Updated Daily. Opposition leaders Sergei Udaltsov and Leonid Razvozzhayev in the long-running Bolotnaya Case were found guilty by a Moscow court of “inciting mass riots” in protests against President Vladimir Putin on 6 May 2012 and sentenced to 4.5 years forced labor. Russian and Ukrainian bloggers confirmed the sighting of the Buk anti-aircraft missile system. […]
Opposition leader Sergei Udaltsov and his aide Leonid Razvozzhayev appeared in court Tuesday to face charges of staging riots at an anti-Kremlin protest after more than a year on house arrest and in pretrial detention, respectively.
[Investigative agencies have filed charges in the final form against Leonid Razvozzhayev, aide to opposition politician and Duma Deputy Ilya Ponomarev. Razvozzhayev, who claims to have been kidnapped by FSB officers and brought back to Russia after seeking political asylum in Ukraine, is charged with organizing and participating in mass disorders and with the unlawful […]
Parnas opposition party candidate Pivovarov was sentenced to a fine of $23,135, and his co-defendant policeman Niknorov was sentenced to 3 years and 9 months of standard-regimen labor camp.
The Russian opposition made their first test of the upcoming fall elections in Barvikha, a prestigious suburb of Moscow where top Russian officials have their homes. When they uncovered obvious fraud there, they felt that Ella Pamfilova, the new head of the Central Elections Commission proposed by President Vladimir Putin
The MacArthur Foundation announced it is leaving Russia after being included in the government’s “undesirable organizations” list. It is the last of US philanthropies to leave in a decade as Putin’s crackdown on civil society worsens. Welcome to our column, Russia Update, where we will be closely following day-to-day developments in Russia, including the Russian […]
Updated Daily. Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev sprang two restrictive Internet decrees on providers and users this week, one requiring presentation of domestic passports to use public Internet cafes or wi-fi, and the other mandating operators of social media to collect more user data and make it available to Russian intelligence agencies. Mysteriously, a group calling […]
Updated Daily. A group seeking greater autonomy for Siberia found its web page, VKontakte community and Twitter account censored as well as an interview with its leader in slon.ru. A rally organized by Russian ultranationalists in support of the separatists fighting in southeastern Ukraine had a very low turnout. Young Russian men cheered a Russian […]
Updated Daily. Refugees continue to flee armed conflict in southeastern Ukraine into Russia, but questions remain about how many of them there are, as both official and news reports differ substantially, and international relief organizations and journalists are not let into the border towns under a state of emergency. The retreat of Col. Igor Strelkov […]
Updated Daily. The Chinese-Russian gas deal is getting mixed reviews, depending on what observers think of Putin in the first place. LifeNews reporters are still being held by Ukrainian authorities on charges they helped armed separatists, sparking a debate in the regional journalist community about embedding with insurgents. Russian liberals are concerned that Putin’s aggressive […]
