Russia suspended an independent election monitoring group for six months on Wednesday, for failing to register as a “foreign agent” under a law that President Vladimir Putin’s critics say is part of a crackdown on dissent.
One thirds of Russians said they support parole for Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky, twice the number of those who want him to remain in prison, a Levada Center poll revealed.
Russia’s most famous prisoner, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, turns 50 on June 26.
Russia has allowed the suspected killers of a whistleblowing lawyer to escape with impunity and instituted a high-level “cover up” of corruption which the international community must do more to counter, according to a damning report.
Two of the co-authors of the expert report into the second Yukos case have been asked to attend interviews by the Investigative Committee, a news report said Tuesday.
Russian billionaire-turned-politician Mikhail Prokhorov, who leads the Civil Platform party, will donate 1.5 million rubles ($45,870) to pay the annual rent for a Russian human rights group evicted from its office last weekend, a party member said on Tuesday.
The judge presiding over the trial of Alexander Lebedev, Russian businessman and financial backer of The Independent, expects to reach a verdict early next week. Mr Lebedev is accused of “hooliganism motivated by political hatred”, over throwing a pair of punches at fellow tycoon Sergei Polonsky during a 2011 television programme
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has revealed that the surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden is indeed in a Moscow airport, ending a global guessing game over the US fugitive’s whereabouts.
An investigation has been reopened into the embezzlement of state funds at an institute where the Education and Science Minister Dmitry Livanov occupied a senior position, Kommersant reported Wednesday.
A Moscow court on Tuesday opened the trial of 12 people suspected of taking part in “riots” and clashing with police at a now-infamous anti-government rally on Bolotnaya Ploshchad last May.
