From the editor
This will be a momentous week for Russia because if everything goes as planned, by the end of it Vladimir Putin will have secured the right to stay in power until 2036, when he will be 83 years old. His proposed changes to the constitution would “annul” his previous terms of office, allowing him two more six-year terms: previously he changed the length of a term from four years to six. Subsequent presidents would be limited to two terms. Voting has already started, both in person and electronically, as the vote on the changes is being held over several days to reduce coronavirus risk.
On the first day of voting Dozhd TV reporter Pavel Lobkov was able to vote twice in Moscow, first at a polling station and then via his pre-registered electronic ballot. At the polling station a volunteer took his temperature and told him that if his temperature was high he could still vote in a separate room. He drew a penis in the “No” box to express his opinion about the changes to the constitution. Across Russia videos showed unusual pop-up polling stations, including one in the boot of a car in Vladivostok and another on a parked bus. Posters and billboards urging people to vote “Yes” could be seen everywhere, and people who picketed for a “No” vote were detained. Viktor Nemytov, who held a sign saying “Russia without Putin. No to the amendments," was jailed for 20 days - his second recent jail sentence for picketing.
The vote comes immediately after the postponed Victory parades that were held in Moscow and other cities on June 24. Hundreds of troops, none wearing masks, participated in Moscow, and weapons systems were paraded as usual, including Buk missiles. The announcer boasted that Buks could destroy “any air target”. Only a few foreign leaders joined Putin for the event, including Alexander Lukashenko and Serbia’s Aleksandar Vucic. President Sooronbay Jeerenbekov of Kyrgyzstan arrived in Moscow for the parade but did not attend because he had to go into self-isolation after members of his delegation tested positive for coronavirus.
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Acclaimed director spared prison
One of Russia’s most admired film and theatre directors, Kirill Serebrennikov, has been found guilty and given a suspended sentence in an embezzlement case that also involves his colleagues at the Seventh Studio. The judge called the director the leader of a criminal group. Alexei Malobrodsky and Yuri Itin also received suspended sentences. Sofiya Apfelbaum was found guilty of a lesser charge of negligence, the statue of limitations for which had expired, and was fined.
The prosecutor had asked for Serebrennikov to be jailed for six years. Hundreds of supporters of Serebrennikov and his colleagues gathered outside the court in Moscow this morning as the verdict was being pronounced. A demonstration also took place outside the Russian embassy in Berlin.
One of Serebrennikov’s supporters outside court, actress Alisa Khazanova, said that the verdict was “an order”. Another, actor Filipp Gorenshtein, told Dozhd TV, “A lot of people from our sphere weren't paying attention to anything. Now they’ve got interested because it concerns them directly. It’s a shame that this happened late and in this way.”
Serebrennikov, 50, has criticised Russia’s annexation of Crimea and spoken out in support of the LGBT community. He was arrested in August 2017 and placed under house arrest. The charges against him included a claim that he received funds for a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream that did not take place, although in fact it was staged. Serebrennikov’s latest film, Summer – completed in 2018 - is about Soviet rock star Viktor Tsoi.
In December 2013 Serebrennikov expressed his frustration at censorship, writing on Facebook: “They’ve banned us from holding the premiere of the film ‘Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer’ and a meeting with Nadia Tolokonnikova and Masha Alekhina. Maxim Pozdorovkin had flown in specially from New York. All the work of Irina Prokhorova, who was supposed to host the conversation, has been cancelled. After a whole day of tense negotiations a banning document arrived from the department of culture at my request, which signifies one thing: censorship in action. That’s it, it’s over! Who could be so afraid of a peaceful conversation between a few hundred audience members at the Gogol Centre and some young women who have been amnestied? Who could be so afraid of the premiere of a film that has received a pile of prizes and that can’t tell us anything new either about the government or about ourselves, as it was made rather a long time ago? I don’t get it...”
Pussy Riot member jailed for 15 days
Pussy Riot activist Petr Verzilov, who is also the publisher of opposition outlet MediaZona, has been jailed for 15 days in Moscow. Police burst into his flat with a sledgehammer at 7 am on Sunday morning and questioned him for 13 hours about his political activities. As he was being released from a police station in the evening someone who was apparently an undercover police officer attacked Verzilov and he was detained again for allegedly getting into a fight. Eventually he was charged with swearing in public.
Verzilov and other Pussy Riot members ran onto the pitch during the World Cup final in Moscow in July 2018, dressed as police officers. Subsequently Verzilov was poisoned. Earlier this year he was detained again for wearing a police uniform during the making of a video that satirised the mayor’s plans to issue people with QR code permits to leave their homes during quarantine.
MH17 defence lawyers present Russian TV clips
In the latest sessions of the MH17 trial in The Hague the Dutch lawyers for defendant Oleg Pulatov gave a presentation titled “A Different Look at the Case.” Disappointingly, it largely recycled “alternative” theories about what happened that had been put forward on Russian state television in 2014. The defence insisted that there needed to be investigations into the possibility that MH17 had been shot down by a Ukrainian fighter jet or by a Ukrainian Buk. They even played a clip of former US Secretary of State Colin Powell talking about how he had presented false evidence of Iraqi WMDs to the UN Security Council in 2003. This was supposed to undermine the reliability of radar data that the US might provide from the day of the MH17 disaster – July 17, 2014.
“We are going to proceed very much against the tide,” lawyer Boudewijn van Eijck admitted. Six years of investigations have resulted in an overwhelming volume of evidence pointing to Russia shooting down MH17 with a Buk. Van Eijck and his colleague Sabine ten Doesschate said other evidence could have been left out, such as intercepted conversations between Ukrainian military personnel. The defence lawyers also claimed that no motive had ever been identified for launching the missile, although a Russian TV report immediately after the crash said Donbass militants had shot down a Ukrainian military plane, which what they thought initially. The defence team later changed tack and argued that the Buk’s friend or foe system would have prevented it from being used to shoot down a passenger plane.
The defence showed clips from Russian state TV reports of people claiming they had seen Ukrainian fighter jets in the vicinity at the time MH17 was shot down, and even included a video by notorious British blogger Graham Phillips, who has constantly promoted the Kremlin line and been arrested briefly for disruptive activities at pro-Ukrainian events in London. Another video showed a woman holding an automatic weapon in the town of Sloviansk saying that Ukraine wanted to provoke the Russian side to shoot at a passenger plane. The defence also repeated Russia’s complaint that Ukraine didn’t close its airspace despite the conflict.
A Russia-backed fighter in Sloviansk shown in a video in the defence’s presentation
After the series of videos the defence made some more sensible points, for example that it was difficult to prove that a voice in an intercepted call was that of Oleg Pulatov, and that the huge quantity of case documents were poorly indexed and often in bad English. The defence says that it has requested a translation of the entire case file into Russian for Pulatov.
The prosecution responded with a detailed dissection of the witnesses mentioned by the defence, pointing to the contradictions and vagueness in their statements, and pointed out that Pulatov should have to disprove the investigation’s conclusions about a Russian Buk before bringing in “speculation” about other theories.
Responding to the defence’s complaints that they hadn’t been able to meet Pulatov due to Russia’s coronavirus restrictions, the prosecution offered to help facilitate communication but said the trial should not be delayed by constantly changing excuses. “The coronavirus is having a profound effect worldwide, but it’s not a game of Monopoly and it’s not a get out of jail free card,” said prosecutor Ward Ferdinandusse.
Long sentences for young men in “Network” case
A court in St. Petersburg has sentenced Viktor Filinkov to seven years in prison and Yuli Boyarshinov to five and a half years for allegedly belonging to an extremist group called “The Network”. A group of young supporters of the anti-fascists gathered outside the court before the verdict, and a man who handcuffed himself to a fence was detained along with others. Later more of their supporters were detained for solo pickets outside FSB headquarters on Lubyanka Square in Moscow. Filinkov and Boyarshinov have been in custody since January 2018 and are said to have been tortured.
Treason cases continue
Roman Kovalev, one of a number of scientists who have been arrested for treason recently, has been sentenced to seven years in prison by a Moscow court. Prosecutors have also appealed against the recent release of 79-year-old scientist Vladimir Lapygin, who was sentenced to seven years in prison in September 2016. Meanwhile a police chief in Kursk Oblast, Dmitri Borzenkov, has been arrested for treason, accused of passing secrets to Ukraine.
Danish Jehovah’s Witness to be released
Dennis Christensen, a Danish Jehovah’s Witness living in Russia who was sentenced to six years in prison last year, will be released early in a few days’ time. He has been in custody since 2017. A court in Kursk replaced the remainder of Christensen’s sentence with a fine of 400,000 roubles ($5,800). Russia has made membership of the Jehovah’s Witnesses illegal, calling it an extremist organisation.
Correction
Last week’s article on the death of former head of Chuvashia Mikhail Ignatyev said that he was hospitalised with pneumonia shortly after announcing a lawsuit against Putin. Some reports say that he was already hospitalised when he announced the lawsuit.