At its own pace

Sergei Krivov, one of the prisoners in the Bolotnaya case, suspended his hunger strike, which he had been on for more than a month, thus speaking out against detention. The fact that he stopped the hunger strike was reported back on January 25 by the Moscow administration of the Federal Penitentiary Service. However, Krivov’s lawyer Vyacheslav Makarov, who was not allowed to see his client that day, allowed himself to doubt this, as well as the fact that if this happened, it was voluntarily. However, on December 26, representatives of the Public Monitoring Commission visited Krivov, and one of them, Anna Karetnikova, wrote in a blog that Krivov himself told them that he had suspended (he emphasizes that he suspended, not stopped) the hunger strike, and of his own free will, having felt that the initial signs of poisoning of the body appeared.

On the same day, a jog took place on Chistye Prudy in support of those accused in the Bolotnaya case, including Krivov. About 15 people, most of them wearing T-shirts with portraits of the accused, ran one lap along Chistoprudny Boulevard, after which eight of them were detained by the police. (including White Ribbon activist Igor Bakirov) The police explained to those gathered that they had to run in the stadium and that this was an uncoordinated action. After the bus took the detainees to the Basmanny police station, the police began to demand that the joggers and sympathizers remaining on the boulevard disperse, since they were carrying out an uncoordinated action. Even the police colonel who was present at the scene did not answer the question of the Daily Journal correspondent why those gathered should disperse if they do not even interfere with the passage of other citizens along the boulevard. A group of citizens who sympathized with those accused in the “Bolotnaya Case” went to the monument to Abai Kunanbayev, where they took pictures, but for some reason the police did not worry about this, and the remaining buses left the boulevard. Later, as ovdinfo.org reports, protocols were drawn up against those detained at the Basmanny police station for violating the procedure for holding mass events. In particular, in the protocol of Yuri Yurkin it was written: “an unauthorized procession expressing an opinion on the release of political prisoners, specifically on May 6,” reports ovdinfo.org.