Protests – Page 2 – Johnson's Russia List

RUSSIALINK NEWSWATCH: “Hand It Over: Court Awards Moscow City Transport 1.2 Million Rubles in Suit Against Opposition Politicians” – Kommersant/ Maria Litvinova

September 11, 2019 JRL Russia List Corruption, Law, Police, Courts, Crime, Human Rights, JRL NewsBlog, Politics, Government, Protests, Elections

File Photos of Law Books and Gavel, adapted from image at fjc.gov

“Alexei Navalny, Lyubov Sobol, Ivan Zhdanov, Yulia Galyamina, Ilya Yashin, Alexander Solovyov, Oleg Stepanov, and Vladimir Milov must jointly pay Moscow City Transport (Mosgortrans) 1.2 million rubles [approx. $18,000] for … traffic stoppages during the ‘unauthorized’ protest rally on July 27 in Moscow. … [according to a] ruling … by the Koptevo District Court on [a] lawsuit brought by Moscow […]

A New Hope? Five Takeaways From The Elections In Moscow And Elsewhere

September 10, 2019 JRL Russia List Corruption, Law, Police, Courts, Crime, Human Rights, Politics, Government, Protests, Elections, Regions, Cities, Municipalities

(Article text ©2019 RFE/RL, Inc., Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty – rferl.org – Mike Eckel – Sept. 9, 2019 – article text also appeared at rferl.org/a/five-takeaways-moscow-elections-russia/30155264.html) The opposition is up. The ruling party is down. Incumbent governors are in. The Kremlin is worried. Aleksei Navalny’s Smart Voting strategy is … smart? Despite Russian elections still being largely a stage-managed process, the […]

RUSSIALINK: “Russian PM questions dominant party’s election strategy” – Interfax

September 10, 2019 JRL Russia List Politics, Government, Protests, Elections

(Interfax – September 9, 2019) Russia’s Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has suggested reconsidering the practice of United Russia-backed candidates running as independents in city council elections. “We can see how events are developing, there is much talk right now on the topic of so-called independent candidates – is this good or not good. Some were running as a representative of […]

JRL NEWSWATCH: “Russian Opposition Puts Putin Under Pressure in Moscow Election; The opposition alliance didn’t fare well elsewhere in Russia, but its leaders hail Moscow showing as a success” – Wall Street Journal/ Georgi Kantchev

September 10, 2019 JRL Russia List Corruption, Law, Police, Courts, Crime, Human Rights, JRL NewsBlog, Politics, Government, Protests, Elections

“Candidates backed by Russia’s opposition won nearly half the seats up for grabs in Moscow’s city elections … building on a wave of protests … that exposed some of the frailties … in Putin ‘s closely controlled political machine, but failed to make significant inroads in local races elsewhere …. Sunday’s vote came after a tumultuous summer that saw a […]

JRL NEWSWATCH: “The unraveling of Vladimir Putin” – Joseph Dresen/ The Hill

September 10, 2019 JRL Russia List Environment, Health, Epidemics, Substance Abuse, JRL NewsBlog, Military, Nuclear, Missile Defense, Politics, Government, Protests, Elections

“… as tens of thousands of protesters once again took to the streets in Moscow to protest upcoming municipal elections, Russian state television showed a smiling … Putin riding with … [a] motorcycle club in Crimea. … a typical scene … the president doing tough guy stuff at the location of his most popular act of [the] annexation of Crimea. […]

JRL NEWSWATCH: “A Summer of Unprecedented Brutality in Moscow” – The New Yorker/ Masha Gessen

September 9, 2019 JRL Russia List Corruption, Law, Police, Courts, Crime, Human Rights, JRL NewsBlog, Politics, Government, Protests, Elections

“… Moscow [recently] has seen an unprecedented number of large, confrontational protests … met with unprecedented brutality …. [While] the Kremlin has been cracking down on dissent for seven years … arrests continue to multiply, prison terms grow longer … brutality becomes more brutal. Once in a while, the cruelty … comes into sharper focus. … prosecutors tried to strip […]

Russians Learn about Protests from State TV but No Longer Accept Official Explanations, Levada Poll Finds

September 6, 2019 JRL Russia List Media, Internet, Social Media, Television

(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, September 3, 2019) The most significant finding of a new Levada Center poll released today is that most Russians continue to get their news about demonstrations from the official media rather than the Internet but no longer accept the government’s explanations about what is going on and why. That suggests that there […]