Fragments of a blog
Fragments of a blog
It’s good to know that Russia’s number one opposition leader supports an expansive understanding of free speech. Navalny may be wrong on Trump versus Twitter but it’s far more important – in the Russian context – that he get the…
Russians are still pretty apolitical animals but they are gradually realizing that their passivity is contributing to the country’s stagnation and general hopelessness. When they quit the “quiet desperation” mode, they look to others who have made it farther into…
Putin in Helsinki, August 22, 2019: Russian opposition members were banned from running for Moscow’s legislature because they had submitted “falsified” signatures, President Vladimir Putin has said, playing down the election protests that rocked the capital this summer… “This was…
Max Seddon reported from Moscow for the FT earlier this week: Russian police have arrested opposition leader Alexei Navalny and raided the homes of several of his allies in a sign that the Kremlin is worried about swelling dissent… This…
Some 20-25 thousand people took to the streets of Moscow last Saturday to protest against the city authorities’ refusal to let independent candidates run for the city council. By itself, 20-25k doesn’t seem like an impressive crowd for a city…
From Tuesday’s press release by the ECHR: In today’s Chamber judgment in the case of Navalnyy v. Russia… the European Court of Human Rights held, unanimously, that there had been: a violation of Article 5 (right to liberty and security),…
The ECHR’s Grand Chamber published its final judgment in Navalnyy v. Russia yesterday. The Russian opposition leader (whose last name is more often transliterated as Navalny, without the extra “y”) complained that his arrest, detention and administrative conviction on seven…
Yesterday, AP reported from Moscow: Russians angered by the impending inauguration of Vladimir Putin to a new term as president protested Saturday in scores of cities across the country — and police responded by reportedly arresting nearly 1,600 of them.…
Alexey Navalny’s team not only asked fellow Russians to boycott last Sunday’s farcical election but also invited volunteers to monitor the vote. About sixty thousand volunteered and more than 33,000 were posted at precincts across the country. Even if most…
The Toronto Star has given this title to an AP story on today’s election in Russia: With a Putin election win in little doubt, Russian voters pressured to get turnout numbers up. At Al Jazeera, Mariya Petkova’s report appears under…
Shaun Walker reports from Moscow for The Guardian: A Moscow court has sentenced a former Russian economy minister to eight years in a high-security prison for corruption, in a verdict that is likely to send chills through the Russian elite……
At the annual presidential Q&A session yesterday, a pseudo-opposition quasi-politician asked the Russian president why genuine opposition politicians, including the de-facto opposition leader, had been effectively barred from running in the upcoming 2018 election: Ksenia Sobchak, a socialite-turned-journalist who wants…