fyeaheasterneurope:

Does Russia’s leading opposition activist cavort with space aliens? Or just with enemies of the state?

A photograph of a grinning Aleksei Navalny, the blogger turned leader of street protests in Moscow, standing beside a bulbous-headed extraterrestrial could be found on his own Web site over the weekend.

Another photograph, showing Mr. Navalny with a man wanted by the police in Russia, the exiled financier Boris A. Berezovsky, appeared in a newspaper distributed on Saturday by a pro-Kremlin group in the major provincial city of Yekaterinburg, according to residents. The caption said that Mr. Navalny “never kept secret” his ties to Mr. Berezovsky.

Mr. Navalny said it was a fake, and his assertion was supported when the original, unaltered photograph appeared on Russian Web sites. That, in turn, set off a flurry of parodies using altered photographs, including the image of the alien, all seeming to highlight the outdated nature of some Russian propaganda.

“Vladimir Putin and his team do not understand the Internet,” Mr. Navalny said in a telephone interview, referring to the prime minister.