Russia: Opposition Activists Sentenced to Prison; Gaskarov & Margolin-3.5 years, Guschin-2.5 years

Russia: Alexey Gaskarov “If, in this country, the way to freedom runs through prison, we are ready to go”.

Moscow's Zamoskvoretsky District Court on Monday found four opposition activists guilty on all counts charged of "inciting mass riots" related to participation in Moscow's 6 May, 2012 Anti Putin Bolotnaya Square protests. Alexei Gaskarov and Alexander Margolin were sentenced to 3.5 years in prison each. Ilya Guschin was sentenced to 2.5 years in prison. Yelena Kokhtareva received a 39-month suspended sentence.

Following the verdict being read, three activists unfurled a banner at the entrance of the courthouse that read: “Russia is not a prison", They, as well as nine other people were detained by police.

An estimated 200 people were outside the courthouse in support of the Bolotnaya Square prisoners. Many of them chanted “freedom!” as a police van drove the twelve arrested protesters away from the courthouse.

Pussy Riot member, Nadezhda [Nadya Tolokno] Tolokonnikova, joined protesters outside the court after the sentences were handed down. She told reporters that the prison terms were harsh.“For the same kind of civil cases, people are usually fined 500 roubles or are detained for 48 hours if they have already committed similar civil offences, But these guys were given three and a half years for nothing.”

Putin’s Powerful Friends Rally Around Russian President Despite Sanctions

“This is a cold shower for Putin,” Kasyanov tells TIME. “I saw a few of the sanctioned lawmakers the other day, and they were very worried. They did not see this coming. They’ve been named and shamed in front of the entire world by this blacklist.”

Kasyanov knows many of the sanctioned individuals personally. Though he now heads a Russian opposition party, he was the number two man in the Russian state hierarchy between 2000 and 2004, just as Putin’s clique of friends from St. Petersburg was migrating to Moscow with ambitious plans. Even then, a joke was going around the capital about a Muscovite meeting a stranger in the streets. “Where are you from?” the man asks. “St. Petersburg,” says the stranger. The Muscovite recoils: “Why do you have to threaten me right away?”

What unites all of the key figures on the U.S. blacklist is not their official rank or ever their wealth. It is their ties to Putin’s St. Petersburg circle. Some of them grew close to Putin decades ago through a shared affinity for martial arts. (Putin and the Rotenberg brothers, for instance, are all experts in judo, having sparred and trained in the same gym since they were teenagers in the 1960s.) Others were Putin’s neighbors at the Ozero Dacha Collective, a gated community that Putin and his friends established on a lakeside near St. Petersburg in 1996. Still others worked with Putin before he moved to the Kremlin, either at the Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) branch of the KGB or at the office of the city’s mayor.

http://time.com/38632/putin-friends-rally-around-him/

I think a ‘Russia Under Putin’ thread would be a good addition to FR. But unless a thread is in the Sidebar it gets little activity and disappears. How could such a thread on Putin be in Sidebar and be acceptable to mods/admin and not be removed? It is almost useless starting a thread at FR if it cannot be added to Sidebar.

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