Conflict around the article "Political prostitution has changed gender"
On 16 March 2013, an article by Georgy Yans, titled "Political prostitution has changed gender", appeared in MK.[10] In it, Yans wrote about the political careers of three female State Duma deputies from United Russia: Olga Batalina, Ekaterina Lakhova, and Irina Yarovaya.
On the same day, United Russia State Duma deputy Andrey Isayev promised on Twitter to "toughly" deal with the authors who allowed themselves to enact a "dirty attack on three female deputies," while calling the bloggers who responded to his tweet "small creatures" who "we are indifferent to."[11]
On 20 March 2013, United Russia deputies Sergey Neverov, Alexander Sidyakin, Sergei Zheleznyak, Robert Schlegel, Olga Batalina, Ekaterina Lakhova, and Mikhail Markelov wrote requests to the Prosecutor General's Office and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, where they asked to check the publication of an advertisement of "dubious nature" in MK. In their opinion, the editor-in-chief of MK "cannot help but know about the true nature of these advertisements."[12] Gazeta.ru associated this move by the deputies with the conflict between Andrey Isayev and MK.[13]
On 22 March 2013, United Russia deputies demanded that the building of the editorial office of MK be returned to Moscow ownership. The initiators were four members of the United Russia faction - Anatoly Vyborny, Daniil Volkov, Vladimir Ponevezhsky, and Valery Trapeznikov.[14]
In October 2013, unknown persons bombarded the newspaper's editorial office with smoke bombs. Pavel Gusev believes that "some people from United Russia" are behind the attack, and the action itself is an act of revenge for the article.[15][16]