16 Mar 2012 | Russia
A Moscow court has sentenced businessman Alexey Kozlov to five years in prison for fraud. The verdict is seen as a slap in the face to civil society, which demanded justice and freedom for Kozlov on the latest mass rally for fair elections in Moscow.
Alexey Kozlov was accused of stealing leather company shares using a fradulent scheme in 2006. He claimed he was innocent and his case was trumped-up by former business partner and senator Vladimir Slutsker. Slutsker denied the allegations.
Kozlov’s case was the second “economical” case to draw the widest response after the case of former YUKOS oil company head Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
Kozlov was arrested in 2008 and then sentenced to eight years in prison on fraud charges after having quit his business with Vladimir Slutsker. He spent three-and-a-half years in prison, until in September 2011 his wife — noted Russian journalist and human rights activist Olga Romanova — gained a Supreme Court order for the case to be retried.
This was celebrated as a victory of human rights activism. Romanova has become the voice of prisoners throughout Russia and created an NGO for relatives of businessmen whose cases were fabricated by their influential business partners and corrupted law enforcement authorities. For all of them Kozlov’s release in September became an example of how rights activism can be rewarded for its efforts.
Thousands of people supported Kozlov on a rally on 10 March. Hundreds of them gathered near the court — but only to shout “Shame!” when Kozlov was arrested and convoyed out of the court. The case was retried, but the corrupted judicial system remained.
Alexey Kozlov will be set free in a year and a half, after the court took into consideration three and a half years already served.
Olga Romanova was in charge of the recent Russian rallies against election fraud. She has been one of the most remarkable public critics of Vladimir Putin. Fellow human rights activists believe her husband’s sentence is also the authorities’ “punishment” to her for her activism and independence. Activists added that this is clearly an attempt to silence her.
Romanova isn’t the only one authorities are trying to silence.
Another member of Pussy Riot punk feminist group Irina Lakhtionova has been arrested on the charge of hooliganism. She is suspected of being involved in an anti-Putin performance in Moscow’s Christ the Saviour Cathedral. As Pussy Riot’s lawyer Nikolay Polozov told Index on Censorship, this goes in the line with repressive politicy against political and civil activists. He is planning to file complaints to European Court of Human Rights.
Finally, on the same day Left Front movement leader Sergey Udaltsov was sentenced to ten days of administrative arrest for allegedly having neglected a policeman’s order after a rally on 10 March. He has announced a hunger strike in protest.
Another opposition leader, Alexey Navalny, was fined 1000 roubles (£21) for breaking the rules of holding rallies, during a mass protest against allegedly fradulent presidential elections on 5 March.
Earlier this week the court refused to release two arrested Pussy Riot members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alekhina and activist Taisiya Osipova, from The Other Russia.
Most frequent bloggers’ believe these cases have one message – Vladimir Putin is back.
15 Mar 2012 | Russia
Moscow city court has refused to release two members of punk feminist group Pussy Riot. Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alekhina were arrested after having performed a protest song “Mother of God, send Putin away” in Moscow’s Christ the Saviour cathedral on charge of hooliganism. Now they will be staying under arrest until 24 April, when they face trial and might be sentenced to up to seven years in prison.
The case is seen as politically motivated as Russia’s prime minister Vladimir Putin, who has just won the presidential elections, was likely to take offence at the protest, according to Tolokonnikova’s husband and Moscow art activist Petr Verzilov. That might be the reason why the court did not take into consideration that both Tolokonnikova and Alekhina have young children.
Lawyers for members of Pussy Riot have expressed concern that the judge who sanctioned their arrest is also offended and biased: in July 2010 she tried a case against organisers of the “Forbidden Art” exhibition. They were found guilty of “debasing religious beliefs of citizens and inciting religious hatred”. Tolokonnikova together with other Voina activists protested against the verdict by bringing cockroaches to the court room and letting them free there.
Russia’s leading human rights activists Lyudmila Alekseeva and Lev Ponomaryov have condemned Tolokonnikova’s and Alekhina’s arrest, calling the court decision “repressive” and highlighting selectivity of Russian judicial system.
While Pussy Riot remains under arrest awaiting trial, a policeman in the city of Kazan who is suspected of violence against a detainee which led to his death was released before the trial. The policeman together with his colleagues in Kazan’s Dalni police department allegedly raped the detainee with a champagne bottle.
A number of single pickets supporting Tolokonnikova’s and Alekhina’s have taken place near the court building. Three protesters were arrested for breaking the rules on pickets after instigators, allegedly from pro-Kremlin youth movements, tried to attack them, take away their placards and initiate a scuffle. Activists in Novosibirsk have created “icons” depicting Pussy Riot members. The church has already called it hooliganism and asked for an investigation.
Meanwhile another political prisoner, Taisiya Osipova — a member of The Other Russia opposition movement, and also a mother of a small child — has been refused freedom until her trial in Smolensk. She was sentenced to ten years on charges of drug trafficking in December. After mass protests against her prosecution, with even President Medvedev saying the verdict was “too cruel”, the court cancelled the verdict and submitted the case for reconsideration. Osipova, who has diabetes and claims the case was trumped-up as a revenge for her and her husband’s membership in The Other Russia, was to be released on 13 March. Now she will stay under arrest until 15 June. Her supporters also worry that the biased court will find her guilty again.
Both Osipova and Pussy Riot’s cases were subjects of mass protest rallies in Moscow. All the rallies’ resolutions included the demand to release political prisoners immediately. Just as the other requirements, this one was not fulfilled by Russian authorities.
If anyone doubted that protest mood remained strong in Russia, politically motivated cases might be the reason not to have any more doubts.
12 Mar 2012 | Russia
Thousands of people gathered on central Moscow street Novy Arbat on Sunday to call for Vladimir Putin to step down. The rally was a follow-up to mass protest rallies which started after allegedly fraudulent parliamentary elections in December.
It was much smaller than the protests leading up to the election, and the mood was dramatically altered.
This time, people had to face the reality that the right to freedom could not be achieved in just three months and that the opposition’s most popular slogan “Russia without Putin” cannot be actualised without a clear political strategy. Some opposition leaders, who have been courageously protesting against Putin must now re-evaluate their strategies. At the protest, TV host Ksenia Sobchak stood on stage and said that protesters needed to “form a concrete list of what they are standing up for”. “This road is long, but Russia will be free in the end”, said Grigory Yavlinsky, Yabloko party founder and unregistered presidential candidate, reflecting the principal current message of Russian opposition: it takes time for the civil society to restore their violated rights.
One of Russia’s leading independent political scientists, Dmitry Oreshkin, monitored the elections on 4 March. Together with other independent elections monitors, he announced the presidential election results based on their independent calculations. Oreshkin claims Putin did not win the elections in Moscow and Saint-Petersburg (in these cities he got less than 50 per cent needed to win in the first round, independent monitors counted). This marks a tendency, which is likely to spread over Russia, Oreshkin said to protesters: if big cities citizens don’t vote for Putin today, smaller cities won’t vote for him either tomorrow.
Left Front leader Sergey Udaltsov tried to march to Pushkin Square with his supporters after the rally. Hundreds of Moscow nationalists tried to do the same on Stary Arbat avenue. Protesters from both groups were arrested “for breaking the law on rallies”. Opposition in Saint-Petersburg also tried to march in the city centre, but police hadn’t sanctioned the action, and 40 protesters were arrested.
Monitors’ reports and plans to form a detailed political strategy were the two major topics of the rally on the 10 March. The third was dedicated to political prisoners in Russia, particularly two members of the punk feminist group “Pussy Riot”, Nadezhda Tolokonnikkova and Maria Alekhina, who were arrested after their act of protest in a cathedral, and Alexey Kozlov, the husband of human rights activist and one of the rally’s organisers Olga Romanova.
Many of the participants in the rally planned to attend the court hearings on Kozlov and Pussy Riot. Those who protest against Vladimir Putin and demand political reform are amongst those who also call for profound reform of the judicial system.
4 Mar 2012 | Russia
Election day is here. And, according to all the signals, it will be as interesting as anticipated.
The first exit polls coming from the far Eastern regions of Russia are quite shocking: preferences for Putin’s United Russia are below 50 per cent, reaching as low as 42 per cent according to certain pollsters. If this is confirmed, a second round will be needed for Putin’s victory. On the other hand, Twitter and Facebook feeds are exploding with videos and pictures documenting “Carousels”, buses with voters sent to cast their votes for United Russia, often more than once.
After a few very calm days, perhaps the calm before the storm, there were several worrying episodes of opposition activists attacked and arrested in Moscow in the late hours of yesterday. Several members linked to the all-girl punk band Pussy Riot, who perform anti-Putin songs dressed in bright mini-skirts and coloured balaclavas, were arrested on charges of hooliganism following an impromptu performance at a cathedral on 21 February. At Kropotkinskaya metro station, two Solidarnost activists and one Novaya Gazeta photo reporter were held. A member of the Committee for Fair Elections, Aleksandr Bilov, was attacked in his home’s entrance and arrested after he fought back the attack.
Early this morning, an army of nearly 30,000 election observers marched towards the polling stations assigned to them, gathering there by 7:30am. Most were well equipped with smart phones, video cameras and guides to correct electoral procedures. As announced in December, Putin installed £320m worth of web cameras around polling stations to contribute to the fairness of the elections, but this did not reassure his opponents much. If proof was needed to confirm that a wave of civil activism has hit Moscow, then this army of election watchers is the final one. Tweeting by observers has already gone viral with the Twitter hash-tag #выборы2012.
Putin is expected to win, eventually, but the question is by how much. His ratings are still extremely high in the countryside, where “any desire of living better is outweighed by a persistent fear of living worse”, the NYT reports. Besides that, none of the other candidates pose an actual threat to him. The only real new entry is the liberal businessman Prokhorov, whose campaign was too short to be able to gain a significant amount of followers. Zyuganov and Zhirinovsky are two “professional opposition candidates” at the opposite ends of the political spectrum, who are today little more than caricatures of themselves, while Mironov… who is Mironov? An anonymous long-time Putin backer, hardly taken seriously by anyone. Yavlinsky, Yabloko leader and most serious counter-candidate, was not allowed to run in the elections because of alleged irregularities in the collection of signatures.
The main person to watch in the opposition spectrum remains Aleksey Navalny. The anti-corruption blogger and lawyer has rapidly risen to political stardom over the past few months. He is a controversial figure — concerns are often raised about his nationalistic views and his “prima donna” attitude. He is very popular among the younger generations for his open way of interacting on the web. It will be interesting to observe his public appearances in the next few days: much of his political future may depend from it.
Among the opposition forces nobody dares say it out loud, but many think that Putin’s defeat would not be a good thing right now. The opposition is too young and fragile to be effective. Until only some months ago, there was nobody to listen to it. Suddenly, Moscow is buzzing with political talk and desire for change, but until a couple of years (if not months) ago, the only people you could find speaking about Russian politics were foreigners. A potential new Russian leader needs a basis of consensus which is still in development, and an all-encompassing programme that it is still lacking.
Demonstrations have already been announced for tomorrow, 5 March. Opposition will gather at 7pm in Pushkin square, while the nationalist group Nashi will be in Manezh square at 4pm. The opposition wants to take the protest to the Red Square but authorities have not allowed this action, though it may still go ahead. Rumours say that the action at the Garden Ring last week was been the last peaceful demonstration, but it could be counterproductive for Putin to crack hard on the protesters.
The carrot-and-stick Medvedev-and-Putin political model gone, it is now time for Vladimir Putin to reveal which one of the two methods is he going to choose in his next term as president of the Russian Federation — which might begin later than expected.
