Chronicle of current events

August 4–8

Oleg Sentsov during the process in the Lefortovo District Court. Moscow, July 7, 2014 /Photo: Sergey Fadeichev /ITAR-TASS

August 4, Monday

With the last word, the defendants of the second wave of “swamp business” Alexei Gaskarov and Elena Kokhtareva performed in court. “If in this country the path to freedom lies through prisons, then we are ready to go through it,” Gaskarov said. “If there is an opportunity, do not plant us,” Kokhtareva, in turn, turned to Judge Natalia Susina.

August 5, Tuesday

The Russian BBC Russian service, despite the pressure of Roskomnadzor, refused to delete an interview with the artist Artem Loskutov from her site about the “Mark for federalization of Siberia” under the slogan “Stop feeding Moscow!” As stated in Roskomnadzor, the editors have already received two official requirements to delete this interview. Roskomnadzor threatens to block the site.

August 6, Wednesday

Ecologist Evgeny Vitishko, who, from July 31, was holding a hunger strike in protest against the premises in the KP-2 penislator in the colony of the Tambov region, stopped his action. As Vitishko said to its supporters, "the administration for the purpose of moral discredit threatened to force the cellmates to accuse him of eating at night." The ecologist is serving a sentence for damage to the fence of the cottage, as he believes the Krasnodar governor Alexander Tkachev.

August 7, Thursday

The Zamoskvoretsky court of Moscow partially satisfied the claims of the two St. Petersburg pensioners to the Rain television channel. The court collected 200 thousand rubles from the TV channel for the question of the blockade of Leningrad, which, as the plaintiffs claimed, insulted their dignity. Initially, one of the pensioners, Yuri Antonov, demanded to reimburse him for 1 million rubles, and the other, Boris Ivchenko, was 50 million. Ivchenko planned to distribute this amount among all pensioners who insulted the issue of the blockade. According to the court decision, each of the plaintiffs will receive 100 thousand rubles.

August 8, Friday

The Moscow City Court recognized the extension of the arrest to the Ukrainian director Oleg Sentsov until October 11. Sentsov is accused of preparing terrorist attacks in Crimea. Since the end of May, he has been in the Lefortovo investigative insulator in Moscow. The director was detained by the FSB on May 11 in Simferopol along with three other people whom the Russian security forces consider “members of the Diversion-Terrorism group of the“ Right Sector ”.