"Sunday’s election was in some ways less about Sobyanin, who many agree has brought positive change to Moscow since taking over three years ago, and more about the depth of discontent in the Russian capital with President Vladimir Putin’s rule."
So says the narrative of the war-promoting propaganda pre$$ of AmeriKa.
See: Moscow election tighter than expected
Translation: Sobyanin had enough support to overcome western vote-rigging.
Look who he was up against:
"Putin foe convicted in embezzlement case; Anticorruption campaigner gets five years in prison" by Will Englund and Kathy Lally | Washington Post, July 19, 2013
MOSCOW — Russia’s most effective anticorruption campaigner and opposition leader was found guilty of embezzlement Thursday and sentenced to five years in prison in a verdict that sent shock waves throughout the country.
The conviction of Alexei Navalny, 37, a leading critic of President Vladimir Putin with a penchant for exposés and cutting jibes, brought sharp criticism from those who believed it to be a politically driven case.
The US ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, posted on Twitter: ‘‘We are deeply disappointed in the conviction of Navalny and the apparent political motivations in this trial.’’
Then Navalny either a CIA asset or agent.
A statement by the European Union’s foreign affairs chief, Catherine Ashton, said: ‘‘This outcome, given the procedural shortcomings, raises serious questions as to the state of the rule of law in Russia.’’
She is saying nice things about Iran now, but that is the same E.U. that has NATO as its law-breaking arm of militarism and had its hand in renditions and torture.
After a while you just get tired of commenting about western selectivity and hypocrisy dripping from the war paper every day. Thing is plastered with the stuff day after after day.
Police closed Red Square and blocked off nearby Manezh Square to prevent protesters from gathering in an unsanctioned demonstration against the verdict, but by evening a crowd of several thousand had gathered along the sidewalks of adjoining streets.
Yeah, protesting is fun in Russia -- or so my agenda-pushing paper tells me.
The youthful crowd spread out in different directions, making it impossible to gauge its size. In a mood more of disgust than anger, the crowd chanted, ‘‘Navalny!’’ and ‘‘Freedom!’’
The police presence was heavy.
In an unexpected move, prosecutors asked for Navalny to be placed under house arrest until his sentence goes into effect in 10 days, perhaps in an attempt to allow public anger to dissipate. The judge made no public comment on the request, however, and as of Thursday night Navalny remained in jail.
They will know where he is. Russians have had a lot of experience keeping an eye on people.
Even before his trial began in April in the city of Kirov, about 550 miles northeast of Moscow, Navalny said that he expected to be convicted of what he and his supporters contended were trumped-up charges. But as he was led into custody, it became clear that those in power in Russia have chosen not to be subtle as they crack down on the opposition.
Good thing we have a $ubtle $urveillance $security $tate of $pying here in AmeriKa. A tyranny that loves you is a lot better than those Russian czars and stuff.
‘‘This shows to what extent the government is afraid of Alexei Navalny,’’ Yevgenia Albats, chief editor at New Times magazine, said on the Ekho Moskvy radio station. ‘‘I think they did it because it is the main principle of security officers — not to show weakness. If you put the man on his knees, then you must finish him off.’’
Is that why AmeriKan police across the country blow away handfuls of citizens every day and night?
Navalny’s case is the most prominent of a series of prosecutions that Russian authorities have launched against their critics since the outbreak of political protest in late 2011, much of it led by Navalny....
Is that Russian for CIA asset?
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"Putin’s adversary set free for an appeal; Critic’s backers say rally helped" by David M. Herszenhorn | New York Times, July 20, 2013
MOSCOW — Not even 24 hours after a judge ordered him handcuffed and imprisoned to begin a five-year sentence for embezzlement, the Russian political opposition leader, Alexei A. Navalny, walked free — temporarily, at least, pending an appeal.
It was a head-spinning turn that gave Navalny new grounds to challenge the authorities, thrilled his supporters — prematurely, perhaps, as he remains convicted of a serious crime — and set off speculation about the government’s motivations and goals in jailing and then freeing President Vladmir V. Putin’s chief antagonist.
Not with me.
His release was requested by the very same prosecutor who asked that he be locked up in the first place.
Supporters of Navalny insisted that an unsanctioned rally Thursday evening by thousands of people in Manezh Square near the Kremlin, blocking traffic and chanting “Freedom!” and “Navalny!” had forced officials to let him go. Other commentators and analysts said his release reflected disagreement and disarray at the highest levels of government.
Or they decided it wasn't worth the hassle.
The official reason given by prosecutors was Navalny’s recently declared candidacy for mayor of Moscow — a campaign that he and his aides said he would now be able to continue.
But if his conviction is not reversed on appeal, Navalny cannot hold public office, raising a possibility that he was freed to lend legitimacy to the race, with no real chance of him ever serving as mayor.
Sergei S. Sobyanin, the incumbent mayor who is heavily favored to win reelection in the Sept. 8 balloting, seemed to lend some credence to that theory Friday.
Look at my paper "theorizing!" The heavily-favored part validates my lead-in comments regarding the overcoming of a rigging.
Rather than quietly enjoying the downfall of a popular rival, Sobyanin said he favored Navalny’s participation, and that the court proceedings should not interfere....
Despite Sobyanin’s remarks, the inherent risk of giving Navalny a prominent platform in Moscow politics fueled rampant guessing about what other machinations may be at work.
Actually, I'm not. I trust the Russians will do what is right for the Russians and can only sigh regarding my banker-enthralled, Zionist-owned government.
One possibility was that the authorities were following a long pattern of slight backtracking in politically charged verdicts that can blunt criticism at home and abroad.
In other words, they act just like the AmeriKan government.
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"Russian opposition leader returns to Moscow" by Nataliya Vasilyeva | Associated Press, July 21, 2013
MOSCOW — Hundreds of supporters greeted the charismatic Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny as he returned to Moscow on Saturday after his surprise release from jail and vowed to push forward with his campaign to become mayor of the Russian capital....
Hundreds of police blocked Navalny supporters from the platform of the Moscow railway station where his overnight train from Kirov arrived at the capital’s Yaroslavsky station.
Through a bullhorn, he addressed backers who were behind the police lines and on nearby station platforms, thanking those who turned out for a large demonstration near the Kremlin protesting his sentence on Thursday, which he credited as key in securing his release.
‘‘I realize that if it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t be standing here for the next five years. You have destroyed a key privilege that the Kremlin has been trying to keep — that it is their alleged right to say to any person ‘arrest him on the spot,’ ” said Navalny....
Navalny is one of the most visible and charismatic leaders of the opposition to President Vladimir Putin and the governing United Russia party.
Analysts saw Navalny’s sudden release as probably reflecting arguments within the Kremlin about how to respond to his popularity.
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"Russians hold rally to support protesters" by Will Englund | Washington Post, June 13, 2013
MOSCOW — Chastened by the protests in Istanbul, Muscovites rallied Wednesday in a show of support for 12 opposition defendants on trial for their actions a year ago in a clash with Russian police.
Estimates of the crowd’s size varied but suggest that as many as 15,000 people may have taken part in the low-key march.
So many protests they don't cover, or give one lousy phrase in a sentence like the trucker's strike in Washington D.C. this past weekend while promoting their agenda-pu$hing crap. F*** this $hit paper.
The turnout was far less than the tens of thousands present at protests a year ago, but those who participated Wednesday said they wanted to remind the public, and one another, that the opposition hadn’t disappeared.
Sigh. Reminder noted, now go home.
Walking a dachshund named Snark, Maria Sakson said, ‘‘We’re spoiled in many ways. And as a nation, we are used to being patient.’’
I ascribe the last quality to prescription drug contamination of AmeriKan water supplies as we are shat on, not $polied.
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"Russian opposition leader is spared jail" by Andrew E. Kramer | New York Times, October 17, 2013
What?
KIROV, Russia — An appellate judge on Wednesday suspended a five-year sentence handed down over the summer to Alexei A. Navalny, the anticorruption crusader and blogger whose role as Russia’s leading opposition politician was highlighted by an unexpectedly strong showing in Moscow’s mayoral election last month.
How nice of the Globe to notice Navalny.
The ruling meant that Navalny, who arrived at the Kirov Regional Court lugging a backpack of clothes to take with him to prison, will remain free, although he is prohibited from traveling outside his home city, Moscow, and possibly from taking part in electoral politics.
So it is not even house arrest now. He is free to travel about the city.
The decision, by Judge Albert A. Prytkov, left the sense that Navalny, 37, had won his freedom by defying expectations with his strong showing in the election, elevating his status and cementing his position as the main political opponent of President Vladimir Putin....
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One who did and did not run:
"Economist explains flight from Russia" by Max Seddon | Associated Press, June 01, 2013
MOSCOW — A liberal Russian economist who has criticized President Vladimir Putin’s policies said on Friday that he fled Russia on a day’s notice because of fears of losing his freedom on ‘‘very bogus grounds.’’
Like that thing the Dutch pulled on the Russian ambassador?
Sergei Guriev said he wanted to escape pressure from a new criminal investigation around jailed oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once Russia’s richest man.
I suppose I have some remnants somewhere about him.
In a 25-minute phone conversation from Paris, where he arrived on a one-way flight April 30, Guriev said he feared he could share the fate of witnesses in two previous investigations into Khodorkovsky who were later charged and died in prison.
‘‘I don’t see under what circumstances I can return,’’ he said.
Investigators began proceedings early this year against the authors of an expert report commissioned by then-president Dmitry Medvedev in 2011, to which Guriev contributed, that criticized Khodorkovsky’s conviction in 2010 for embezzling oil. He had been jailed since 2003 on charges of avoiding taxes on the same oil.
Khodorkovsky is scheduled to be released early next year, and Russia’s supreme court is to reconsider the verdict in the second case in August. His supporters fear, however, that investigators are preparing a third set of charges to make certain he remains in jail.
According to investigators, the authors of the report had a conflict of interest because they had previously received money from Khodorkovsky.
Guriev denied receiving money from Khodorkovsky’s oil company, Yukos, once Russia’s largest, or bank, Menatep.
Two of the other five experts have been questioned by investigators but have not been charged.
Guriev began to worry when investigators interrogated him three times and searched his office, seizing hundreds of pages of documents and 45 gigabytes of e-mails dating back five years, on grounds he described as ‘‘extremely absurd.’’
Though Guriev is only a witness in the case, he said his shock at investigators’ ‘‘lack of respect for the letter and spirit of the law’’ made him worry that they could name him as a suspect.
Guriev said he could not discuss the interrogations because he had signed a nondisclosure agreement. However, he said investigators informally told him that he was fair game for legal pressure because he had ‘‘started his political activity’’ in 2008, when he began advising Medvedev.
Guriev’s family had moved to Paris without him 3½ years earlier.
Guriev, who ran Moscow’s respected New Economic School from 2005 until his departure, has long enjoyed the reputation as one of Russia’s top economists and as something of a maverick. President Obama spoke at the school while on a state visit in 2009 which both sides used as a springboard for improving relations.
When Medvedev was president from 2008 to 2012, Guriev was an informal government advisor and was seen as a key figure encouraging Westerners to invest in Russia.
Guriev’s sudden departure has made him a poster boy for the uncertainty and fear gripping liberal members of the Russian elite. On Friday, Guriev polled the maximum possible among all candidates to the board of state-run banking giant Sberbank, even beating its chairman German Gref, though Guriev had withdrawn from the running after leaving Russia.
Liberal figures who flourished under Medvedev, who is now prime minister and widely derided as weak, have come under heavy fire since Putin returned to the presidency last year.
Leading Kremlin strategist Vladislav Surkov, who is believed to have pushed for Medvedev to remain president, resigned earlier this month after a public spat with investigators over attempts to develop a Russian Silicon Valley, one of Medvedev’s flagship projects.
Akhmed Bilalov, whose cousin went to university with deputy prime minister Arkady Dvorkovich, one of Medvedev’s top advisors, was fired from Russia’s Olympic Committee after a public upbraiding from Putin and left Russia claiming that his office had been poisoned with mercury. Dvorkovich has been engaged in a semi-public dispute for months with Rosneft chief executive Igor Sechin, a close Putin confidante thought to head the Kremlin’s hawkish faction.
‘‘In the last year we’ve seen a lot of things which we thought are impossible,’’ Guriev, said. ‘‘Some people who were high profile are now no longer there.’’
After the wave of pressure from investigators began, Guriev reached out to high-profile ties in Russia’s government. In April, a senior official told him that he was in the room when Putin called chief investigator Alexander Bastrykin and told him that there was no reason to investigate Guriev.
In May, after he left, senior figures told Guriev that he had nothing to worry about and could return to Russia, but that Putin had said he could not interfere with investigators’ work.
Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian media earlier this week that Guriev’s departure was a personal matter and that the Kremlin had no hand in it.
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