Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny was detained at the passport control desk on arrival at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport on January 17. He had returned after six months in Germany being treated for a near-fatal poisoning which, according to extensive evidence presented by Bellingcat and other Western media, was carried out on Kremlin orders.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Russian opposition figure Aleksei Navalny has left Berlin for Moscow, despite the Russian authorities’ stated intention to arrest him and potentially jail him for years.
Navalny’s flight with the Russian airline Pobeda on January 17 is scheduled to land at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport at 7:20 p.m. local time.
Journalists at Vnukovo have noted a large police presence, while authorities have urged Russians not to come out to greet Navalny.
The outspoken Kremlin critic has received months of medical treatment in Germany for a poisoning that he has blamed on the Russian authorities. He fell ill in August 2020 on a flight from Tomsk to Moscow after being poisoned by a Novichok-type nerve agent
His return sets the stage for a potentially dramatic showdown between the Kremlin and Navalny, one of President Vladimir Putin’s most vocal foes.
Late last month, the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) demanded Navalny return immediately from Germany or face jail in Russia for violating the terms of a suspended prison sentence relating to a 2014 fraud conviction and for evading criminal inspectors.
Navalny denies all wrongdoing in that case and says that it, like several other criminal cases filed against him in recent years, is retribution for his anti-Kremlin political activity.
According to court documents, he could face a prison term of as much as 3 1/2 years.
The OVD-Info group that tracks political arrests said police detained an activist at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport before Navalny’s arrival.
Navalny’s supporters plan to meet him at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport. About 2,000 people have used a Facebook page to say they plan to be there, with another 6,000 expressing an interest. Pro-Kremlin activists are also expected to turn up.
WATCH: Showdown In Moscow: Navalny Risks Jail With Return To Russia
Security measures at the airport have been heightened, with several prisoner-transport trucks parked outside.
The airport has said it will not allow media inside, citing COVID-19 restrictions.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Russian opposition figure Aleksei Navalny is due to fly back to Russia on January 17 from Germany despite Russian authorities’ stated desire to arrest him and potentially jail him for years.
Navalny is expected to fly to Moscow from Berlin, where he has received months of medical treatment for a poisoning that he has blamed on Russian authorities.
The outspoken Kremlin critic announced on January 13 that he would return to Russia despite having received a notice that the country’s Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) would seek his arrest.
His return sets the stage for a potentially dramatic new showdown between the Kremlin and Navalny, one of President Vladimir Putin’s most outspoken foes.
Late last month, FSIN demanded Navalny return immediately from Germany or face jail in Russia for violating the terms of a suspended prison sentence relating to a 2014 fraud conviction and of evading criminal inspectors.
According to court documents, he could face a jail sentence of as much as 3 1/2 years.
“The question ‘to return or not’ never stood before me as I didn’t leave on my own. I ended up in Germany in an intensive care box. On January 17, Sunday, I will return home on a Pobeda flight,” he said in a tweet on January 13, referring to a Russian airline whose name means Victory.
His supporters plan to meet him at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport. About 2,000 people have used a Facebook page to say they plan to be there, with another 6,000 expressing an interest. Pro-Kremlin activists are also expected to turn up.
The Moscow Prosecutor-General’s office has said the event is illegal because it is not sanctioned by the authorities.
Citing COVID-19 restrictions, the airport has said it will not allow media inside.
Navalny fell ill on a flight from Tomsk to Moscow and was treated and placed in an induced coma in a Siberian hospital before being transferred to a world-class facility in Germany.
Lab tests in three European countries, confirmed by the international Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, established the Navalny was poisoned with a nerve agent of the Novichok class. The findings led the European Union to imposed sanctions on six Russian officials and a state research institute.
Russian authorities have claimed that no trace of poison was found in Navalny’s body before he was airlifted to Germany, and have refused to open a criminal investigation into the incident.
On the eve of his return, Navalny thanked the Germans in a Facebook post and said they don’t fit the stereotype that they are unfriendly and only want to give and follow orders.
“The five months I’ve been here, I’ve been amazed how much the Germans don’t match the stereotypical idea of them,” Navalny wrote. “These are really the sweetest people with a great sense of humor, always trying to help.”
“Thank you friends!” he wrote in German.
Earlier on January 16 Germany demanded that Moscow carry out a full investigation into the poisoning and transmitted to Russia the transcripts of interviews its authorities conducted with him.
The German Justice Ministry said that, with transmission of information requested by Moscow — including blood and tissue samples — the Russia government now has all the information it needs to carry out a criminal investigation.
A ministry spokesman said Berlin expects that “the Russian government will now immediately take all necessary steps to clarify the crime against Mr. Navalny.”
“This crime must be solved in Russia. This requires investigations commensurate with the seriousness of this crime,” the spokesman added.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
MOSCOW — Germany has sent to Russia the transcripts of interviews its authorities conducted with Aleksei Navalny, and demanded that Moscow carry out a full investigation into the poisoning of the Russian opposition politician.
The move on January 16 came a day ahead of Navalny’s planned return to Moscow following several months in Germany, where he was sent for treatment following his August 2020 near-fatal poisoning that he has blamed on Russian authorities.
The Kremlin critic has said that he will return to Russia despite having received a notice that the country’s Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) would seek his arrest, setting the stage for a potentially dramatic new showdown between the Kremlin and Navalny, one of President Vladimir Putin’s most outspoken foes.
Late last month, FSIN demanded Navalny return immediately from Germany or face jail in Russia for violating the terms of a suspended prison sentence relating to a 2014 fraud conviction and for evading criminal inspectors.
According to court documents, he could face a jail sentence of as much as 3 1/2 years.
The European Court of Human Rights ruled in October 2017 that the Russian courts violated Navalny’s right to a fair trial in the case.
Navalny has faced numerous arrests and jail terms as he has challenged Putin’s rule over the past several years, mainly by organizing and leading protest events.
The Kremlin critic in August fell seriously ill during a flight from the Siberian city of Tomsk to the Russian capital. He was initially treated at a hospital in Omsk before being taken by air to Berlin.
Several laboratories in Western countries, including Germany, have determined that Navalny was poisoned by Novichok, a military substance developed in Soviet-era Russia.
Moscow denies any involvement and, in September 2020, said it needed more information, including clinical samples, to carry out an investigation into the poisoning.
The German Justice Ministry said that with the handing over of information requested by Moscow — including blood and tissue samples — the Russian government now has all the information it needs to carry out a criminal investigation.
A ministry spokesman said Berlin expects that “the Russian government will now immediately take all necessary steps to clarify the crime against Mr. Navalny.”
“This crime must be solved in Russia. This requires investigations commensurate with the seriousness of this crime,” the spokesman added.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
MOSCOW — A Russian court has ordered a member of opposition politician Aleksei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) accused of inciting extremism on the Internet to be kept in pretrial detention until February 28, according to a top human rights lawyer.
Pavel Chikov, head of the legal-aid nongovernmental organization Agora, said on Telegram that the Presnensky District Court issued the ruling against Pavel Zelensky on January 16.
The decision comes a day before Navalny is set to fly back to Russia for the first time after spending six months in Germany where he was treated for a near-fatal poisoning, despite the risk of being jailed upon his return.
Zelensky, a camera operator for FBK, was detained on January 15 and charged over a tweet he sent last year following the self-immolation of journalist Irina Slavina in the city of Nizhny Novgorod.
In his tweet on October 2, 2020, Zelensky condemned the Russian authorities, saying they were responsible for the journalist’s death.
Slavina died after setting herself on fire in front of Nizhny Novgorod’s city police department on October 2 following a police raid on her apartment in an apparent search for evidence linking her to an opposition group.
Before setting herself on fire, Slavina posted a statement on Facebook saying, “Blame the Russian Federation for my death.”
Slavina’s self-immolation caused a public outcry, with many people demanding justice for the journalist.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
The head of the Council of Europe has expressed “great concern” after the Association of Schools of Political Studies of the Council of Europe was added to the list of “undesirable” organizations in Russia.
In a letter dated January 14 and obtained by RFE/RL, Council of Europe Secretary-General Marija Pejcinovic Buric asked Moscow to clarify “the circumstances” that led to the decision, which she called “unacceptable.”
“I cannot stress enough how problematic is the notion that an organization such as the Association of Schools of Political Studies of the Council of Europe, closely linked to our organization and uniting schools of political studies, aiming to organize civic education activities based on the Council of Europe values and principles, would represent a threat” to a Council of Europe member state, reads the letter, addressed to Russian Justice Minister Konstantin Chuychenko.
Russia’s Prosecutor-General’s Office announced in December 2020 it had declared the Strasbourg-based Association of Schools of Political Studies as “undesirable,” requiring the Justice Ministry to blacklist the organization.
A 2015 law allows prosecutors to shut down “undesirable” organizations if they are deemed to be a threat to Russia’s national interests.
In a statement on January 6, the two co-rapporteurs of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe for the monitoring of Russia “deplored” the decision to place the Association of Schools of Political Studies on the Russian list of “undesirable” organizations.
“Russia’s 2015 law on ‘undesirable organizations’ has been severely criticized by the international community, including the Council of Europe, for its violations of the freedoms of association, assembly, and expression, its arbitrariness, and the wide discretionary powers granted to the prosecutor-general,” Axel Schafer and Ria Oomen-Ruijten said in a statement.
Human rights groups have accused Russia of using legislation governing NGOs to silence organizations that have a diverging view from the authorities and sanction their members, increasingly restricting space for civic activity.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
The head of the Council of Europe has expressed “great concern” after the Association of Schools of Political Studies of the Council of Europe was added to the list of “undesirable” organizations in Russia.
In a letter dated January 14 and obtained by RFE/RL, Council of Europe Secretary-General Marija Pejcinovic Buric asked Moscow to clarify “the circumstances” that led to the decision, which she called “unacceptable.”
“I cannot stress enough how problematic is the notion that an organization such as the Association of Schools of Political Studies of the Council of Europe, closely linked to our organization and uniting schools of political studies, aiming to organize civic education activities based on the Council of Europe values and principles, would represent a threat” to a Council of Europe member state, reads the letter, addressed to Russian Justice Minister Konstantin Chuychenko.
Russia’s Prosecutor-General’s Office announced in December 2020 it had declared the Strasbourg-based Association of Schools of Political Studies as “undesirable,” requiring the Justice Ministry to blacklist the organization.
A 2015 law allows prosecutors to shut down “undesirable” organizations if they are deemed to be a threat to Russia’s national interests.
In a statement on January 6, the two co-rapporteurs of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe for the monitoring of Russia “deplored” the decision to place the Association of Schools of Political Studies on the Russian list of “undesirable” organizations.
“Russia’s 2015 law on ‘undesirable organizations’ has been severely criticized by the international community, including the Council of Europe, for its violations of the freedoms of association, assembly, and expression, its arbitrariness, and the wide discretionary powers granted to the prosecutor-general,” Axel Schafer and Ria Oomen-Ruijten said in a statement.
Human rights groups have accused Russia of using legislation governing NGOs to silence organizations that have a diverging view from the authorities and sanction their members, increasingly restricting space for civic activity.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Russia has informed the United Nations that it plans to withdraw 300 “military instructors” sent to the Central African Republic (C.A.R.) in the run-up to presidential and legislative elections.
Russia told the United Nations about its plans this week in a letter to the Security Council committee monitoring sanctions against the C.A.R., news agency reports said on January 15.
“The Russians have informed the UN that they will withdraw the troops and helicopters,” a diplomat quoted by AFP said on condition of anonymity.
Russia informed the UN of the withdrawal before attacks that took place on January 13 on the outskirts of the capital, Bangui, raising questions about whether Moscow will confirm the departure in light of those latest events.
The Security Council has scheduled a meeting to discuss the situation on January 21.
Prior to the elections Russia denied the assertion of C.A.R. officials that Russia had sent regular forces. But last month it acknowledged the deployment of at least 300 “military instructors.”
Russia’s Foreign Ministry said the instructors were sent at the request of the C.A.R.’s government. The objective was to “help” the C.A.R. “strengthen its defensive capacities” in the run-up to the elections, Russian authorities said at the time.
Violence continues unabated in C.A.R., and in the past few weeks tens of thousands have fled to Cameroon, Congo, and other neighboring countries, the United Nations refugee agency said.
After the announcement on January 4 that President Faustin-Archange Touadera had won reelection, the rebel coalition threatened to take the capital. The rebels had taken towns in other parts of the country before the elections.
In the most recent violence, rebels on February 15 killed a UN peacekeeper and injured two others near the town of Grimari, northeast of Bangui.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Returns can be a big deal in Russia, in art and in life.
In art, there’s unparalleled Soviet-era author Andrei Platonov’s haunting story The Return, and Andrei Zvyaginstev’s 2003 movie with the same title — a nerve-wracking tale of two young brothers on a trip with their “remote, impossible to please, harshly judgmental and violently punishing father,” who has abruptly returned after a long absence: What could go wrong?
Much earlier, there was Ilya Repin’s 1880s painting They Did Not Expect Him, which shows a man striding into a room to the surprise of its occupants — including a boy who seems joyful and adults who look markedly less so — and is said to represent an anti-government revolutionary returning home from exile.
Russian painter Ilya Repin’s They Did Not Expect Him
The real-life returns have been no less dramatic, though their consequences have varied.
There was Lenin, whose return to Russia in 1917 changed the country and the world forever and whose legacy still hobbles his native land nearly a century after his death and 30 years after the Soviet Union fell apart following a failed seven-decade experiment with communism.
And 70 years after the death of Lenin, whose embalmed corpse still remains on display in a mausoleum on Red Square, there was the return of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who helped expose the Soviet Union’s crimes against its own people and, when he returned not long after its demise, found a Russia where many of the changes were not to his liking.
Solzhenitsyn had little influence after his return — and since his death, in 2008, Kremlin critics say Putin has done more to rehabilitate the reputation of the U.S.S.R. among Russians than to address the darker aspects of its legacy.
‘Victory’ Flight
Now comes Aleksei Navalny, the opposition politician, anti-corruption crusader, and Kremlin critic whose struggle against Putin has defined politics and more in Russia for almost a decade — since he played a leading part in street protests, which began in December 2011, over evidence of fraud in parliamentary elections and dismay at Putin’s plan to return to the Kremlin after four years as prime minister.
That struggle took a major turn last August, when Navalny was poisoned in Siberia with a variant of the Soviet-developed nerve agent Novichok, in what he says was a murder attempt carried out by the Federal Security Service (FSB) and blames on Putin. Navalny was flown to a Berlin hospital for treatment days after the poisoning.
Russian President Vladimir Putin
Convalescing in Germany, Navalny repeatedly vowed to return to Russia — and on January 13, he abruptly announced that he would do so this weekend, on a budget airline flight scheduled to arrive at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport on the evening of January 17. By coincidence or not, the airline is Pobeda, Russian for victory.
A day after Navalny’s announcement on social media, the Moscow branch of the Russian prison bureau — full name: Federal Service for the Execution Of Punishment — said it would “take all measures” to detain Navalny upon “establishing his whereabouts” — presumably once the plane lands and its door is opened, or sometime shortly after that.
What happens in the coming days, months, and years is harder to predict. But the situation — even before it plays out in what is forecast to be around -20 C weather when he arrives after dark — says several things about Russia under Putin, who has been president or prime minister for more than 21 years and, after securing changes in the constitution several weeks before Navalny’s poisoning, could potentially remain in the Kremlin until 2036.
Defined By Rivalries
Putin has dominated Russia for over two decades. In turn, portions of his rule have been defined in large part by struggles with prominent opponents who are prosecuted, persecuted, or both after falling afoul of the Kremlin — or being targeted by Putin and his allies as perceived rivals in the chase for power and popularity.
Former Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky (file photo)
From 2003, it was Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was arrested that August and spent the next decade in jail or prison on large-scale fraud and theft charges he contends were fabricated to sideline him and wrest control of Russia’s largest oil company, Yukos, which soon ended up in the hands Rosneft, the state company headed by close Putin associate Igor Sechin.
Khodorkovsky’s two trials hurt Russia’s image abroad and in December 2013, Putin pardoned the former tycoon, who was released from a prison near the Arctic Circle and was immediately flown out of Russia – a few weeks before Russia hosted the Sochi Olympics, a showcase event for a president who had campaigned hard to secure the Winter Games for Russia. While claiming that Khodorkovsky is welcome to return, the state has taken steps to deter him from doing so, and he has remained abroad.
By the time of Khodorkovsky’s release, Navalny was also a prominent Kremlin foe. After helping lead the wave of protests that started after State Duma elections in December 2011 and hit their height with a demonstration on Moscow’s Bolotnaya Square on May 6, 2012, the eve of Putin’s return to the presidency, he was charged with financial crimes in the so-called Kirovles Case that July and found guilty a year later — the first of two convictions he contends were fabricated to blunt his challenges to Putin.
Trial And Error
The court that convicted Navalny initially sentenced him to five years in prison and ordered him jailed pending a possible appeal — the usual practice in such cases in Russia. But in a move that lawyers described as unprecedented, and that came as thousands of protested rallied in support of Navalny outside the Kremlin, prosecutors said he and his co-defendant should not be kept behind bars until a ruling on appeal.
They were freed the next morning and Navalny, who the day before his conviction had registered as candidate for Moscow mayor in a September 8 election, was able to go ahead with the campaign. He came in second to the Kremlin-backed incumbent, with 27.4 percent of the vote according to the official results — an outcome he dismissed as “fake” but one that may have frightened the authorities, who barred him from challenging Putin for president in 2018.
Infographic: All The Times Aleksei Navalny Has Been In Jail
The five-year sentence was suspended on appeal, meaning that Navalny was not imprisoned. And since then, while he has repeatedly been jailed for a few days or weeks, he has never been sentenced to prison — a fact that many observers believe stems from a fear in Putin’s Kremlin that putting him away would make him into a martyr, potentially increasing his chances of winning over disgruntled Russians.
This Is Now?
That may change soon. The evidence of FSB involvement in Navalny’s poisoning is also evidence of what analysts say is a shift in the state’s approach to opponents, real or perceived, in the direction of tighter restrictions and further oppression.
And while the authorities have avoided sending Navalny to prison so far, he could now face a term of up to 3 1/2 years not long after he returns: The prison bureau has asked a court to change his suspended sentence he received in a second trial on financial-crimes charges he contends were fabricated to keep him out of elections — the so-called Yves Rocher Case – into a prison term. He also faces new fraud accusations, which he denies, that could lead to a third criminal trial.
Other signs of an intensifying clampdown include new legislation targeting so-called “foreign agents,” new restrictions on public demonstrations, and potential prison terms for online defamation.
In November and December, the Kremlin-controlled parliament passed a “fusillade of bills” that “will practically bury civil society” and further undermine the ability of journalists to cover the news in Russia, media-defense lawyer Galina Arapova told RFE/RL this week.
The screw-tightening comes ahead of September elections to the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, in which Navalny hopes to weaken the unpopular but dominant United Russia party with a “smart voting” strategy he employed in regional and local balloting in 2019 and 2020.
The Duma vote comes about two years ahead of the time when Putin, whose approval rating has dropped from 88 percent in October 2014 and 2015 to 68 percent last October and 65 percent in November amid deep concerns among Russian citizens over their economic security, will need to state publicly whether he intends to run for another six-year term in March 2024.
Months after his return in 1994, Solzhenitsyn told the Duma that the “masses of our people are dismayed, stunned and shocked by humiliation and by the shame of their powerlessness,” and that there was “no evidence that the reforms and the government’s policies are being undertaken in the interests of the people.”
Alexander Solzhenitsyn addresses the Duma in 1994.
But the legislature he addressed was substantially more diverse than the current Duma, whose three nominal opposition parties often back Kremlin initiatives or serve as impotent foils to the United Russia majority. And critics of Putin argue that many of his government’s actions — including the constitutional amendment allowing him alone to seek 12 more years as president after serving four terms — have nothing to do with the interests of the people.
Through a series of video reports on investigations revealing alleged corruption among associates of Putin and other members of the ruling elite, from former Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev to state TV hosts, Navalny seems to have sought to show Russians where he suspects the Kremlin’s interests lie. His fate upon returning may provide some hints about the answer to that question as well.
“After all, Navalny’s arrest is not a question of the just or unjust treatment of an opposition figure, it’s a question of what the FSB and Kremlin have a mandate to do to every one of us,” Russian political analyst Tatiana Stanovaya wrote on Telegram on January 15.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
German authorities have granted permission for the construction of the Nord Stream 2 undersea gas pipeline from Russia to continue despite U.S. sanctions threats and opposition from environmental groups.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) says Russian authorities should repeal the country’s controversial foreign agents law and ensure that Russia’s telecommunications regulator Roskomnadzor is not used to threaten and harass media organizations and censure journalists.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Poisoned Kremlin foe Aleksei Navalny has announced his return to Russia on January 17. Analysts say he is balancing the very real threat of arrest against the much slimmer prospect of igniting a massive wave of protest against President Vladimir Putin’s government.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
SAMARA, Russia — The judges at the trial of a civil rights activist from Russia’s Republic of Tatarstan for mocking President Vladimir Putin and two of his close associates in a YouTube video have banned journalists from attending the proceedings, saying they were adhering to restrictions to combat the spread of the coronavirus.
Judges of the Central Military District Court in the city of Samara on January 14 refused to allow RFE/RL correspondent Yekaterina Mayakovskaya to attend the ongoing trial of Karim Yamadayev, citing the virus restrictions.
Yamadayev’s lawyer Vladimir Krasikov told RFE/RL that, as his trial resumed, his client protested that no journalists were present in the courtroom.
When Judge Igor Belkin told the defendant that journalists could not be present due to coronavirus precautions, Yamadayev challenged the judge’s explanation, saying that journalists had been present at all of the trial’s previous sessions.
Yamadayev, who says he is innocent, demanded that his trial be covered by the media. The judge rejected these demands and continued the trial.
“It looked strange to me, because when prosecutors were given the floor at the trial, journalists were allowed inside to cover the proceedings But when the defense team’s turn came to present testimony, journalists were banned from attending the trial,” Yamadayev’s lawyer said, adding that the courtroom where the trial is being held was big enough to preserve social distancing.
Yamadayev, a former police officer in Tatarstan, was arrested in January 2020 and charged with promoting terrorism and insulting authorities for a video he posted in late-2019 on his YouTube channel called Judge Gramm.
The video in question features Yamadayev, dressed as a judge, reading death sentences to two men whose heads are covered with black sacks. A white sign hangs from their necks with the names “Dmitry Peskov” and “Igor Sechin” respectively.
Peskov is Putin’s long-serving press spokesman, while Sechin is the powerful chief of Russian state-owned oil giant Rosneft.
Another man in the show portrays a third defendant who also has his head covered with a black sack and a sign with the name “Vladimir Putin.”
If found guilty, Yamadayev faces up to seven years in prison.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
SAMARA, Russia — The judges at the trial of a civil rights activist from Russia’s Republic of Tatarstan for mocking President Vladimir Putin and two of his close associates in a YouTube video have banned journalists from attending the proceedings, saying they were adhering to restrictions to combat the spread of the coronavirus.
Judges of the Central Military District Court in the city of Samara on January 14 refused to allow RFE/RL correspondent Yekaterina Mayakovskaya to attend the ongoing trial of Karim Yamadayev, citing the virus restrictions.
Yamadayev’s lawyer Vladimir Krasikov told RFE/RL that, as his trial resumed, his client protested that no journalists were present in the courtroom.
When Judge Igor Belkin told the defendant that journalists could not be present due to coronavirus precautions, Yamadayev challenged the judge’s explanation, saying that journalists had been present at all of the trial’s previous sessions.
Yamadayev, who says he is innocent, demanded that his trial be covered by the media. The judge rejected these demands and continued the trial.
“It looked strange to me, because when prosecutors were given the floor at the trial, journalists were allowed inside to cover the proceedings But when the defense team’s turn came to present testimony, journalists were banned from attending the trial,” Yamadayev’s lawyer said, adding that the courtroom where the trial is being held was big enough to preserve social distancing.
Yamadayev, a former police officer in Tatarstan, was arrested in January 2020 and charged with promoting terrorism and insulting authorities for a video he posted in late-2019 on his YouTube channel called Judge Gramm.
The video in question features Yamadayev, dressed as a judge, reading death sentences to two men whose heads are covered with black sacks. A white sign hangs from their necks with the names “Dmitry Peskov” and “Igor Sechin” respectively.
Peskov is Putin’s long-serving press spokesman, while Sechin is the powerful chief of Russian state-owned oil giant Rosneft.
Another man in the show portrays a third defendant who also has his head covered with a black sack and a sign with the name “Vladimir Putin.”
If found guilty, Yamadayev faces up to seven years in prison.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
MOSCOW — Moscow authorities have extended restrictions against COVID-19 for another week, with the exception of pupils returning to schools from January 18.
Mayor Sergei Sobyanin made the announcement in a blog post on his website on January 14, warning that “if just a single coronavirus case is detected, the entire class will have to temporarily shift to distance learning.”
Sobyanin wrote that all other restrictions have been extended until January 21, with universities, colleges, and other educational facilities remaining on remote learning or on holiday breaks until that date.
Other restrictions include bars and restaurants having to close early, the wearing of medical masks in shops and on public transport, and businesses having to limit the number of staff in offices.
Russia, which last month launched a voluntary vaccination program with the locally developed Sputnik V vaccine, has resisted imposing a strict lockdown to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
Sobyanin said Moscow’s vaccination program was “gaining momentum,” with several thousand Muscovites being inoculated daily.
But the number of COVID-19 patients in hospitals remained high — more than 13,000 — meaning that only a gradual reduction in restrictions was possible, the mayor said.
As of January 13, Russian health authorities reported 22,850 new coronavirus cases, including 4,320 in Moscow, taking the total tally to more than 3,470,000 since the beginning of the pandemic.
The nationwide death toll stood at over 63,300, but the figure is believed to be much higher.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Russian activist Pyotr Verzilov, who is a member of the Pussy Riot protest group, and blogger Ilya Varlamov were briefly detained in South Sudan.
The two tweeted on January 13 that they and three other people, including Varlamov’s wife, Lyubov Varlamova, were detained upon arrival at the airport of the city of Kapoeta, some 260 kilometers east of South Sudan’s capital, Juba.
Varlamov wrote on his blog that the group arrived in South Sudan as tourists, planning to continue on another flight to Juba, but were stopped and detained after airport security found the remote control of a drone in their luggage.
“They found the remote control, but the drone had already been confiscated by the authorities at the Entebbe airport in Uganda,” where the group was traveling prior to their arrival in South Sudan, Varlamov wrote.
Ilya Varlamov
According to local law enforcement officers quoted by Meduza, the detainees allegedly could have been “filming military objects with the drone.”
Varlamov wrote that the group refused to hand in their mobile phones despite being asked to do so.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement quoted by the TASS news agency that the group was subsequently released “as a result of diplomatic efforts.”
“At this point, issues related to their departure from South Sudan are under discussion,” Zakharova said.
Russian Embassy officials told TASS that South Sudanese officials did not press any charges against the Russian citizens, who will spend the night in the city of Kapoeta and on January 14 will leave for Juba.
It was not immediately clear why the group had chosen South Sudan as a tourist destination.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Roman is a trained violinist who signed up to fight Russia-backed separatists in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region. He takes out his violin and plays for half an hour once or twice a week and says music distracts him from the war and the possibility of dying. According to the United Nations, more than 13,000 people have died as a result of the conflict — including over 3,000 civilians — since war broke out in April 2014.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Russian prosecutors say they have opened an investigation into a circus performance that featured a monkey wearing a Nazi uniform and goats with swastikas.
The prosecutor’s office for the Udmurtia region said on January 13 it had launched a probe into “the display of Nazi symbols” after they became aware of the performance from social media.
The January 8 performance was part of a show at a state-run circus in the regional capital, Izhevsk, that was commissioned by the local branch of the Russian Orthodox Church a day after celebrating Christmas.
According to video published by the circus, the performance showed a monkey being led around the ring by a woman in a Soviet military uniform and two goats with red blankets on their backs displaying swastikas.
The Orthodox diocese in Izhevsk defended the show by saying it was intended to be “a symbol of not just the victory over fascism, but also of the spurning and the global condemnation of the ideals of Nazi Germany.”
The diocese also pointed to an amendment passed last year lifting a blanket ban on the display of Nazi symbols as long as they are intended to “create a negative attitude to Nazi ideology.”
Izhevsk is the capital of Udmurtia, a republic in Russia’s Volga Federal District some 1,250 kilometers east of Moscow.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered officials to begin mass vaccinations next week and to open up the inoculation program to all Russians.
“I ask you to start mass vaccinations of the entire population as early as next week,” Putin told officials during a government meeting by video link on January 13, touting Russia’s homemade jab as “the best in the world.”
Putin said Russia should “get relevant infrastructure ready” to boost production of its Sputnik-V vaccine.
Russia, which has the world’s fourth-highest number of COVID-19 cases, began large-scale vaccinations last month even though it was still in its third phase of clinical trials.
Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova said the authorities would be ready to broaden the program from January 18.
The RDIF sovereign-wealth fund has said 1.5 million Russians have already been inoculated with Sputnik-V.
Russia health authorities have reported more than 3.4 million coronavirus cases since the pandemic began, with over 63,300 deaths. However, the death toll is believed to be much higher.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
A court in Siberia has extended the pretrial detention of three leaders of an isolated messianic sect who are charged with “creating a religious group, activities of which may impose violence on citizens.”
Defense lawyers for Sergei Torop, the founder of the Church of the Last Testament who calls himself Vissarion, and his associates, Vadim Redkin and Vladimir Vedernikov, wrote on Telegram on January 13 that the Central District Court in the city of Novosibirsk had prolonged their clients’ pretrial detention until April 15.
The lawyers added that they will appeal the court ruling.
The trio was arrested by security forces in September in a massive raid on the group’s remote settlement in the Krasnoyarsk Krai region.
Torop, a 59-year-old former traffic-police officer, founded the Church of the Last Testament in 1991. It was officially registered as a legal religious organization in 1995. The group claims some 10,000 followers, mostly living in southern parts of the Krasnoyarsk region.
The group bars members from eating meat, as well as from using tobacco, alcohol, or money.
Torop also has followers abroad, particularly in Germany.
Seven volumes of the church’s teachings – which combine elements of Russian Orthodoxy and Buddhism with strong elements of collectivism and environmentalism — have been translated into German.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
A court in Siberia has extended the pretrial detention of three leaders of an isolated messianic sect who are charged with “creating a religious group, activities of which may impose violence on citizens.”
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) is calling on President-elect Joe Biden to reinforce the commitment of the United States to human rights after four years of shirking it during Donald Trump’s presidency, and to join broad coalitions that have emerged to stand up to “powerful actors” such as Russia and China that have been undermining the global human rights system.
Trump was “a disaster for human rights” both at home and abroad, HRW Executive Director Kenneth Roth wrote in an introduction to the New York-based watchdog’s annual report on human rights published on January 13.
[Trump] cozied up to one friendly autocrat after another at the expense of their abused populations…”
According to Roth, the outgoing president “flouted legal obligations that allow people fearing for their lives to seek refuge, ripped migrant children from their parents, empowered white supremacists, acted to undermine the democratic process, and fomented hatred against racial and religious minorities,” among other things.
Trump also “cozied up to one friendly autocrat after another at the expense of their abused populations, promoted the sale of weapons to governments implicated in war crimes, and attacked or withdrew from key international initiatives to defend human rights, promote international justice, advance public health, and forestall climate change.”
This “destructive” combination eroded the credibility of the U.S. government when it spoke out against abuses in other countries, Roth said, adding: “Condemnations of Venezuela, Cuba, or Iran rang hollow when parallel praise was bestowed on Russia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, or Israel.”
But as the Trump administration “largely abandoned” the protection of human rights abroad and “powerful actors such as China, Russia, and Egypt sought to undermine the global human rights system,” other governments stepped forward to its defense, he said.
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After Biden’s inauguration on January 20, the U.S. government should “seek to join, not supplant” these collective efforts by a range of Western countries, Latin American democracies, and a growing number of Muslim-majority states.
Biden should also “seek to reframe the U.S. public’s appreciation of human rights so the U.S. commitment becomes entrenched in a way that is not so easily reversed by his successors.”
China
According to HRW’s annual World Report 2021, which summarizes last year’s human rights situation in nearly 100 countries and territories worldwide, the Chinese government’s authoritarianism “was on full display” in 2020.
Repression deepened across the country, with the government imposing a “draconian” national-security law in Hong Kong and arbitrarily detaining Muslims in the northwestern Xinjiang region on the basis of their identity, while others are subjected to “forced labor, mass surveillance, and political indoctrination.”
Russia
In Russia, HRW said the authorities used the coronavirus pandemic as a “pretext…to restrict human rights in many areas, and to introduce new restrictions, especially over privacy rights.”
Following a “controversial” referendum on constitutional changes, a crackdown was launched on dissenting voices, with “new, politically motivated prosecutions and raids on the homes and offices of political and civic activists and organizations.”
Belarus
The situation wasn’t much better in neighboring Belarus, where HRW said thousands were arbitrarily detained and hundreds were subjected to torture and other ill-treatment as strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka faced an unprecedented wave of protests following a contested presidential election in August.
“In many cases they detained, beat, fined, or deported journalists who covered the protests and stripped them of their accreditation,” HRW said. “They temporarily blocked dozens of websites and, during several days, severely restricted access to the Internet.”
Ukraine
According to the watchdog, the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine “continued to take a high toll on civilians, from threatening their physical safety to limiting access to food, medicines, adequate housing, and schools.”
Travel restrictions imposed by Russia-backed separatists and Ukrainian authorities in response to the coronavirus pandemic exacerbated hardship for civilians and drove them “deeper into poverty.”
Balkans
In the Balkan region, HRW said serious human rights concerns remained in Bosnia-Herzegovina over “ethnic divisions, discrimination, and the rights of minorities and asylum seekers,” while “pressure” on media professionals continued.
There was “limited” improvement in protections of human rights in Serbia, where journalists “faced threats, violence, and intimidation, and those responsible are rarely held to account.”
On Kosovo, HRW cited continued tensions between ethnic Albanians and Serbs and “threats and intimidation” against journalists, while prosecutions of crimes against journalists have been “slow.”
Hungary
Elsewhere in Europe, the government in EU member Hungary continued “its attacks on rule of law and democratic institutions” and “interfered with independent media and academia, launched an assault on members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community, and undermined women’s rights.”
Iran
HRW said Iranian authorities continued to crack down on dissent, including “through excessive and lethal force against protesters and reported abuse and torture in detention,” while U.S. sanctions “impacted Iranians’ access to essential medicines and harmed their right to health.”
Pakistan
In neighboring Pakistan, the government “harassed and at times prosecuted human rights defenders, lawyers, and journalists for criticizing government officials and policies,” while also cracking down on members and supporters of opposition political parties.
Meanwhile, attacks by Islamist militants targeting law enforcement officials and religious minorities killed dozens of people.
Afghanistan
HRW noted that fighting between Afghan government forces, the Taliban, and other armed groups caused nearly 6,000 civilian casualties in the first nine months of the year.
The Afghan government “failed to prosecute senior officials responsible for sexual assault, torture, and killing civilians,” while “threats to journalists by both the Taliban and government officials continued.”
South Caucasus
In the South Caucasus, six weeks of fighting over the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region dominated events in both Azerbaijan and Armenia.
HRW said all parties to the conflict committed violations of international humanitarian law, including by using banned cluster munitions.
Central Asia
In Central Asia, critics of the Kazakh government faced “harassment and prosecution, and free speech was suppressed.”
Kyrgyz authorities “misused” lockdown measures imposed in response to the coronavirus epidemic to “obstruct the work of journalists and lawyers,” and parliament “advanced several problematic draft laws including an overly broad law penalizing manipulation of information.”
Tajik authorities “continued to jail government critics, including opposition activists and journalists, for lengthy prison terms on politically motivated grounds.”
The government also “severely” restricted freedom of expression, association, assembly, and religion, including through heavy censorship of the Internet.
Uzbekistan’s political system remained “largely authoritarian” with thousands of people — mainly peaceful religious believers — being kept behind bars on false charges.
Citing reports of torture and ill-treatment in prisons, HRW said journalists and activists were persecuted, independent rights groups were denied registration, and forced labor was not eliminated.
Turkmenistan experienced “cascading social and economic crises as the government recklessly denied and mismanaged” the COVID-19 epidemic in the country, leading to “severe shortages” of affordable food.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Outspoken Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny, who is currently in Germany after surviving a poison attack, has tweeted that he plans to return to Russia on January 17.
Navalny was flown to Berlin for emergency medical care after being poisoned in Russia in August.
Laboratory tests conducted in Germany, France, and Sweden have established that Navalny was poisoned with a toxin from the Russian-made Novichok group of Soviet-era nerve agents, a conclusion confirmed by the International Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
Navalny has accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of ordering the poisoning, an allegation rejected by the Kremlin.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
MOSCOW — The Moscow City Court on January 12 slightly reduced prison terms handed to two men convicted in the high-profile case of the so-called New Greatness movement.
The court reduced the seven-year prison term of Ruslan Kostylenkov by three months, and the 6 1/2-year prison term of Pyotr Karamzin by two months.
The six-year prison term of Ruslan Kostylenkov, as well as suspended prison terms for Anna Pavlikova, Maksim Roshchin, Maria Dubovik, and Dmitry Poletayev were upheld at the hearing.
The men and women reiterated their not-guilty pleas saying that the case against them was groundless as there were no victims and no damages inflicted either to individuals or to the state.
They were arrested in 2018 and charged with creating an extremist group with the intention of overthrowing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government.
Critics say the case against them was fabricated by Russia’s security services.
The rights group Memorial describes the seven as political prisoners.
Pavlikova was 17 at the time of her arrest. Her being held under house arrest for several months sparked protests in Moscow and other cities.
The defendants say they had turned their online chat group into a political movement called New Greatness at the suggestion of one group member.
Later, it was revealed that the man who proposed the idea, wrote the movement’s charter, and rented premises for gatherings was a special agent of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB).
In late-October, another member of the group, Pavel Rebrovsky, was sentenced to six years in prison after a Moscow court found him guilty of creating an extremist organization.
In April 2019, Rebrovsky made a deal with investigators to testify against other suspects in the high-profile case, and was sentenced to 29 months in prison for being a member of the group.
However, several months later, after Rebrovsky recanted his testimony, saying it had been made under duress, prosecutors demanded that his verdict and sentence be annulled, which the Moscow City Court did in October 2019.
One more member of the group, Rustam Rustamov received a suspended 18-month prison sentence in 2019 after he made a deal with investigators.
Another group member, Sergei Gavrilov, fled to Ukraine in October 2019, where he asked for political asylum.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
MOSCOW — Russia’s telecommunications watchdog Roskomnadzor has drawn up its first eight administrative protocols — all against Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty — for violating the country’s controversial foreign agents law.
Roskomnadzor said in a statement on its website on January 12 that the offenses are “for noncompliance by the media performing the functions of a foreign agent with the requirements of the law on labeling information disseminated by them.”
The protocols involve RFE/RL’s Russian Service, Current Time, Sibir.Realii, and Idel.Realii.
“The drawn-up protocols will be sent to the magistrate’s court within three working days to make decisions on the imposition of administrative fines,” Roskomnadzor said.
The “foreign agent” law, originally passed in 2012, requires designated organizations to report their activities and face financial audits. Amendments to the law in December 2020 oblige the media to note the designation whenever they mention these individuals or groups.
The new law also says that individuals, including foreign journalists, involved in Russia’s political developments or collecting materials and data related to Russia’s defense or national-security issues must be included on the list of foreign agents.
Critics say the law has been arbitrarily applied to target Russian civil society organizations, human rights defenders, and political activists, including outspoken Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation.
Amnesty International recently slammed the legislation, saying it would “drastically limit and damage the work not only of civil society organizations that receive funds from outside Russia but many other groups as well.”
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty as a whole was listed in the original registry in December 2017, along with several of RFE/RL’s regional news sites: the Crimea Desk of RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service; the Siberia Desk of RFE/RL’s Russian Service; Kavkaz Realii of RFE/RL’s North Caucasus Service; Idel.Realii of RFE/RL’s Tatar-Bashkir Service; and Factograph, a former special project by RFE/RL’s Russian Service.
Current Time, the Russian-language network led by RFE/RL in cooperation with Voice of America, was also named in the original list, as was Voice of America.
In November 2019, the list was expanded to include Sever.Realii. In February 2020, the Russian Justice Ministry added RFE/RL’s corporate entity in Russia.
Moscow began adding individuals to the list in December 2020, including three journalists who contribute to RFE/RL: Lyudmila Savitskaya and Sergei Markelov, freelance correspondents for the North Desk (Sever.Realii) of RFE/RL’s Russian Service; and Denis Kamalyagin, editor in chief of the online news site Pskov Province and a contributor to RFE/RL’s Russian Service.
“The Justice Ministry is stating unambiguously that reporting the facts is a crime, and that it will stop at nothing to silence the voices that seek to inform, protect, and engage their compatriots, the people of Russia,” Daisy Sindelar, RFE/RL vice president and editor in chief, said after the list was expanded last month.
Russian officials have said that amending the “foreign agents law” to include mass media in 2017 was a “symmetrical response” to the U.S. requirement that Russia’s state-funded channel RT register under the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
U.S. officials have said the action is not symmetrical, arguing that the U.S. and Russian laws differ and that Russia uses its “foreign agent” legislation to silence dissent and discourage the free exchange of ideas.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny, who survived a poison attack last year that he blames President Vladimir Putin for, says Russia’s prison authority has asked a court to change his suspended sentence to one where he serves jail time.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
YEKATERINBURG, Russia – A fire raced through a nine-story apartment building in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg, killing eight people, including a child.
Emergency officials in the Sverdlovsk region said on January 12 that the cause of the fire in the residential building overnight remained unknown.
According to preliminary data, the blaze started in an apartment on the second floor and smoke quickly filled the building, making it impossible for many residents on upper floors to escape.
Firefighters managed to rescue 90 people, including nine children, from the building. The eight residents who lost their lives were found in apartments on the second, fifth and ninth floors, officials said.
The regional prosecutor’s office said that an investigation had been launched into the incident.
Deadly fires caused by violations of safety regulations or faulty wiring are common in Russia.
Two days earlier, a fire at a private nursing home in western Siberia killed seven people.
Less than a month ago, a fire in a private retirement house in the Bashkortostan region killed 11 people.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Another group of Crimean Tatars has been sentenced to lengthy prison terms on charges of being members of a banned Islamic group and plotting to seize power in the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea that Moscow illegally annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
U.S. President-elect Joe Biden says he has chosen veteran diplomat William Burns, who once served as Ambassador to Russia, to be the new director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
“Bill Burns is an exemplary diplomat with decades of experience on the world stage keeping our people and our country safe and secure,” Biden said in a statement on January 11.
“He shares my profound belief that intelligence must be apolitical and that the dedicated intelligence professionals serving our nation deserve our gratitude and respect. Ambassador Burns will bring the knowledge, judgment, and perspective we need to prevent and confront threats before they can reach our shores. The American people will sleep soundly with him as our next CIA Director.”
In his 33-year diplomatic career, Burns was also the U.S. Ambassador to Jordan and a lead negotiator in the secret talks that paved the way to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal under former Democratic President Barack Obama. Burns has said he would restore the nuclear deal with other major global powers that Trump pulled the United States out of in 2018.
The 64-year-old diplomat is currently the president of the international affairs think tank the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and has written articles critical of President Donald Trump’s administration.
Biden’s pick to lead the CIA comes as he races to get a national security team into place after the transition was delayed by outgoing President Trump contesting Biden’s November election victory.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.