency Roman Vilfand said at a press conference on Friday, adding the information would be shared with the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

Russia’s gas giant Gazprom and Austria’s OMV energy company signed a new deal to extend Russian gas supplies to Austria through to 2040. The deal was signed on the day of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Vienna,
in what was his first trip to the West since visiting Finland in mid-2017 and being re-elected earlier this year. The previous gas deal with Austria was set to expire by 2028. Last year, Gazprom increased gas supplies to Austria by more than 50 percent to 9 billion cubic metres, from 6.1 billion cubic meters in 2016. In 2018, Russian gas exports to Austria climbed by an additional 70 percent between January and mid-May as compared to the same period in 2017.

A senior lawmaker has implored Russian women to avoid entering into intimate relationships with foreign World Cup fans, especially those of a different race, at the risk of raising children as single mothers. More than half a million fans from across the world are expected in 11 Russian cities that will host the football championship between June 14 and July 15. Bearing the children of non-Russians could lead to broken families, Tamara Pletnyova, the head of the State Duma’s Family, Women and Children Committee, warned in an interview Wednesday.

Russian police have been instructed not to publish their usual crime reports and instead share exclusively positive news during the month of the World Cup. Reports of robbed and scammed tourists have multiplied in the run-up to the tournament as up to a million football fans plan to descend on the 11 Russian host cities. Regional outlets began reporting this week that local Interior Ministry press offices have been instructed to self-censor any news that could spark concern about crime rates.

“Suspend the publication in the media of the results of investigations and preventive measures between June 5 and July 25, 2018,” the Mediazona news website quoted a previously published regional Interior Ministry directive on Wednesday. No regional Interior Ministry website has published its daily crime reports since June 6, the news outlet found in its examination of local websites. There were 1,500 search results for the terms “detain,” “solve,” “wanted” or “Criminal Code” the week before; and 20 times fewer results between June 7 and June 13. Police spokespeople in the Belgorod, Krasnodar and Tver regions confirmed the ‘no bad news’ trend to Mediazona, but did not directly attribute it to the June 14 to July 15 World Cup.

“We’re not breaking our heads about it. We write about things that could spark interest, things that are cheerful. We’re not making things up,” Belgorod region spokesman Alexei Goncharuk was quoted as saying. In addition to the nationwide ban on negative news, Russian transportation workers are being taught to smile at foreign fans who may be less accustomed to the notoriously stone-faced demeanor many Russians consider typical.

A Russian arms company has announced plans to develop new electronic warfare systems in three years after analyzing U.S. Tomahawk missiles recovered following a recent coalition strike in Syria. The United States, Britain and France launched 105 missiles on Syrian government forces last month in retaliation for a suspected chemical attack on a rebel-held area near the capital. The Russian military had warned prior to the airstrikes that it would target the missiles and the locations from which they are fired.

Former fencer Stanislav Pozdnyakov was elected president of the Russian Olympic Committee on Tuesday as the country works to regain the trust of international sports bodies after a string of doping scandals. Pozdnyakov, who had served as the committee’s first vice-president since 2016, led the Russian delegation at this year’s Pyeongchang winter Olympics.