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MOSCOW — A Moscow court has agreed to hear a libel lawsuit filed by Aleksei Navalny against Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov over comments he made linking U.S. spies with the jailed opposition politician.
Open Media group quoted a representative of the Presnensky district court on May 5 as saying that Navalny, who is serving a prison term in a penal colony, will be able to take part in the hearing if he wishes and if the judge agrees with that.
The date of the hearing into the lawsuit filed by Navalny in late March is yet to be determined.
It is the second lawsuit Navalny has filed against Peskov in defense of his “honor, dignity, and business reputation.”
An initial lawsuit was filed in November 2020 when Navalny demanded the Kremlin publish on its official website his rebuttal of public statements Peskov made saying that CIA specialists are “working with Navalny” and that the contents of Navalny’s statements, including those criticizing President Vladimir Putin, are prepared by the U.S. secret service.
The court refused to register the lawsuit at the time, citing “procedural shortcomings.” It was then refiled.
Navalny was arrested in January upon his return to Russia from Germany, where he received life-saving treatment for a poisoning attack in Siberia in August.
He blames the poisoning with a Soviet-style chemical nerve agent on Putin and Russia’s security services. The Kremlin has denied any role in the poisoning.
In February, a Moscow court ruled that while in Germany, Navalny had violated the terms of parole from an old embezzlement case that is widely considered to be politically motivated. He is currently serving a 2 1/2 year sentence at a prison in the Vladimir region.
Navalny’s incarceration sparked numerous protests across Russia which were violently dispersed by police.
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A group of Russian lawmakers has proposed legislation that would bar individuals involved in the activities of a public or religious group, or any organization that has been recognized by a court as “extremist or terrorist,” from taking part in parliamentary elections.
The draft bill, put forward just ahead of September elections to the parliament’s lower chamber, the State Duma, states that ordinary employees and leaders of such organizations cannot be elected as lawmakers if they worked in such groups for one and three years, respectively, before a court’s decision to ban such groups.
The bill also says that individuals who “provided financial support, property, as well as organizational, methodical, consultative, or any other type of assistance” to such organizations one year before the organization was banned will be barred from taking part in parliamentary elections for three years.
The move comes on the heels of Moscow prosecutors asking a court to recognize jailed opposition politician Aleksei Navalny’s regional network, along with his Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) and his Citizens’ Rights Defense Foundation (FZPG), as extremist organizations.
The Moscow City Court has said it will rule on the motion on May 17.
Leonid Volkov, a close associate of Navalny, says the draft bill is aimed squarely at the Kremlin critic, his supporters, and the staff members at its organizations.
“We have seen a mass of ‘laws against Navalny,’ but nothing this harsh. Contributed even just a penny to the FBK in the last year — you cannot be elected to the State Duma. Worked as a coordinator for Navalny’s team in the last three years — you cannot be elected to the State Duma. Just read [the draft bill], there is fear in every sentence, ” Volkov wrote on Telegram.
The pressure on Navalny has intensified greatly in the past eight months, starting with his poisoning in Siberia last August. But it goes back at least as far as December 2011, when Navalny helped lead protests prompted by anger over evidence of election fraud that benefited the Kremlin-controlled United Russia party and dismay at Vladimir Putin’s plans to return to the presidency in 2012 after four years as prime minister.
The elections must be held by September 19, and the United Russia party has been polling at historically low levels. Many observers link this to the government’s latest crackdown on Navalny and his colleagues, as well as on other dissenters and independent media outlets.
Lyubov Sobol, another close Navalny associate and a lawyer for the FBK who has announced her intention to run for a seat in the State Duma in September, told Current Time that the move by lawmakers is “a demonstration of United Russia’s weakness.”
“I think I am the person that the Kremlin [and] United Russia are scared of. And they will try, using that bill, to prevent me from taking part in the elections to the State Duma because they understand that if I am registered, I will win…. Because Moscow residents want change, they want decent, strong, and independent politicians…. The fact that they will try to label us as extremists to ban our participation in the elections shows that they are really afraid of us,” Sobol said.
Volkov announced on April 29 that Navalny’s regional network will be disbanded ahead of the Moscow City Court hearing on May 17 to avoid the prosecution of staff members.
With reporting by Current Time
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U.S. President Joe Biden says he hopes to hold his proposed summit with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, during his planned trip to Europe in June.
“That is my hope and expectation. We’re working on it,” Biden told reporters on May 4 after a speech about the U.S. response to the coronavirus.
For his first overseas trip since taking office in January, Biden plans to join the other leaders of the Group of Seven (G7) major industrialized nations for a summit in Britain set for June 11-13.
He will then fly to Brussels to participate in a NATO summit on June 14 and attend an EU-U.S. meeting with the bloc’s 27 leaders.
Biden in April offered a meeting in a third country to discuss spiraling tensions over issues including military threats to Ukraine, the SolarWinds cyberattack on U.S. computers, and Russia’s treatment of jailed opposition activist Aleksei Navalny.
Putin’s top foreign policy aide, Yury Ushakov, has said that planning for a face-to-face meeting between the two presidents was under way.
“June is being named, there are even concrete dates,” Ushakov said on April 25.
Russia last month declared 10 employees at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow to be personae non gratae in what it called a “mirror” response to Washington’s expulsion of 10 Russian diplomats and wide-ranging sanctions as it moved to hold the Kremlin accountable for actions against the United States and its interests.
Biden has repeatedly stated that while he will be tough on Russia over any hostile policies, he is also seeking to cooperate where the two sides have mutual interests. This includes on such issues as nuclear proliferation, climate change, the Iran nuclear deal, North Korea, and fostering peace and stability in Afghanistan.
Speaking during a trip to London on May 3, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that Washington wants a “more stable, more predictable relationship” with Moscow but that will depend on Kremlin policies and how “recklessly or aggressively” it decides to act.
With reporting by Reuters and AFP
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ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — A Russian court has dismissed a case against an RFE/RL correspondent who was charged with the distribution of “false information about the coronavirus” over an article she wrote about a lack of ventilators for COVID-19 patients.
The lawyer for Tatyana Voltskaya, Leonid Krikun, told RFE/RL that the Gatchino City Court in the northwestern Leningrad region ruled on May 4 that there was no crime committed by the reporter.
Investigators initially demanded a criminal case be launched against Voltskaya regarding her article published on RFE/RL’s North.Realities website in April 2020.
In the story, Voltskaya reported on a lack of ventilation units at hospitals treating COVID-19 patients in the city of St. Petersburg, citing an unnamed physician.
After a local court refused to launch a criminal case, Russia’s Investigative Committee requested an administrative case against Voltskaya that could have seen her fined or spend several days in jail as punishment.
“The court had an opportunity to close the case because of the statute of limitations, but it looked into it taking into account our motion saying that Voltskaya had a right to express her opinion on an issue important for society and that the preparation of the report and offering it for publication were an expression of the journalist’s professional and civil position,” Krikun told RFE/RL.
After Voltskaya’s article in question was published last year, Russian media regulator Roskomnadzor demanded RFE/RL remove the material from the site, which the broadcaster refused to do.
In August, a court in Moscow fined RFE/RL’s Russian Service 300,000 rubles ($4,000) over Voltskaya’s article. RFE/RL refused to pay the fine, saying it was confident that the information in the article is valid.
Independent journalists across Russia have faced similar encounters as they worked to cover the unfolding COVID-19 pandemic in its early stages and the Russian government’s efforts to cope with it.
In addition, Amnesty International said last month that Russian police have never cracked down so extensively and systematically on journalists as they are in their recent efforts to prevent coverage of protests in support of Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny.
In 2012, Russian lawmakers passed the “foreign agent” law giving authorities the power to brand nongovernmental organizations, human rights groups, and news media deemed to receive foreign funding for political activity as “foreign agents.”
Among other things, the law — which has been expanded several times since — requires news organizations that receive foreign funding to label content within Russia as being produced by a “foreign agent.”
In 2017, the Russian government placed RFE/RL’s Russian Service on the list, along with six other Russian-language RFE/RL news services, and Current Time, a network run by RFE/RL in cooperation with VOA.
Roskomnadzor has prepared hundreds of complaints against RFE/RL’s projects for failure to follow these rules that could result in fines totaling more than $1 million.
RFE/RL has called the fines “a state-sponsored campaign of coercion and intimidation,” while the U.S. State Department has described them as “intolerable.”
The targeting of RFE/RL has raised concerns that the Russian government may be moving to shutter RFE/RL’s operations inside Russia and force its Russian-language services and Current Time out of the country.
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From the time Eduard Shmonin was a young man, he always wanted to be a gangster.
But disillusionment with Russia’s criminal world came quickly for the Sverdlovsk region native after he served two years in prison for burglary in the 1990s. Shmonin, now 50, instead decided to get into journalism — a profession that he quickly determined was inextricable from local battles over money, resources, and influence.
The business model he adopted involved digging up dirt on officials and industry players — and then publishing it or withholding it, depending on the bidder.
“I understood at the time that the job of a journalist is to get paid for what he doesn’t write,” Shmonin told RFE/RL’s Russian Service, known locally as Radio Svoboda, last year.
Now prosecutors have asked a court to sentence Shmonin to 11 years in prison on charges of blackmail and distributing pornography — allegations linked to media operations he ran in Russia’s oil-rich Khanti-Mansi Autonomous District in western Siberia.
A verdict in Shmonin’s trial in Surgut, in western Siberia, which has been closed to the public, is expected next week.
And while Shmonin has never denied trafficking in “kompromat,” or compromising information, he believes he was targeted for an entirely different reason: a documentary he released exposing evidence of massive oil theft in the Khanti-Mansi region with the complicity of corrupt law enforcement officials.
An archive of materials gathered by Shmonin for the exposé and a planned sequel that never aired served as a pillar of an independent investigation by Radio Svoboda in March exposing the central role that Federal Security Service (FSB) and Interior Ministry officials play in the industrial-scale theft of oil from Russia’s network of pipelines.
Radio Svoboda was able to independently corroborate numerous details of this illicit business, which, according to a 2013 estimate by state-owned investment bank VTB Capital, costs Russian oil companies $1.8 billion to $3.5 billion annually and the Russian budget $632 million to $1.2 billion.
Shmonin released his documentary, Criminal Oil, in November 2016 and was arrested the following April on not only the blackmail and pornography charges, but also for suspected libel based on a complaint by four individuals mentioned in the film — all of whom worked in security for a subsidiary of Rosneft, the state oil giant whose CEO, Igor Sechin, is a close ally of President Vladimir Putin.
One of the plaintiffs was a retired FSB general, and the other was a former FSB officer who has since been arrested and charged with oil theft.
Shmonin was held for nearly a year in pretrial detention, while his muckraking website and his TV channel, Yugra Public Television, ceased operations. He claims that, during his detention, he was tortured by FSB officers who tried to force him to reveal who financed the Criminal Oil documentary.
“They said, ‘You have three options to get out of here: You can be carried out of here feet first; you can eat the charges, we’ll release you on bail, and you leave the country; or you reveal who is behind you and we will classify you as a witness,’” Shmonin told Radio Svoboda, adding that he told investigators the documentary was made on his own initiative.
Shmonin protesting in 2010 in defense of his kompromat-filled website. His sign reads: “Corrupt cops: Fight corruption, not the media.”
Shmonin claimed his interrogators then wrapped a plastic bag over his head and tased him, though Radio Svoboda was unable to independently corroborate his torture claims. The FSB did not respond to requests for comment sent in March.
Disappearing Evidence
A funny thing happened on the way to the verdict in Shmonin’s case: A trove of evidence went missing or was damaged, including hard drives, computers, mobile phones, and flash drives that authorities had confiscated. And the libel charges related to his Criminal Oil documentary were ultimately dropped.
Of the 13 original charges Shmonin faced, only two remain: blackmail and illegal distribution of pornography.
The blackmail charge relates to Shmonin’s alleged demand for money from Yevgeny Vostrikov, a lawmaker in the Khanti-Mansi city of Nefteyugansk, in exchange for withholding release of a film in which he was accused, among other things, of domestic abuse and trafficking in drugs. (Many of these allegations had already appeared on Shmonin’s websites prior to the film’s eventual release.)
Shmonin in the courtroom in Surgut, where a verdict in his trial is expected next week. (file photo)
The pornography charge relates to a secretly recorded video showing a sexual encounter between a lawmaker in the city of Nizhnevartovsk and another man. Shmonin has denied releasing the video.
He insists that the evidence that went missing in his case includes alibis that would exonerate him.
All of these developments have taken place behind closed doors. The trial was closed to the public, formally because of the intimate nature of the video related to the pornography charge.
Shmonin, who has been out on bail since 2018 pending a verdict in the trial, is barred by law from discussing the case with the media.
Meanwhile, the trial of Roman Chernogor — the former FSB officer who filed a libel complaint against Shmonin over his Criminal Oil film — continues.
Chernogor has been charged with illegally tapping into oil pipelines. His co-defendant, former FSB officer Vladimir Chernakov, was also implicated in oil-theft schemes in Shmonin’s film.
Written by Carl Schreck based on reporting by RFE/RL Russian Service correspondent Sergei Khazov-Cassia.
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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken says Washington wants a stable relationship with Moscow but that will depend on Kremlin policies and how aggressively it decides to act.
Speaking on May 3 after meeting with his British counterpart in London, Blinken repeated past statements from President Joe Biden and the previous administration, saying that the United States did not want to escalate tensions with Russia.
“President Biden’s been very clear for a long time, including before he was president, that if Russia chooses to act recklessly or aggressively, we’ll respond,” he said.
“But we’re not looking to escalate: We would prefer to have a more stable, more predictable relationship,” he said. “And if Russia moves in that direction, so will we.”
Blinken’s comments on Russia come as tensions continue to spiral downward, over issues including military threats to Ukraine, the SolarWinds cyberattack on U.S. networks, and Russia’s treatment of jailed opposition activist Aleksei Navalny.
Blinken’s meeting with British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab comes as ministers from the Group of Seven (G7) countries gathered in person for the first time in two years.
In addition to Russia, other subjects on the G7 agenda include the U.S. withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, Iran’s nuclear program, and a trade deal in the wake of London’s withdrawal from the European Union.
At a news conference, Raab said Britain stood “shoulder to shoulder” with the United States on issues such as Afghanistan and Iran. He said London also agreed China needs to adhere to international commitments.
On China, Blinken said the West was not trying to restrain Beijing.
“It is not our purpose to try to contain China or to hold China down,” he said.
Based on reporting by Reuters, dpa, and AP
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When human rights lawyer Karinna Moskalenko learned that fellow attorney Ivan Pavlov had been detained in Moscow, alarm bells rang.
“This is a real state of emergency,” Moskalenko, who 20 years ago was the first Russian lawyer to speak before the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and to win a case from Russia, wrote on Facebook on April 30.
“A lot depends — for him and for us all — on how we act now,” Moskalenko wrote. “For my part, I am sending the alarm to the headquarters of the International Commission of Jurists in Geneva. And I am asking this global organization to act immediately.”
Karina Moskalenko
In a post the same day, journalist and human rights activist Zoya Svetova called the prominent defense attorney “a knight among lawyers.” “Pavlov is an absolutely fearless and professional lawyer who is also sensitive and loyal,” Svetova wrote. She urged “a majority of bold, honest, and professional colleagues” to come to his aid and to the aid of the legal profession in Russia generally.
Pavlov, who specializes in cases involving state secrets, was questioned in Moscow and is under investigation for allegedly disclosing classified information about the ongoing investigation of former journalist Ivan Safronov. Safronov is accused of giving classified information about Russian arms sales to the Czech Republic, which he denies.
Also on April 30, law enforcement searched the St. Petersburg office of Pavlov’s legal-aid NGO Team 29, the home of the group’s IT specialist, the apartment of Pavlov’s wife, and Pavlov’s dacha.
At a court hearing the same day, a judge granted a prosecution request that Pavlov be barred from using the Internet or communicating with witnesses in the Safronov case.
‘A Bone In The Throat’
The Telegram channel SOTA posted a copy of the complaint that triggered the case, which was signed by Federal Security Service (FSB) Director Aleksandr Bortnikov and addressed to the head of the Investigative Committee, Aleksandr Bastrykin.
Pavlov’s lawyer and longtime Team 29 colleague, Yevgeny Smirnov, wrote on Telegram that Bortnikov rarely signs such documents himself.
Ivan Pavlov (left) appears in a Moscow courtroom with Ivan Safronov in July 2020.
Lawyer Irina Biryukova made headlines in 2018 when she briefly left Russia because of threats when she was working on a case of alleged torture in a prison in the Yaroslavl region. She told RFE/RL the case against Pavlov was a demonstration of power by the security services aimed at the entire human rights community.
“He has been like a bone in the throat of the security agencies,” Biryukova told RFE/RL. “Any pressure against a lawyer — particularly one involved in political cases — is pressure against human rights as a whole. This is an attempt to show us all that now the security forces can do anything they want without consequences. To show that they can come for any dissenter at any moment. It is pressure not only against lawyers, but against the entire human rights community.”
“And I’m sure this is not the end of it,” she added. “Toward the autumn, we’ll feel all its charms. Things are not going to get any better.”
Irina Biryukova
Russia is preparing for elections to the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, which must be held by September 19. President Vladimir Putin’s ruling United Russia party has been polling at historically low levels, and many observers link this to the government’s latest crackdown on opposition leader Aleksei Navalny and his colleagues, as well as on other dissenters and independent media outlets.
Pavlov had a long-running conflict with the FSB, and particularly with Aleksandr Cheban, the FSB investigator handling the Safronov case, Smirnov said. A Team 29 post on Telegram on April 30 quoted Smirnov as saying Cheban had told Pavlov, “You are standing on our throat, and we will do everything we can to put you in prison.”
Team 29 lawyer Maksim Olenichev told RFE/RL that “Ivan was threatened many times, since his human rights activity centered on defending innocent people from state pressure.”
Pavlov, 50, was born in St. Petersburg and graduated from the St. Petersburg University law department in 1997. He immediately became involved in his first major case, defending Russian Navy Captain Aleksandr Nikitin, who was accused of publishing classified information about emergency situations on Russian nuclear submarines. Nikitin was acquitted by the Russian Supreme Court in 2000. Nikitin was the first person in the Soviet or post-Soviet eras to be acquitted of a treason charge.
Freedom Of Information
More recently, Pavlov defended Svetlana Davydova, a woman from the Smolensk region who was accused in 2015 of passing military information to Ukraine the previous year. The charges against her were dropped for lack of evidence that a crime had been committed. In addition, the Prosecutor-General’s Office sent her a written apology.
Also in 2015, Pavlov created Team 29, which was devoted to”attaining justice in cases involving freedom of information.” In 2019, the group won a Supreme Court case that enabled a Russian to get information about his grandfather,who was executed in 1933.
Pavlov also defended physicist Viktor Kudryavtsev, who died of cancer on April 29 while awaiting trial on treason charges. Pavlov was able to get him released from pretrial custody, which he later claimed had “completely damaged his health.”
Scientist Viktor Kudryavtsev’s health was “completely damaged” by his detention, Pavlov said.
Pavlov has also been defending Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) against the government’s efforts to have it labeled “extremist.” Some observers believe the case against Pavlov could be connected to his involvement in that high-profile case.
Human rights advocate Pavel Chikov wrote on Telegram that the Justice Ministry had already twice complained to the Petersburg Chamber of Advocates alleging that Pavlov had revealed secret information in connection with the Safronov case.
‘In The Face Of Outrage’
“Both times the Petersburg chamber refused to take disciplinary actions,” Chikov wrote. For its part, the chamber on April 30 published an open letter to Bastrykin, Bortnikov, and other senior officials saying the case against Pavlov “was being created by representatives of the investigative authorities with blatant and intentional violations of Russia’s criminal-procedural legislation.”
“The legal community cannot reconcile itself with the clearly illegal practices of the investigative authorities in forcibly taking confidential information from lawyers involved in criminal defense,” the letter stated. It added that investigators’ actions “will inevitably lead to the destruction of the legal foundations of our state.”
Pskov region legislator and opposition politician Lev Shlosberg told RFE/RL that the cases Pavlov had taken on in his career involving charges of “treason, terrorism, and extremism are usually cases that were initiated by the Russian government to cover up political persecution.”
“They are an attempt to destroy — legally, and sometimes physically — political opponents,” he added. “Defending the accused in such cases is a direct fight against the government in its bid to destroy dissent.”
Lev Shlosberg
In 2016, when Shlosberg became the first laureate of the annual Boris Nemtsov Foundation prize, he donated the entire 10,000-euro ($12,070) prize to Team 29. According to Team 29’s annual report, they spent almost all the money defending Natalya Sharina, the former director of Moscow’s Library of Ukrainian Literature, who was accused of purchasing extremist materials.
“These people are real defenders of the law in the face of outrage,” Shlosberg said in his acceptance speech. “They are the defenders of the citizen in the face of the despotism of the state. They are working hard in the name of freedom and democracy in our country.”
Written by Robert Coalson based on reporting from Russia by Anna Yarovaya and Svetlana Prokopyeva of the North.Realities desk of RFE/RL’s Russian Service
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The European Union has summoned Russia’s ambassador in Brussels in reaction to Moscow’s retaliatory decision to bar eight of the bloc’s officials from entering the country.
“The Russian ambassador (Vladimir Chizhov) has been summoned. He should be received in the afternoon by the secretary-general of the European Commission and of the European External Action Service, where we will convey him strong condemnation and objection,” EU foreign policy spokesman Peter Stano told a news briefing on May 3.
Last week, Russia’s Foreign Ministry banned eight EU officials, including Vera Jourova, vice president for values and transparency at the European Commission; David Sassoli, the president of the European Parliament; and Jacques Maire, a member of the French delegation at the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly.
Moscow said the move was in retaliation for sanctions imposed on Russian citizens by the bloc.
The EU imposed sanctions last month on two Russians accused of persecuting gay and lesbian people in the southern Russian region of Chechnya. The EU also slapped sanctions on four senior Russian officials close to President Vladimir Putin the same month.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry has accused the EU of fomenting anti-Russia “hysteria” with the moves.
Based on reporting by Reuters and AFP
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Britain is proposing an international effort to counter Russian propaganda and disinformation, British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said on May 2.
Raab will host Group of Seven foreign ministers May 3-5 for the rich-nation club’s first in-person meeting in two years, with tensions with Russia high on the agenda.
Britain will ask the G7 to come together to develop “a rapid rebuttal mechanism” against Russian “lies and propaganda or fake news,” Raab told reporters ahead of the meeting.
While he didn’t provide specifics, Raab said the idea is to “come together to provide a rebuttal and frankly to provide the truth, for the people of this country but also in Russia or China or around the world.”
The G7 members are Britain, the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan. Britain has also invited representatives from Australia, India, South Korea, and South Africa to some of the meetings.
Russia used to be part of what was the G8, but its membership was suspended in 2014 due to Moscow’s illegal annexation of Crimea from Ukraine and support for separatists in eastern Ukraine.
British, U.S., and European officials accuse Russia of spreading disinformation on a range of issues, including elections, COVID-19 vaccines, and NATO.
At the G7, Raab will present Foreign Office-funded research showing pro-Russian trolls are targeting newspapers in democracies to try to create the impression that the public supports Russian aggression towards Ukraine, the Sunday Times reported.
“Pro-Russian trolls are posting comments on Ukraine and other areas, both to influence opinion here but to be played back in the Russian media,” Raab told the newspaper.
The London summit will also discuss expanding access to COVID-19 vaccines around the world, supporting girls’ education, setting climate action goals, and preventing famine.
Based on reporting by AFP, Reuters, and The Sunday Times
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More than 80 Russian journalists, writers, historians, and translators have issued an open letter in support of prominent defense attorney Ivan Pavlov, who was detained in Moscow on April 30 and accused of disclosing classified information about the ongoing investigation of former journalist Ivan Safronov.
“The persecution of Ivan Pavlov and the seizure of confidential case files is an act of terror directed not only at Pavlov but at the entire law community and an attempt to drive Pavlov out of the Ivan Safronov case,” the open letter published on May 2 said.
The signatories of the letter represent the Moscow PEN Club and the Free Speech Association.
Pavlov, 50, is one of Russia’s leading human rights lawyers and the head of the legal-aid foundation Team 29. Law enforcement officers searched the Team 29 office in St. Petersburg, the home of the group’s IT specialist, and the apartment of Pavlov’s wife.
Safronov is accused of treason and has been in pretrial detention since July 2020. Authorities say he gave classified information about Russian arms sales in the Middle East to the Czech Republic, an accusation that Safronov denies.
Pavlov has also been representing the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), which was created by imprisoned opposition politician Aleksei Navalny and which Russian authorities are pushing to have declared an “extremist” organization.
In a statement on April 30, Amnesty International described Pavlov as “one of the country’s most courageous lawyers” and said his detention was “a travesty of justice.”
Pavlov also defended physicist Viktor Kudryavtsev, who was also charged with treason. Kudryavtsev died of cancer on April 29 as his trial was pending.
Pavlov told journalists that the 14 months Kudryavtsev spent in pretrial detention had “completely damaged his health.” The case was “an example of how the secret services are literally killing Russian science in general,” he added.
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Orthodox Christians are marking Easter in largely toned-down celebrations due to coronavirus restrictions, with prayers going out that the pandemic will soon be over.
In Jerusalem, on the eve of Easter believers flocked to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, packing the revered site where they believe Jesus was crucified and resurrected for the Holy Fire ceremony.
Entry to the church was restricted to those who were fully vaccinated.
Israel has lifted most restrictions, including mask-wearing in public, after a world-leading vaccination drive.
In normal years, Orthodox Easter draws tens of thousands of tourists and pilgrims to holy sites in Jerusalem and Bethlehem, but this year air travel from abroad is still restricted due to the pandemic.
In Russia, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and all Russia led an Easter divine service at the Christ the Savior Cathedral, attended by President Vladimir Putin.
“This Easter is special and its special nature lies in the hope that the bane of the pandemic will pass and, leaving us with a number of important lessons, will after all abandon us forever,” Kirill told the Russia-24 TV channel.
Many countries are restricting normal Orthodox Easter celebrations, after last year much of the world lived in lockdown.
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians based in Istanbul, has conducted various Easter celebrations over the weekend with limited attendance, as Turkey is under a strict lockdown.
In Greece, the government kept pandemic restrictions in place through the Easter holiday while preparing to restart services for tourists next week. Many church services were held outdoors and those indoors required social distancing and mask wearing.
In Lebanon, a curfew was in effect to curb the spread of coronavirus and churches were allowed to hold Easter Mass and prayers only at 30 percent capacity.
In Egypt, home to about 10 million of Coptic Christians, churches were told to limit attendance to 25 percent or less.
In the Egyptian coastal city of Alexandria, Greek Orthodox Patriarch Theodore of Alexandria and all Africa prayed for the joy of Christ’s resurrection to “drive away all the clouds of the pandemic and bring back the smile on your face, the love in your heart, the optimism in our eyes.”
In Serbia, which has a fairly high rate of 50 vaccine doses administered per 100 people, believers are expected to attend church services.
RFE/RL’s Balkan Service reported concerns that churches may continue a tradition of sharing communion from a common spoon.
Last year, 90-year-old Serbian Orthodox Church Patriarch Irinej died from COVID-19 a month after leading a service for Metropolitan Amfilohije, the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Montenegro, who also died from the virus.
With reporting by AP, RFE/RL’s Balkan Service, Orthodox Times, and TASS
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A Russian LGBT activist and artist on May 1 announced a hunger strike to protest the proceedings of her closed-door trial on pornography charges.
Yulia Tsvetkova’s trial began on April 12 after a nearly 1 ½ year investigation, during which time she has been fined for spreading LGBT “propaganda” and put under house arrest in the city of Komsomolsk-on-Amur, in Russia’s Far East region.
Tsvetkova, 27, is charged with producing and distributing pornographic material for administering a page on social media called The Vagina Monologues showing abstract art of female genitalia.
The artist, an activist who draws women’s bodies, is known for her advocacy of LGBT issues.
Her trial, which has been repeatedly drawn out, is ostensibly being held behind closed doors because prosecutors need to show evidence in the form of artistic vagina images and drawings of women’s bodies.
In a Facebook post declaring a hunger strike, Tsvetkova wrote that the state’s “cowardly” handing of her case and ruining of her life amounted to “torture.”
She said the hunger strike would continue until the state could “be a man” and open the trial to the public and allow her to defend herself.
According to Amnesty International, the case against Tsvetkova amounts to political repression and “Kafkaesque absurdity.”
“A woman has been criminally charged with ‘producing pornography’ simply for drawing and publishing images of the female body and freely expressing her views through art,” Natalia Zviagina, Amnesty International’s Moscow Office Director, said ahead of her trial this month. “During this ordeal, Yulia has spent time under house arrest and twice been subjected to extortionate fines under the so-called ‘gay propaganda’ law.”
With reporting by RFE/RL’s Russian Service
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Aggression, in international politics, is commonly defined as the use of armed force against another sovereign state, not justified by self-defense or international authority. Any state being described as aggressive in foreign or international reporting, therefore, is almost by definition in the wrong.
It’s a word that seems easy to apply to the United States, which launched 81 foreign interventions between 1946 and 2000 alone. In the 21st century, the United States has attacked, invaded or occupied the sovereign states of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.
Despite the US record, Western corporate media overwhelmingly reserve the word “aggression” for official enemy nations—whether or not it’s warranted. In contrast, US behavior is almost never categorized as aggressive, thereby giving readers a misleading picture of the world.
The Hill (10/3/19)
Perhaps the most notable internationally aggressive act in recent memory was the Trump administration’s assassination of Iranian general and political leader Qassem Soleimani last year. Yet in its long and detailed report on the event, the Washington Post (1/4/20) managed to present Iran as the aggressor. The US was merely “choos[ing] this moment to explore an operation against the leader of Iran’s Quds Force, after tolerating Iranian aggression in the Persian Gulf for months,” in the Post’s words.
It also gave space to senior US officials to falsely claim Soleimani was aiming to carry out an “imminent” attack on hundreds of Americans. In fact, he was in Iraq for peace talks designed to bring an end to war between states in the region. The Iraqi prime minister revealed that he had invited Soleimani personally, and had asked for and received Washington’s blessing to host him. Trump instead used that information to kill him.
For months, media had been awash with stories, based on US officials’ proclamations, that Iranian aggression was just around the corner (e.g., Yahoo! News, 1/2/20; Reuters, 4/12/19; New York Times, 11/23/19; Washington Post, 6/22/19). The Hill (10/3/19) gave a retired general space to demand that we must “defend ourselves” by carrying out a “serious response” against Iran, who is “test[ing] our resolve with aggressive actions.”
New York Times (11/12/20)
Russia is another country constantly portrayed as aggressive. The New York Times (11/12/20) described a US fishing boat’s mix up with the Russian navy off the coast of Kamchatka as typical Russian aggression, complete with the headline, “Are We Getting Invaded?” The Military Times (6/26/20) worried that any reduction in US troops in Germany could “embolden Russian aggression.” And a headline from the Hill (11/14/19) claimed that “Putin’s Aggression Exposes Russia’s Decline.” In the same sentence that publicized a report advocating that NATO expand to take on China directly, the Wall Street Journal (12/1/20) warned of “Russian aggression.” Suffice to say, tooling up for an intercontinental war against another nuclear power was not framed as Western warmongering.
Other enemy states, such as China (New York Times, 10/6/20; CNBC, 8/3/20; Forbes, 3/26/21), North Korea (Atlantic, 11/23/10; CNN, 8/9/17; Associated Press, 3/8/21) and Venezuela (Wall Street Journal, 11/18/05; Fox News, 3/10/14; Daily Express, 9/30/19) are also routinely accused of or denounced for “aggression.”
Corporate media even present the Taliban’s actions in their own country against Western occupation troops as “aggression” (Guardian 7/26/06; CBS News, 11/27/13; Reuters, 3/26/21). The New York Times (11/24/20) recently worried about the Taliban’s “aggression on the battlefield,” while presenting the US—a country that invaded Afghanistan in 2001 and still has not left—as supposedly committed to the “peace process.”
Even as the US has been flying squadrons of nuclear bombers from North Dakota to Iran and back, each time in effect simulating dropping atomic bombs on the country, media have framed this as a “defensive move” (Politico, 12/30/20) meant to stop “Iranian aggression” (Defense One, 1/27/20) by “deter[ring] Iran from attacking American troops in the region” (New York Times, 12/30/20).
Forbes (3/26/21)
In February, President Joe Biden ordered an airstrike on a Syrian village against what the White House claimed were Iran-backed forces. The Department of Defense absurdly insisted that the attack was meant to “deescalate” the situation, a claim that was lamentably uncritically repeated in corporate media, with Politico (2/25/21) writing that “the strike was defensive in nature” and a response to previous attacks on US troops in Iraq. Needless to say, it did not question the legitimacy of American troops being stationed across the Middle East.
That the US, by definition, is always acting defensively and never aggressively is close to an iron law of journalism. The US attack on Southeast Asia is arguably the worst international crime since the end of World War II, causing some 3.8 million Vietnamese deaths alone. Yet in their seminal study of the media, Manufacturing Consent, Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky (Extra!, 12/87) were unable to find a single mention of a US “attack” on Vietnam. Instead, the war was commonly framed as the “defense” of South Vietnam from the Communist North.
Even decades later, US actions in Vietnam are still often described as a “defense” (e.g., Wall Street Journal, 4/29/05; Christian Science Monitor, 1/22/07; Politico, 10/10/15; Foreign Policy, 9/27/17). In a 2018 autopsy of the conflict headlined “What Went Wrong in Vietnam,” New Yorker staff writer Louis Menand (2/26/18) wrote that “our policy was to enable South Vietnam to defend itself” as the US “tried to prevent Vietnam from becoming a Communist state.” “Millions died in that struggle,” he adds, as if the perpetrators of the violence were unknown.
It was a similar story with the US invasion of Grenada in 1983, which was presented as a defense against “Soviet and Cuban aggression in the Western hemisphere” (San Diego Union-Tribune, 10/26/83).
US News (4/26/21)
There have only been three uses of the phrases “American aggression” or “US aggression” in the New York Times over the past year. All came in the mouths of Chinese officials, and in stories focusing on supposedly aggressive Chinese actions. For example, at the end of a long article warning about how China is “pressing its territorial claims aggressively” from the Himalayas to the South China Sea, in paragraph 28 the Times (6/26/20) noted that Beijing’s priority is “confronting what it considers American aggression in China’s neighborhood.” Meanwhile, two articles (10/5/20, 10/23/20) mention that Chinese disinformation calls the Korean War the “war to resist American aggression and aid Korea”. But these were written off as “visceral” and “pugnacious” “propaganda” by the Times.
Likewise, when the phrase “American aggression” appears at all in other leading publications, it is largely only in scare quotes or in the mouths of groups long demonized in corporate media, such as the Houthi rebels in Yemen (Washington Post, 2/5/21), the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad (Associated Press, 2/26/21) or Saddam Hussein’s generals (CNN, 3/3/03).
The concept of US belligerence is simply not being discussed seriously in the corporate press, leading to the conclusion that the word “aggression” in newspeak means little more than “actions we don’t like carried out by enemy states.”
This post was originally published on CounterSpin.
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Aggression, in international politics, is commonly defined as the use of armed force against another sovereign state, not justified by self-defense or international authority. Any state being described as aggressive in foreign or international reporting, therefore, is almost by definition in the wrong.
It’s a word that seems easy to apply to the United States, which launched 81 foreign interventions between 1946 and 2000 alone. In the 21st century, the United States has attacked, invaded or occupied the sovereign states of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.
Despite the US record, Western corporate media overwhelmingly reserve the word “aggression” for official enemy nations—whether or not it’s warranted. In contrast, US behavior is almost never categorized as aggressive, thereby giving readers a misleading picture of the world.
The Hill (10/3/19)
Perhaps the most notable internationally aggressive act in recent memory was the Trump administration’s assassination of Iranian general and political leader Qassem Soleimani last year. Yet in its long and detailed report on the event, the Washington Post (1/4/20) managed to present Iran as the aggressor. The US was merely “choos[ing] this moment to explore an operation against the leader of Iran’s Quds Force, after tolerating Iranian aggression in the Persian Gulf for months,” in the Post’s words.
It also gave space to senior US officials to falsely claim Soleimani was aiming to carry out an “imminent” attack on hundreds of Americans. In fact, he was in Iraq for peace talks designed to bring an end to war between states in the region. The Iraqi prime minister revealed that he had invited Soleimani personally, and had asked for and received Washington’s blessing to host him. Trump instead used that information to kill him.
For months, media had been awash with stories, based on US officials’ proclamations, that Iranian aggression was just around the corner (e.g., Yahoo! News, 1/2/20; Reuters, 4/12/19; New York Times, 11/23/19; Washington Post, 6/22/19). The Hill (10/3/19) gave a retired general space to demand that we must “defend ourselves” by carrying out a “serious response” against Iran, who is “test[ing] our resolve with aggressive actions.”
New York Times (11/12/20)
Russia is another country constantly portrayed as aggressive. The New York Times (11/12/20) described a US fishing boat’s mix up with the Russian navy off the coast of Kamchatka as typical Russian aggression, complete with the headline, “Are We Getting Invaded?” The Military Times (6/26/20) worried that any reduction in US troops in Germany could “embolden Russian aggression.” And a headline from the Hill (11/14/19) claimed that “Putin’s Aggression Exposes Russia’s Decline.” In the same sentence that publicized a report advocating that NATO expand to take on China directly, the Wall Street Journal (12/1/20) warned of “Russian aggression.” Suffice to say, tooling up for an intercontinental war against another nuclear power was not framed as Western warmongering.
Other enemy states, such as China (New York Times, 10/6/20; CNBC, 8/3/20; Forbes, 3/26/21), North Korea (Atlantic, 11/23/10; CNN, 8/9/17; Associated Press, 3/8/21) and Venezuela (Wall Street Journal, 11/18/05; Fox News, 3/10/14; Daily Express, 9/30/19) are also routinely accused of or denounced for “aggression.”
Corporate media even present the Taliban’s actions in their own country against Western occupation troops as “aggression” (Guardian 7/26/06; CBS News, 11/27/13; Reuters, 3/26/21). The New York Times (11/24/20) recently worried about the Taliban’s “aggression on the battlefield,” while presenting the US—a country that invaded Afghanistan in 2001 and still has not left—as supposedly committed to the “peace process.”
Even as the US has been flying squadrons of nuclear bombers from North Dakota to Iran and back, each time in effect simulating dropping atomic bombs on the country, media have framed this as a “defensive move” (Politico, 12/30/20) meant to stop “Iranian aggression” (Defense One, 1/27/20) by “deter[ring] Iran from attacking American troops in the region” (New York Times, 12/30/20).
Forbes (3/26/21)
In February, President Joe Biden ordered an airstrike on a Syrian village against what the White House claimed were Iran-backed forces. The Department of Defense absurdly insisted that the attack was meant to “deescalate” the situation, a claim that was lamentably uncritically repeated in corporate media, with Politico (2/25/21) writing that “the strike was defensive in nature” and a response to previous attacks on US troops in Iraq. Needless to say, it did not question the legitimacy of American troops being stationed across the Middle East.
That the US, by definition, is always acting defensively and never aggressively is close to an iron law of journalism. The US attack on Southeast Asia is arguably the worst international crime since the end of World War II, causing some 3.8 million Vietnamese deaths alone. Yet in their seminal study of the media, Manufacturing Consent, Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky (Extra!, 12/87) were unable to find a single mention of a US “attack” on Vietnam. Instead, the war was commonly framed as the “defense” of South Vietnam from the Communist North.
Even decades later, US actions in Vietnam are still often described as a “defense” (e.g., Wall Street Journal, 4/29/05; Christian Science Monitor, 1/22/07; Politico, 10/10/15; Foreign Policy, 9/27/17). In a 2018 autopsy of the conflict headlined “What Went Wrong in Vietnam,” New Yorker staff writer Louis Menand (2/26/18) wrote that “our policy was to enable South Vietnam to defend itself” as the US “tried to prevent Vietnam from becoming a Communist state.” “Millions died in that struggle,” he adds, as if the perpetrators of the violence were unknown.
It was a similar story with the US invasion of Grenada in 1983, which was presented as a defense against “Soviet and Cuban aggression in the Western hemisphere” (San Diego Union-Tribune, 10/26/83).
US News (4/26/21)
There have only been three uses of the phrases “American aggression” or “US aggression” in the New York Times over the past year. All came in the mouths of Chinese officials, and in stories focusing on supposedly aggressive Chinese actions. For example, at the end of a long article warning about how China is “pressing its territorial claims aggressively” from the Himalayas to the South China Sea, in paragraph 28 the Times (6/26/20) noted that Beijing’s priority is “confronting what it considers American aggression in China’s neighborhood.” Meanwhile, two articles (10/5/20, 10/23/20) mention that Chinese disinformation calls the Korean War the “war to resist American aggression and aid Korea”. But these were written off as “visceral” and “pugnacious” “propaganda” by the Times.
Likewise, when the phrase “American aggression” appears at all in other leading publications, it is largely only in scare quotes or in the mouths of groups long demonized in corporate media, such as the Houthi rebels in Yemen (Washington Post, 2/5/21), the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad (Associated Press, 2/26/21) or Saddam Hussein’s generals (CNN, 3/3/03).
The concept of US belligerence is simply not being discussed seriously in the corporate press, leading to the conclusion that the word “aggression” in newspeak means little more than “actions we don’t like carried out by enemy states.”
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Russia has barred eight officials from EU countries from entering the country in retaliation for sanctions imposed on Russian citizens by Brussels.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said those banned included European Commission Vice President Vera Jourova, and David Sassoli, the president of the European parliament.
The EU imposed sanctions last month on two Russians accused of persecuting gay and lesbian people in the southern Russian region of Chechnya.
The EU also imposed sanctions on four senior Russian officials close to President Vladimir Putin the same month.
Based on reporting by Reuters and AFP
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Richard Kruspe, the guitarist for the German rock group Rammstein, has expressed his support for a former associate of jailed Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny after he was handed a prison sentence for sharing the band’s video online in 2014.
Kruspe wrote on Instagram late on April 29 that he is aware of the case of Andrei Borovikov from Russia’s northwestern city of Arkhangelsk, who was sentenced earlier that day to 2 1/2 years in prison for reposting the music video to Rammstein’s song Pussy on VKontakte, a popular Russian social network similar to Facebook..
“I very much regret that Borovikov has been sentenced to imprisonment for this. The harshness of this sentence is shocking. Rammstein have always stood up for freedom as a guaranteed basic right of all people,” Kruspe’s Instagram statement said.
A court in Arkhangelsk on April 29 found Borovikov guilty of “distributing pornography” by sharing the video in question in 2014.
Amnesty International said Borovikov — a former coordinator of Navalny’s Arkhangelsk regional headquarters — was being “punished solely for his activism, not his musical taste.”
The music video posted by Borovikov came to the attention of authorities six months ago when a former volunteer at his office informed the police. Amnesty International said it suspected the volunteer was employed as an agent provocateur to help fabricate the case.
The prosecution ordered “a sexological and cultural examination” of the clip, before experts found it to be of “pornographic nature” and “not containing artistic value.”
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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The regional campaign offices of jailed opposition politician Aleksei Navalny have been placed on the Russian financial regulator’s list of organizations involved in “terrorism and extremism.”
The network appeared on an updated list maintained by Russia’s financial monitoring service, Rosfinmonitoring, on April 30, a day after the network of Navalny’s regional offices was disbanded.
Leonid Volkov, the head of the network, said that a crackdown on the group had made it “impossible” to continue operating.
This is a developing story.
More to follow.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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The U.S. Embassy in Moscow says it is reducing the number of consular services it will provide because of restrictions Russia has imposed over the hiring of local staff.
“Effective May 12, U.S. Embassy Moscow will reduce consular services offered to include only emergency U.S. citizen services and a very limited number of age-out and life or death emergency immigrant visas,” the embassy said in a statement on April 30.
“These service reductions are necessary due to the Russian government’s April 23 notification of its intention to prohibit U.S. Mission Russia from employing foreign nationals in any capacity. Non-immigrant visa processing for non-diplomatic travel will cease.”
President Vladimir Putin last week signed a law to limit the number of local staff working at foreign diplomatic missions and other agencies and ordered the Russian government to draw up a list of “unfriendly” states that will be subject to the restrictions.
Washington and Moscow have entered a new phase of heightened tensions, with the White House announcing punishing sanctions over cyberattacks, election interference, and threats against U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.
Further souring the mood has been the issue of the health and jailing of Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny, Russia’s backing of separatists in eastern Ukraine and its forcible annexation of Crimea, and allegations of Russian involvement in a deadly explosion at a munitions depot in the Czech Republic in 2014.
“We regret that the actions of the Russian government have forced us to reduce our consular work force by 75 percent, and will endeavor to offer to U.S. citizens as many services as possible,” the U.S. Embassy statement said, adding that the provision of emergency services in Russia may be “delayed or limited” because the ability of staff to travel outside Russia had been constrained.
It also urged U.S. citizens in Russia to heed a June 15 deadline set by the Russian government when a temporary extension to visas, residence permits, and immigration documents expires.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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YAKUTSK, Russia — A court hearing has started in Russia’s Siberian region of Yakutia to decide on the forced “treatment” in a closed psychiatric institution of a shaman who has been stopped by authorities several times in his attempts to march to Moscow by foot “to drive President Vladimir Putin out of the Kremlin.”
Aleksandr Gabyshev’s sister, Kyaiyylana Zakharova, told RFE/RL that the hearing started on April 30. Gabyshev’s lawyer, Olga Timofeyeva, said that the hearing may last several days.
Timofeyeva added that state experts said at the hearing that her client poses an “extreme danger” to society and “needs to be forcibly treated in a specialized hospital under permanent supervision.”
About two dozen supporters of Gabyshev gathered in front of the courthouse in the regional capital, Yakutia. They were not allowed to attend the hearing as it is being held behind closed doors.
In March, the court found Gabyshev “mentally unfit” and said he should be placed in a psychiatric clinic. The ruling was challenged by Gabyshev’s lawyers and supporters, who say it is an attempt to silence dissent.
In February, police launched a probe against Gabyshev, accusing him of a “violent act against a police officer” when he was forcibly taken from his home to a psychiatric clinic in late January.
Police said at the time that the incident between Gabyshev and a law enforcement officer took place on January 27, less than three weeks after the shaman had announced his plan to resume his trek to the Russian capital to drive Putin out of the Kremlin.
In April, Zakharova told RFE/RL that her brother’s health had dramatically deteriorated, most likely, she said, due to unspecified injections he had received while in the psychiatric clinic.
Gabyshev first made headlines in March 2019 when he called Putin “evil” and announced that he had started a march to Moscow to drive the Russian president out of office.
He then walked more than 2,000 kilometers, speaking with hundreds of Russians along the way.
As his notoriety rose, videos of his conversations with people were posted on social media and attracted millions of views.
In July 2019, when Gabyshev reached the city of Chita, he led a 700-strong rally under the slogan “Russia without Putin!”
At the time, Gabyshev said, “God told me that Putin is not human but a demon and has ordered me to drive him out.”
His march was halted when he was detained in the region of Buryatia later in September 2019 and placed in psychiatric clinic in Yakutia for several months against his will.
His forced stay in a clinic was equated by many with a Soviet-era practice used to muzzle dissent.
Shamans have served as healers and diviners in Siberia for centuries. During the Soviet era, the mystics were harshly repressed, but in isolated parts of Siberia they are now regaining prominence.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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MOSCOW — Ivan Pavlov, the lawyer for jailed Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), has been detained for allegedly disclosing classified information relating to an ongoing investigation.
The Team 29 lawyers’ group that Pavlov leads said on Telegram early on April 29 that Federal Security Service (FSB) officers detained Pavlov after searching his hotel room in Moscow, adding that the St. Petersburg home of the group’s IT specialist, Igor Dorfman, was also searched.
The TASS news agency cited a source in law enforcement structures confirming that Pavlov was detained.
According to Pavlov’s colleagues, he is accused of disclosing classified information relating to an ongoing investigation, an offense punishable by up to three months in jail.
Pavlov and his team specialize in high treason, espionage, and cases related to state security. He is a lawyer of former journalist Ivan Safronov, who was charged with treason and was scheduled to attend a court hearing in Moscow on April 30 that would decide on an extension of his pretrial detention.
On April 29, Pavlov represented Navalny’s FBK at a Moscow court hearing over a prosecutor’s request to label the group an extremist organization.
Pavlov also defended physicist Viktor Kudryavtsev, who was charged with high treason. Kudryavtsev died of cancer on April 29 at the age of 78 as his trial was pending.
A day before his detainment, Pavlov accused the FSB of causing Kudryavtsev’s death, saying that the 14 months spent by Kudryavtsev in pretrial detention “completely damaged his health.” He added that Kudryavtsev’s case is “an example of how secret services are literally killing Russian science in general.”
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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The Russian state’s reputation is taking some hits abroad, with rejections of its Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine, mounting evidence of nefarious acts by its military intelligence agency across Europe, and anger over a buildup of military forces that sent tensions skyrocketing. At home, it’s hitting out hard at imprisoned Kremlin opponent Aleksei Navalny’s already marginalized organizations, seemingly seeking to annihilate a force that President Vladimir Putin fears ahead of parliamentary elections in September.
These actions have been accompanied by what one analyst called “increasingly unhinged” rhetoric from top Kremlin allies: The parliament speaker claimed without evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic was unleashed in a leak from a U.S.-backed lab, while the longtime foreign minister was called out for presenting Russians with a “false choice” between personal well-being and national pride.
Here are some of the key developments in Russia over the past week and some of the takeaways going forward.
Crossing The Line
In his annual speech to the nation last week, President Vladimir Putin growlingly warned foreign countries not to cross Russia’s “red lines” — without stating where those lines lie, or much of anything else about them aside from their color.
At home, in the months before Putin’s speech and the week and a half since, his government has been crossing what its opponents, rights activists, and a substantial number of Russians may see as their own red lines.
Specifically, the state, having imprisoned its vocal opponent Aleksei Navalny earlier this year based on a parole-violation claim that was widely seen as a show of clumsy legal acrobatics — he was faulted for failing to report to the authorities but he had been in Berlin at the time, recovering from a weapons-grade nerve-agent poisoning he blames on Putin — took aim at the anti-corruption crusader’s organizations nationwide.
Russian President Vladimir Putin listens to the national anthem after his annual state-of-the-nation address in Moscow on April 21.
Prosecutors and courts are speeding through a process that seems likely to end soon with Navalny’s three main organizations — the Moscow-based Anti-Corruption Foundations (FBK), which has authored numerous reports revealing evidence of profligacy and graft in the highest circles around the Kremlin; the lesser-known Citizens’ Rights Defense Foundation (FZPG); and his network of regional offices across Russia, the meat and bones of an opposition party that is not recognized by the state — outlawed as extremist groups.
This outcome would clearly mark a major step in what Kremlin critics say is Putin’s campaign to both sideline Navalny — to push him to the political margins and beyond — and to silence him.
The pressure on Navalny has intensified greatly in the past eight months, starting with his poisoning in Siberia last August. But it goes back at least as far as December 2011, when Navalny helped lead protests prompted by anger over evidence of election fraud that benefited the Kremlin-controlled United Russia party and dismay at Putin’s plans to return to the presidency in 2012 after four years as prime minister.
In 2013, Navalny ran for Moscow mayor and came in second to the Kremlin-backed incumbent, with almost one-third of the vote. A prison sentence on financial-crimes charges he contends were fabricated was suspended to allow him to campaign — but that was the last election he contested. He sought to challenge Putin in the 2018 presidential election, setting up regional campaign headquarters across Russia to support the bid, but was barred from the ballot due to a conviction in a separate fraud case in 2013.
It is that constellation of offices that prosecutors are seeking to label extremist, along with the FBK and the FZPG — and that the Navalny aide who heads them, Leonid Volkov, announced on April 29 had been forced to disband — though he added that some would now operate independently.
“This is a punch in the gut, a blow to the heart itself,” Volkov said.
Putin’s main motive, at least in the short term, may be the desire to avoid a body blow — or even a scrape — in the elections to the lower parliament house, the State Duma, in September. United Russia is deeply unpopular, and Navalny has exposed weaknesses in the Kremlin’s electoral strategies with his Smart Voting initiative, which has helped defeat Kremlin favorites in several local elections in the past few years.
‘Incompetent Rule’
Longer-term, Putin may be determined to clear the field — or to clear Navalny off the field — ahead of 2024, when the next presidential election is due. Last year, he pushed through a raft of constitutional amendments that many critics saw as an ineffective smokescreen for a single amendment: the one that lets him run for a six-year term in 2024 and again in 2030, a full three decades after his first election, if he chooses.
Navalny, who is usually on the wrong side of verdicts, delivered a judgment on Putin’s first two decades in power as president or prime minister during a court hearing on April 29.
“Your emperor has no clothes, and millions of people are already shouting about it — not just one little boy,” he told the judge by video link from prison, looking rail-gaunt in his first appearance on camera since he ended a hunger strike that his doctors said would have killed him very soon. “Twenty years of incompetent rule have led to this result: There’s a crown that’s slipping off his head, there are lies on television, we have wasted trillions of rubles and still our country is sliding into poverty.”
Navalny’s court appearance is hard to explain, in a way: He is already serving a 2 1/2-year prison term, so why another hearing? Answer: It’s another case, another part of what Navalny and his opponents say is a baseless bid to — while physically blunting his challenge by separating him from society and shuttering his organizations — paint him as an unpatriotic enemy of the people and a puppet used by Washington and the West to undermine Russia.
The court was hearing Navalny’s appeal of his February conviction on a charge of defaming a World War II veteran — a politically and emotionally charged issue in countries that used to part of the Soviet Union, which lost an estimated 27 million people in what Russians call the Great Patriotic War.
Navalny, who had been charged after he mocked people who appeared in a Kremlin-organized promotional video involving the war, which Putin often uses as a rallying cry for patriotism, lost the appeal, as expected.
Meanwhile, Navalny’s backers reported that in examining the prosecution’s case in the extremism allegation, they discovered that Navalny, Volkov, and another senior associate are facing a criminal investigation on suspicion of creating an NGO that “infringes on the personality and rights of citizens.”
Details of the accusation were unclear, but the investigation came under a statute that Putin, last May, added to a list of crimes that bars anyone convicted from running for public office for five years — a period that would cover the 2024 election.
But wait, there’s more “Navalny crackdown news,” as one journalist put it: Also on April 29, a court in the city of Arkhangelsk convicted a former associate of the opposition leader of “distributing pornography,” seven years after he shared a video by the German rock band Rammstein on the Internet in 2014.
Amnesty International has described the case as “utterly absurd,” a statement that exemplifies expressions of outrage abroad over the plight of Navalny and his supporters, which has further damaged already severely strained ties between Moscow and the West.
Explosions And Expulsions
And as the legal onslaught rumbled on in Russia’s courts, the European Parliament on April 29 passed a resolution threatening action against Moscow over its treatment of Navalny, its recent military buildup in Crimea and near the border with eastern Ukraine, and what the lawmakers described as “Russian attacks in the Czech Republic.”
The latter was a reference to a snowballing dispute that erupted after the Czech government accused the Russian military intelligence agency known as the GRU of being behind an October 2014 explosion in the town of Vrbetice that set off 50 metric tons of stored ammunition and killed two people.
Aleksandr Mishkin (left) and Anatoly Chepiga
The accusations, based on Czech intelligence findings, focus on the same two purported GRU operatives — Aleksandr Mishkin and Anatoly Chepiga — whom Britain says carried out a poison attack on former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury, England, in March 2018.
The dispute has led Prague and Moscow to trade large-scale diplomatic expulsions and is reverberating in several European countries, including Bulgaria, which is investigating six Russian citizens suspected of involvement in a series of blasts at four weapons and armament facilities in that country in the past decade.
Alongside traditional diplomacy, Russia has also suffered setbacks in vaccine diplomacy — its effort to promote the Sputnik V coronavirus shot in countries around the world, even as it struggles to get its own citizens vaccinated.
Earlier in April, Slovakia reported problems with the doses it received, saying they differed from those being reviewed by a European regulator and also apparently from those whose testing resulted in a positive review from the respected medical journal The Lancet.
And on April 27, the health regulator in hard-hit Brazil rejected calls by state governors struggling with a deadly second wave to import the Russian-made vaccine, citing what it said were “inherent risks,” serious defects, and a lack of evidence guaranteeing that it is safe and effective.
The next day, the European Union accused Russia and China of conducting “state-sponsored disinformation” campaigns denigrating Western-developed coronavirus vaccines while promoting their own, suggesting that Moscow and Beijing had adopted a Cold War-style “zero-sum game logic” on a vital health-care matter.
‘Increasingly Unhinged’
Russia, at least from some quarters close to the Kremlin, countered with ire and more disinformation. State Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, a former Putin deputy chief of staff responsible for domestic politics, recycled a baseless claim that the source of the COVID-19 pandemic was a leak from a U.S.-backed lab.
Volodin also said, erroneously, that worldwide more people have been killed by the coronavirus than had died in World War II. The global COVID death toll is about 3.2 million.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, meanwhile, faced criticism for remarks in which he took aim at “liberal views” and suggested that Russians who have criticized the government and his ministry for aggravating relations with the West are selfish ingrates who care too much about themselves and too little about their country.
Foreign policy analyst Vladimir Frolov said the remarks were an example of “increasingly unhinged statements” from Lavrov, who has been foreign minister since 2004 and is the longest-serving minister in Putin’s government.
In an article published on April 28, Yelena Chernenko, a prominent journalist with the daily Kommersant, accused Lavrov of presenting what the headline called “a false choice between well-being and national pride.”
“I see no contradiction at all in wanting to live well and experiencing patriotic feelings,” Chernenko wrote. “After all, the better citizens live, the more reason they have to be proud of their country.”
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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WASHINGTON — The U.S. State Department says press freedom in Russia is under growing threat as authorities slap RFE/RL and other media organizations with restrictive “foreign agent” labels and fines.
Speaking at a press briefing on April 29, State Department spokesperson Ned Price said the Russian government is increasingly “intolerant of outside perspectives” as it moves to quash any dissent in the country.
The comments come as Russia’s media regulator Roskomnadzor has hit RFE/RL’s Russian-language services with fines of nearly $1 million in recent months for hundreds of violations of the “foreign agent” law.
In its latest salvo against independent media, the Russian government designated the Latvia-based Meduza as a “foreign agent,” taking aim at a top Russian news source.
“We’ve made clear that Russia’s actions against RFE/RL and other media organizations labeled as so-called ‘foreign agents’ reflect significant intolerance and oppressive restrictions,” Price said.
First passed in 2012 and expanded several times since, the “foreign agent” law gives authorities the power to brand nongovernmental organizations, human rights groups, and news media deemed to receive foreign funding for political activity as “foreign agents.”
Among other things, the law requires news organizations that receive foreign funding to label content within Russia as being produced by a “foreign agent.” The mandatory 24-word announcement must be twice as large as the font size used for the headline of the article. For video materials, the text must occupy at least 20 percent of the screen and be shown for at least 15 seconds.
The targeting of RFE/RL has raised concerns the Russian government may be moving to shutter RFE/RL’s operations inside Russia and force its Russian-language services and Current Time, the network run by RFE/RL in cooperation with VOA, out of the country.
“Should the Russian government continue to move to forcibly shut down RFE/RL, we will respond,” Price said, without specifying what action could be taken.
An independent nonprofit corporation that receives funding from the U.S. Congress, RFE/RL refuses to comply with the “foreign agent” law.
RFE/RL President Jamie Fly said, “RFE/RL will not be put in a position of undermining freedom of speech and journalistic integrity. We will not allow Roskomnadzor and the Kremlin to make editorial decisions about how we engage our audiences in Russia.”
In recent weeks, Secretary of State Antony Blinken has raised the issue of RFE/RL with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov.
“We’ve been very seized with the RFE/RL situation with Russia,” Blinken said on April 28 at a roundtable discussion on world press freedom.
“We’re doing everything we can to be supportive and to find a good way forward. Ultimately, Moscow is doing what Moscow will do, but we’re trying to make sure that at least in some ways we can be supportive and helpful, even if our advocacy falls on deaf ears in Moscow itself,” Blinken said.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will visit Ukraine next week amid heightened tensions with Russia over a military buildup in the region.
CBS News reported Blinken confirmed the trip in an interview to be aired on its 60 Minutes program on May 2.
A Russian troop buildup in recent weeks near Ukraine’s border and in occupied Crimea has raised concerns of an escalation of the conflict in Kyiv and in the West. But on April 23, Moscow announced that it had started pulling back its forces.
“There are more forces amassed on the border with Ukraine than any time since 2014, when Russia actually invaded,” Blinken said in an excerpt of the interview released by CBS.
Moscow said its troop buildup was a military drill and dismissed Western concerns as involvement in a sovereign manner.
Blinken said the United States does not know Russian President Vladimir Putin’s intentions.
“There are any number of things that he could do or choose not to do. What we have seen in the last few days is apparently a decision to pull back some of those forces and we’ve seen some of them, in fact, start to pull back,” Blinken said in the CBS interview.
The developments come against the backdrop of a cease-fire from last summer unravelling, with deadly clashes increasing between Ukrainian forces and Russia-backed separatists in a war that has killed more than 13,000 people since April 2014.
Around 30 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since the start of the year compared with 50 in all of last year, while the separatists have reported at least 20 military deaths.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Thousands of Czechs have rallied in Prague against President Milos Zeman, calling for his removal from office and condemning what opponents say are his pro-Russia views.
The rally in Wenceslas Square on April 29 comes as the Czech government has accused Russia’s GRU military intelligence of being behind a fatal ammunition depot explosion in 2014.
In response, the Czech government announced the expulsion of Russian diplomats it considered to be spies, setting off a string of tit-for-tat moves that have brought relations between Prague and Moscow to a nadir.
Zeman, whose role is largely ceremonial, appeared to contradict the government in a televised address to the nation on April 25, saying that are two theories about what caused the explosion of a munition depot near the eastern Czech town of Vrbetice in 2014.
He said that one version of events is that Russian intelligence was involved in the deadly explosion. The other version, he said, was that the blast was caused by inexpert handling of ammunition.
Zeman is circulating “the same fairy tales as the Russian disinformation pages and Russian propaganda,” said Benjamin Roll, head of the group A Million Moments for Democracy that organized the protest police estimated at 10,000 people.
The protesters demand the Senate bring treason charges against Zeman.
Slovakia, Romania, and Baltic states have also ejected Russian diplomats in solidarity with the Czech Republic, while Bulgaria leveled its own accusation at Russia over a series of blasts at its weapons and armament facilities over the past 10 years.
Sofia is also linking Russia to a murder attempt against an arms dealer and two other Bulgarian citizens.
Russia has denied any involvement in the blasts.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Four years ago, a court in the Russian Far Eastern city of Blagoveshchensk watched Kill The Cosmonauts — a satirical music video that proposed murdering space adventurers for “climbing toward heaven”– and was not amused.
The court found that the video, by a hardcore punk group called the Ensemble of Christ the Savior and Crude Mother Earth, constituted “extremist material.” It banned the video, on the basis of a 2002 Russian law, and added it to a federal blacklist of prohibited materials.
“It is hard to imagine that the calls…contained in the text could be taken seriously even by the most radical audience,” the SOVA Center, a Russian research organization, said in a 2018 report that documented how the law was being misused.
As of April 29, that blacklist of materials considered to be extremist includes nearly 5,200 items, including translations of the Bible, videos made by a splinter group of the Russian Orthodox Church, and Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf.
If indications are correct, in the coming days a Moscow court will add another organization to the list of “extremist” groups under Russian law: anti-corruption crusader Aleksei Navalny and the network of activist groups that have turned into a major challenge for President Vladimir Putin’s government.
Such an order would effectively order the organization out of existence, Navalny’s allies and outside experts said.
No Concise Definition
Russian authorities’ turn to the ” extremism ” law in their yearslong struggle with Navalny has again brought the measure into sharp focus from rights groups to legal experts who say it is sweepingly ambiguous, possibly by design: a dragnet to be used against anyone deemed a threat for any reason.
Moreover, the law itself, while stipulating what qualifies as extremism, does not concisely define what it is in the first place. Instead, it merely lists a series of offenses that would fall under the law; for example, distribution of extremist materials, preparation of extremist acts, and incitement of hatred against religious or ethnic groups. The list also includes criticism of government officials and politicians, and, more recently, public questioning of Russia’s territorial integrity.
“Anti-extremism has two meanings in Russia: one legal, one political,” said Aleksandr Verkhovsky, the longtime director of the SOVA Center.
Since first passed 19 years ago, he told RFE/RL, “the law has changed, there’ve been lots of amendments, and it’s become significantly much harsher.”
Over the years, Navalny and his Anti-Corruption Foundation have spearheaded a string of scathing, and eye-popping, investigations into government corruption, targeting some of Putin’s closest allies. His most popular one to date, documenting an opulent Black Sea mansion purportedly built for Putin, is among the most watched Russian-language videos on YouTube.
He’s also organized so-called Smart Voting campaigns nationwide, initiatives that aim to sway disaffected voters and siphon votes away from candidates for the dominant, and deeply unpopular, ruling party, United Russia.
In the current case against Navalny, which is expected to result in his organizations being closed down, prosecutors charged that they were “engaged in creating conditions for destabilizing the social and sociopolitical situation under the guise of their liberal slogans.”
If upheld, the ruling would result in anyone found to be a member of such an “extremist” organization facing up to 12 years’ in prison. Additionally, giving money to such an organization could also result in up to 10 years in jail, and anyone seeking to use the organizations’ logos, banners, or symbols could be banned from running for elected office.
For his part, Navalny, who returned to Russia in January following months of recuperation from exposure to a powerful nerve agent, has his own individual legal problems: He has been ordered to serve about 2 1/2 years in prison for allegedly violating parole conditions. He and his supporters say the case is trumped up, aimed at keeping him behind bars.
Religious Targets
The first law on the Russian books regarding the issue was passed in 2002, the Federal Law on Countering Extremist Activity, which is the main basis for such cases. Other provisions providing for various punishments — misdemeanors or felonies — exist in various other Russian laws as well.
The measure was specifically aimed at terrorism; it was passed at a time when authorities were determined to end all separatist activity in the North Caucasus — and at a time when terrorist attacks in Moscow and elsewhere were becoming more frequent.
Islamic terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda were the main targets of the legislation, as were fundamentalist Islamic groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir and the missionary organization Tabligh.
After a series of anti-government protests in 2011-12, protests that were organized in part by Navalny, the government began to turn the extremist legislation against other religious groups, including, most prominently, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who were labeled extremist in a 2017 Supreme Court ruling. More than 250 members of the group have been jailed on extremist-related charges.
“Russia’s anti-extremism legislation has remained vague and susceptible to being arbitrarily weaponized by local authorities,” Jarrod Lopes, a U.S.-based spokesman for the Jehovah’s Witnesses, told RFE/RL. “Russian authorities are making a mockery of the rule of law — both international human rights law as well as Russia’s own constitution, which protects religious freedom.”
But the anti-extremism provisions have also been used against other secular targets. In 2006, a journalist was convicted for publishing statements by Chechen separatist leaders. More famously, the provision on inciting religious hatred served as the basis for the criminal conviction of the performance-art group Pussy Riot after they performed a song criticizing Russian clergy in 2012.
In 2019, a Moscow university student who posted a series of political monologues on YouTube was convicted and given a suspended sentence for inciting extremism.
New Territory
In 2020, the law was amended again to add another item to the list of “extremist activity” — this time to include anyone who questions Russia’s territorial integrity, or rhetoric in support of a region’s secession. That provision appeared to be linked specifically to Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014, a hugely popular move among many Russians.
“Putin has consistently created laws to serve his purposes,” said Maksim Trudolyubov, a former Moscow newspaper columnist who now edits the Kennan Institute’s Russia File.
“This time it’s expanding an existing law — that is conveniently broad — into new territory. The tactic is not new. He’s suspended his Ukraine brinkmanship for now. So, he looks reasonable to his counterparts. He is going after domestic ‘threats’ now,” he told RFE/RL. “Apparently, [Navalny] is a designated threat at this given moment.”
Verkhovsky, of the SOVA Center, argued that the law has been properly applied in many instances of clear extremist activity.
In 2002, when it was first written, it’s likely [lawmakers] didn’t anticipate that it would be used against political groups,” he said.
The problem now, he said, is not only the danger of how the law is defined, but the willingness of authorities to use it against a wider group of people, Navalny, or others — particularly when United Russia’s approval ratings are at record lows ahead of parliamentary elections scheduled for the fall.
“It’s very difficult, and we have elections coming up, and the authorities are nervous, and when they’re nervous they start wielding more and more oppressive measures,” he told RFE/RL.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Aleksei Navalny, a prominent Russian opposition leader who has been jailed since January, issued a scathing assessment of President Vladimir Putin on April 29. Navalny spoke at an appeal hearing for a case in which he was found guilty of defaming a World War II veteran. It was his first appearance since his three-week hunger strike, which he called off last week amid reports that his health was failing.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.