If a guy dressed in black and armed to the teeth is grabbing you or bashing you over the head with his дубинка (truncheon), it probably doesn’t matter to you which unit he represents. So most folks just call them космонавты (cosmonauts) because of their huge round helmets and bullet-proof glass face shields, their бронежилеты (bullet-proof vests), and nifty наплечники (shoulder pads) and наколенники (kneepads).
Behind them are полицейские (policemen), who generally wear less body armor.
And then to the side are the infamous люди в штатском (men in civilian clothing), who, by all reports, walk around and spot people to be detained. Взять его! (Take this one!) they tell the cosmonauts and cops, who duly grab them and stick them in the waiting автозак (paddy wagon). Who are these guys? Who do they report to? No one seems to know, and they aren’t saying. https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/07/31/wordsworth-a66639
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Authorities across the country have issued ever fewer permits for protests and rallies, while increasing the scale and severity of the law-enforcement response to unsanctioned gatherings….
It was not always thus. Throughout the so-called ‘Bolotnaya’ protests that accompanied Vladimir Putin’s return to the Kremlin in 2011–12, the government allowed most protests to go ahead unhindered. Riot police only became involved in the infamous rally on 6 May 2012, which resulted in dozens of arrests and numerous lengthy prison terms. That, though, was the exception to the rule and remained so until recently.
As Russia geared up for Putin’s 2018 re-election, however, the screws began to tighten. The government barred most of opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s planned anti-corruption protests through 2016–18, daring supporters to come out and face down the riot police — which many did. As protest bans and dozens of arrests failed to keep people off the streets, officials began pre-emptively arresting Navalny and other opposition leaders on charges of inciting participation in illegal rallies. When that too failed the batons began swinging more wildly, and arrest numbers climbed. https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/08/01/violent-crackdowns-on-russian-opposition-reveal-dangerous-policy-shift-a66664
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Héloïse Bargain / MT
When putting their names forward, the independents (many of whom have now been arrested) were testing the limits of the regime’s flexibility. If the regime opened up — just a little — one could then hope for the gradual widening of the sphere of political contestation.
This, unfortunately, did not happen.
This did not happen because the Moscow city authorities feared that should the independents be allowed to run, the Kremlin-backed candidates would lose with big numbers.
Russian regional elections last fall showed that the regime can lose even when it resorts to electoral fraud. https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/08/03/i-will-be-joining-the-moscow-protests-today-heres-why-a66690
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Faced with a wave of summer protests, authorities have opened criminal proceedings for what they term mass civil unrest, an offense punishable with up to 15 years in jail.
Although they have rejected protesters' complaints, they have said they'll allow protests in Moscow on Saturday and Sunday next weekend, albeit in a location away from the city center which the opposition has rejected in the past.
But Leonid Volkov, an ally of jailed anti-Kremlin opposition politician Alexei Navalny, said late on Saturday that Navalny's political movement planned to organize another of its own protests on Aug. 10 which he said would be nationwide.
He said protesters would demand that jailed activists be released, that opposition candidates be allow to run in the Moscow election, and that the mayor of Moscow and other top officials resign.
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/08/04/russian-opposition-plans-new-protest-despite-over-1000-arrests-a66699
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The Shcherbinsky Court of Moscow fined an unregistered candidate for the Moscow City Duma Lyubov Sobol for 300 thousand rubles ($4600). https://www.tellerreport.com/news/2019-08-03---the-court-in-moscow-fined-love-sobol-300-thousand-rubles-.BJSVD6I77S.html
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