May I go off on a tangent? I don't know anything about The Moscow Times, but the title says

MoscowTimes - 30 Years Independent News From Russia

Then the byline here has "by AFP". (a European news agency)

Am I the only one annoyed that a half dozen news agencies determine "The Narrative" for the entire planet? (don't look up the owners of some of these agencies if you're not ready to go down a rabbit hole) AFP even has this on their About Us page:

"AFP is one of the world's three major news agencies, and the only European one. ...Its main source of funding is subscriptions from its clients, and it also receives public funding..."

Regurgitating their content passes for independent?

Of course this article could have been written by a Russian at Moscow Times while also working for AFP. Or a Ukrainian, who knows. They have articles by other writers too. This isn't a problem specific to this paper, but the word "independent" triggered me. Almost all local TV and radio stations in America get 99% of their news from the same cartel of global news agencies. It's just a very weird, lazy, non-competitive relationship the media has with itself, with suspicious links to states and intelligence agencies at key points in the chain. </rant>

Here's a RT article on the trans ban btw, so you get a balanced diet of propaganda for the day: https://www.rt.com/russia/578034-duma-sex-change-law/