CEO of Russian Facebook Fired

Pavel Durov, the founder of Russia’s most popular social-networking site, VKontakte, said Monday that he was fired and that the company was “under the complete control” of two of Putin’s allies, Igor Sechin and Alisher Usmanov. Usmanov is a metal tycoon, and Sechin is CEO of state-owned oil company Resneft, as well as one of Putin’s closest advisers. In a statement on his Vkontakte page, Durov said “Probably, in the Russian context, something like this was inevitable, but I’m happy we lasted seven and a half years.”