Pussy Riot: will Vladimir Putin regret taking on Russia's cool women punks?

The feminist collective hit the headlines when three members were arrested after an anti-Putin protest. Now they face up to seven years in jail, a prospect that has shocked and radicalised many Russians. On the eve of their trial, some of the women speak exclusively

But it's the words of Ilya Oskolkov-Tsentsiper, the co-founder of the Strelka, that echo most in my ears. In Russian history, he says, there's an old tradition of mad, half-witted saints. "This idea that it's only the crazy, half-witted fool who can tell the truth to the nation and to power. There is something that all Russians know even if they're not aware of it. In Russia, you never call it St Basil's Cathedral, it's Vasily Blazhenny, Vassily the Mad. And this is what these girls are. The truth-tellers to the Russian nation."

We're sitting at a table in Strelka while he tells me this, a beautifully designed space right opposite the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, scene of the crime. "I remember swimming in that pool as a child. And sometimes, I have a feeling that in another 70 years the pool will have to be restored. And we will live through this endless cycle of destroying the churches and then rebuilding them."

Lunch with the FT: Alexander Lebedev

Best known in Britain as a newspaper magnate with a KGB past, the oligarch talks about his clashes with the Kremlin and Putin

It is certainly not profitable. I ask him why he likes newspapers so much. “Well, I think it’s culturally so important. This country was just destroying culture for 90 years, destroying [Boris] Pasternak, [Osip] Mandelstam and [Anna] Akhmatova and that brought a huge tragedy to the people, who are recovering from it, but it takes generations. Newspapers are a centre of public culture,” he says. “We can’t give in to extortion. Otherwise we’ll just have a repeat of the last (Soviet) era.”

The Magnitsky Law

After Sergei Magnitsky was beaten to death in a Moscow jail for uncovering fraud by Russian authorities, investor Bill Browder devoted himself to publicising the case. As a result, the US is close to passing a dramatic human rights law

“What Russia’s political and business elite most fear is not having access to capital in the west or a vacation on the Côte d’Azur or sending their children to British private schools,”   Vladimir Ashurkov says. “I think one of the most important things the west could do is to adopt the Magnitsky legislation.”

Simon Kuper - The Original Olympic Hero

What moved the world in 1908 was the sight of an ordinary man attempting something extraordinary

Nowadays people dressed in Donald Duck costumes run double marathons for charity, but in 1908 completing a marathon was considered an almost superhuman feat. Pietri was Everyman. That distinguishes him from the Olympic heroes of this London fortnight.

Narconomics

From HR to CSR: management lessons from Mexico’s drug lords

The drug industry’s flexibility is partly due to its exemption from import duties. Whereas legitimate Mexican traders have free access to America and Canada via the North American Free-Trade Agreement (NAFTA), drug smugglers are granted tariff-free entry to every country in the world thanks to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, which prohibits the regulation or taxation of their product.

Apple in China

Apple doesn’t just make stuff in China; its sales there are booming, too

Some say Apple should copy an idea from Henry Ford. The great American carmaker paid his employees enough to afford a Model T. Will the workers who assemble iPads one day be able to own one? With wages soaring in China, that may not be a pipe dream. Given that wages account for only 2% of the retail price, bumping them up would hardly cripple Apple’s margins. And removing the “sweatshop” stigma might help its global reputation.

Business and the Olympics - Victors and spoils

The Olympic games are big business. Who wins, and who loses?

Most top-level sponsors, such as McDonald’s, Omega, Panasonic and Procter & Gamble, are not trying to prove their prowess. They are just trying to look noble and global by association in a way that wows and woos customers. How they do so reveals the brilliance of the IOC’s stand against the “crass commercialism” of corporate ads and logos at the games. Unable to advertise inside, the sponsors must advertise outside, by way of posters and packaging and every other platform at their disposal. And to reap the benefit of their sponsorship, this advertising must be linked back to the Olympics: so every billboard and chocolate bar and television set carries the Olympic logo. It is hard to walk down a high street anywhere in the world without being reminded of the Olympics.

Adversity and adverts - The business of the Paralympics

Sport for the disabled can be lucrative, too

The other Paralympics-only sponsor is Sainsbury’s, a British supermarket not noted for selling orthopaedic technology. Jat Sahota, Sainsbury’s head of sponsorship, offers two explanations. First, company researchers have found that mothers, who do a lot of grocery shopping, respond warmly to the Paralympic ideal of triumph over adversity. Second, in Britain the Olympics are televised by the BBC without ads. The Paralympics are shown by Channel 4, a private station, with plenty of commercial breaks. So Sainsbury’s can plug its (non-global) brand as energetically as Tatyana McFadden will pump her wheelchair down the track in pursuit of gold.

Lucy Kellaway - in the Financial Times

London’s Olympics are a workers’ curse

The Olympics also show that where there is no competition there is no freedom of speech, and bureaucracy triumphs. There was the restaurant that had to remove the O from its name and call itself Lympic instead. Less well known is the fact that all sponsors have had to get International Olympic Committee approval – a process that takes three or four weeks – for every tweet they send out. I know one person who has submitted 2,000 tweets covering every eventuality, and so this week will be able to start tweeting with impunity such things as “Having a great time in Olympic Village despite the rain!” or “The sun is shining down on a lot of happy people in Olympic Village!!”

Simon Kuper - What Makes London Different

If they want to be Londoners – to be part of this thrilling, rich city – people have to rub along together despite fantastic inequality

Recently, the economist Jonathan Portes showed me a remarkable statistic. In Tower Hamlets, the London district with the worst child poverty in Britain, children at primary school whose first language is not English get slightly better scores for English than the national average. So do kids from foreign language-speaking homes across London. My theory is that those kids and their parents think London has a place for them – a semi-detached house in Chingford, perhaps. Put simply, they believe in the London dream.

Mad Men - The Lion’s Dentsu

Japan’s ad giant buys a British agency

Jerry Buhlmann, the boss of Aegis, promises that the Dentsu deal represents “continuity”. Aegis staff will keep their contracts, clients will continue to be served by the firm, and the headquarters will remain in London. Mr Buhlmann will stay in charge. That suggests that Dentsu will allow Aegis to do its own thing. But don’t count on it.

The Music Business - Universal’s gamble

A musical merger could create a new model, or a dozy mammoth

Some are now wondering whether Universal Music Group was wise to gamble quite so much money on EMI’s recorded-music division, which it bought from Citigroup for £1.2 billion ($1.9 billion) in an auction in November last year. For a firm in the weakest segment of a struggling industry, it was a lot.

Yahoo! - Googling a new boss

Marissa Mayer takes on one of the toughest jobs in tech

At Google Ms Mayer had a reputation for prickliness, but also for nurturing talent and helping staff to cope with heavy workloads. Earlier this year she even gave several public talks about the risks of burnout, urging people to discover the “rhythm” that helps them work hard for long periods without losing their drive. Yahoo!’s employees will need to find their own rhythms fast.

DIY Apps - Make your own Angry Birds

Homebrew apps have arrived

The democratisation of technology is not without drawbacks. Apple’s App Store already has some 550,000 apps. Google offers 450,000 for download on its Android operating system. The coming deluge of apps made by amateurs will see those numbers swell.

Why do we believe we get what we pay for?

Lucy Kellaway in the Financial Times

The third most expensive face cream is La Prairie. It costs $3,000 for a tiny jar and involves smearing caviar on your face. The third cheapest is much more appealing. It is Sudocrem at £3.50 for a big jar. It might be meant for nappy rash, but Cheryl Cole swears by it. And so, as it happens, do I.

Counting the World's Couch Potatoes

Women in Russia, Croatia, Luxembourg, Greece and Iraq (to name a few) move more than their male counterparts

Falling BRICs - Measuring Economic Sentiment

A MAN only thinks of the dentist when he has a toothache, observed Keynes, and only considers the economy when it too is painful. By that standard, as signs mount of wobbles in the BRIC economies (Brazil, Russia, India and China), what are the sentiments of the people themselves?

Jonathan Margolis - media gadgets from Bang & Olufsen

Bang & Olufsen has launched a new brand & some impressive new kit

Simon Kuper - Why citizenship tests are full of holes

To be a citizen, it doesn’t matter what you know, or what crazy stuff you have in your head

And even a modest factual test is probably pointless. It would be nice to live in a polis where all citizens have some familiarity with the Magna Carta, but we never will. To be a citizen, it doesn’t matter what you know, or what crazy stuff you have in your head. If you believe homosexuals are infidels, that’s fine. In a democracy you can believe what you like. You just can’t act on certain beliefs.

Intoxivation

A new market is producing a wave of innovation in an old industry

The drinks business is one of the world’s most conservative. Wine drinkers value ancient vintages. Regulars ask the barman for “the usual”. Brewers tussle mightily to increase their market share by a single percentage point. But none of this is true in emerging markets. There, drinkers have yet to become set in their ways, and innovation is rife.

Can Russia create a new Silicon Valley?

Sergey Brin is still in California

In other countries, such ambitious government-led schemes have usually flopped. Nonetheless, Skolkovo’s backers remain optimistic. Dmitry Medvedev, then Russia’s president, gave the green light in 2010. Since then the government has earmarked $3 billion over four years for the project, and will spend billions more indirectly, for instance via tax breaks.

Industry in Russia

Russia is about to join the WTO. Can its industry cope?

Russia’s economy today depends to an alarming degree on pumping and digging things from the ground. Yet the country also has some serious industries apart from oil, gas and minerals. Take the Gorky Automobile Plant (GAZ) in Nizhny Novgorod. It was founded in 1929, when the Soviet Union, keen to create a national motor industry, asked Henry Ford to help set up a huge car factory. It went on to make lorries, vans, military vehicles and cars, including the bulky Chaika limousines given to officials not grand enough for a Zil.

VW conquers the world

Germany’s biggest carmaker is leaving rivals in the dust

As VW drives relentlessly towards world domination, Bernstein’s Mr Warburton says that Mr Piëch “will go down in history as an automotive legend, in the same class as Gottlieb Daimler, Henry Ford and Kiichiro Toyoda.”

Advertising on mobile phones

Digital ads are popping up in irritating places

EVERYONE hates digital ads. Yet the ads pay for the free apps that people love to download. Small wonder that crafty firms are slipping them into unexpected places. And that is why, on July 12th, America’s Department of Commerce will hold a public meeting in Washington, DC, to discuss this and other aspects of mobile privacy.