Photographer Denis Sinyakov, who covered the Greenpeace action at the Prirazlomnaya on assignment from Lenta.ru, was the second person out of 30 arrested in the Arctic Sunrise case to be freed on bail. On November 21, he was released from Kresty Prison pre-trial detention in St. Petersburg and told The New Times how the foreigners […]
Vladimir Pastukhov writes an essay for Novaya Gazeta, a liberal newspaper, on how Putin is not the driver of creeping totalitarianism, but Russia is pushing Putin down that path. It is worth noting that four Novaya Gazeta journalists have been assassinated in eight years. – Ed. Standing on the edge of the Russian abyss, they […]
Last Thursday, Sergei Magnitsky was convicted of tax evasion. The only problem was he was not there to hear the verdict read. Magnitsky was killed in Moscow’s Butyrka prison in 2009, likely as a result of beatings and a lack of medical treatment. His crime was uncovering a $230 million tax fraud involving members of […]
[Last week, Interpreter contributor Sasha de Vogel admiringly replied to Peter Pomersantsev’s essay, “Cracks in the Kremlin Matrix,” about the system of “managed democracy” in Russia and how opponents of the Putin regime have struggled to combat it. Below, Peter has expanded on some of the key themes in his original piece as well as […]
[Leonid Nevzlin, a former executive of the Yukos oil company, has been tried in absentia and found guilty of misappropriating shares. The proceedings against the former Yukos executives have been widely criticized by international human rights monitors—Ed.] Today [June 24—Ed.] a Moscow district court sentenced Leonid Nevzlin, one of the major Yukos shareholders, to six […]
[The expatriation of Sergei Guriyev, a highly regarded Russian economist, was a major story both in the Russian and in international presses last month. By his own admission, Guriyev left Russia because he feared imprisonment after continued harassment by Russia’s Investigative Committee, which searched his office and seized thousands of emails related to investigation into […]
On June 4, Sergei Sobyanin, the Mayor of Moscow, announced his resignation. He will be running for office at early mayoral elections that will be held in September According to Sobyanin, the majority of the capital’s residents support the idea of holding early mayoral elections concurrently with elections for the governor of the Moscow Region […]
Sergei Guriev has spoken about his decision to flee Russia, stating frankly that he left because “I don’t want to sit in jail.” Guriev, a leading economist once very much part of the Russian establishment who wrote speeches for Dmitry Medvedev, described how the increasing pressure from investigators over a report he had authored criticizing […]
It is safe to say that publicly challenging Putin means that you may find yourself facing charges of money laundering, extortion, or the regime’s curiously esoteric understanding of hooliganism. The experiences of Pussy Riot, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and Alexei Navalny have all shown the repercussions that dissent entails. Now, however, it seems that even disagreeing with […]
A quick recap of top Russia stories today: – Pussy Riot member Maria Alyokhina has ended her hunger strike after prison officials finally conceded to her demands. One of three members of the female punk rock band, jailed for performing a protest song inside Moscow’s main cathedral, went on a hunger strike in protest of […]
